Comment by Xcelerate | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Xcelerate | Hacker News Reader

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> series of suppositions ... First is that people are static.

I don't know of anyone who believes people are static. You even say yourself in the next sentence "We all know that we all change". No one (at least that I'm aware of) goes into marriage expecting the person they marry to stay the same over time. Another HN poster (can't remember who) put it beautifully once: marriage is an agreement to learn to love the person that each of you become over time.

A marriage is a promise, a vow, to commit to this. Now, I could certainly see a situation where two people tell each other at the altar "I promise to love and support you always, well... unless we change too much". However, both people should be aware of these terms! You can't make an agreement that you will always, unconditionally support the other person, and then back out of it later because you changed your mind. If both people are in agreement that they might change and get divorced later before the marriage begins, then fine with me. It's not that different than dating with some legal benefits. But if one person thinks they're going into something permanent, and the other person has doubts about it, then that is really not fair to the first person, and I would argue it's essentially evil to be that dishonest to someone.

> further stigma to those who have gone through divorce

There is a stigma, but it's not on divorce; it's on someone who goes back on their word. What are my terms for divorce? If there is abuse or cheating. Those are my only conditions. And before I marry anyone, I will make it very clear that these are the only conditions in which I will abandon them, and if they don't like those terms they can marry someone else. The stigma associated with the vast majority of divorces is that one (or two) people were unable to keep a promise. I don't want to be associated with these kinds of people. My life is simpler and happier if I associate with people who will keep their word at any cost. Maybe your experience is different.

> marriage is an agreement to learn to love the person that each of you become over time

The supposition that it is always possible to learn to love the other person is as ridiculous as the supposition that people are static.

> If both people are in agreement that they might change and get divorced later before the marriage begins, then fine with me.

Everyone who gets married knows that the possibility of divorce exists and roughly what divorce proceedings entail. How does making these details explicit as opposed to implicit help anyone?

> There is a stigma, but it's not on divorce; it's on someone who goes back on their word.

I would wager that very few people are as hot-to-trot as you are on the notion of honor in contract literalism.

> My life is simpler, more enjoyable, and happier if I associate with people who will keep their word at any cost. Maybe your experience is different.

It is. Honesty is valuable, but by my way of reckoning there is little honesty in the practice of enshrining outdated guesses about the future. A promise made without implicit limits is a lie.

> Everyone who gets married knows that the possibility of divorce exists and roughly what divorce proceedings entail.

On the contrary, I had absolutely no idea how difficult divorce proceedings were when I got married. Maybe I was just naive and living in a bubble, but it was a very real shock to me that, since our divorce was amiable, my wife and I couldn't just go in to the courthouse and tell them we didn't want to be married any more. Instead the legal system forces an adversarial process on you.

Maybe this was just because my religious ideals caused me to not even consider divorce as an option. But even then, it's a very real thing and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person to have been in that boat.

> The supposition that it is always possible to learn to love the other person is as ridiculous as the supposition that people are static.

No it's not. What do you support that statement with?

> Everyone who gets married knows that the possibility of divorce exists and roughly what divorce proceedings entail.

> I would wager that very few people are as hot-to-trot as you are on the notion of honor in contract literalism

I've found that people's life experiences significantly shape their views on things. Friends of mine that come from family backgrounds with a lot of divorce have the same view that you do. I call it the "realist" view. The idea of a permanent happy relationship is viewed with pessimism, as an "unrealistic fairy tale", because they've either never seen such a thing or experienced it themselves.

On the other hand, I come from a family background with multiple, near-perfect half-century or longer marriages. Out of my entire extended family, only one person has been divorced. And I wonder -- the divorce rate is so much lower in my family (30 or so people) than the rest of society -- why is this? And I think it's the "hot-to-trot notion of contract literalism" that you so summarily dismiss.

There's something fascinating that I've begun to realize in the last few years, and it's that people assume everyone else is more similar to them (or people they grew up with) than is actually the case. Cheaters assume everyone else would secretly cheat, just like them, given a good enough opportunity or motive. Liars assume everyone else does the same. They find it hard to believe that people actually do exist that don't view the world through the same negative lens that they do, including people who will honor their word above all else. And there's more of them than you might think.

(Btw, I didn't downvote you. I wish people wouldn't use the downvote button to express differing opinions; that's what comments are for.)

That's called 'projection' and I know what you mean. If you're put into a Prisoner's Dilemma with someone who believes that people always cheat, it's not hard to understand what they will do.

> Friends of mine that come from family backgrounds with a lot of divorce have the same view that you do.

I come from a family with a history of long, strong marriages. My parents are another success story. They have learned to tolerate each other, and we (my parents, my sister, myself) are all better for it.

What do I base my opinion on?

1. My parents fought on occasion. Screaming matches, passive aggression, shit-talking behind each others backs. It was rare and not nearly enough to threaten the marriage, but it gave me a point of comparison.

2. I had friends whose parents did this constantly. Rather than fighting 5% of the time, they fought 95% of the time. I saw some of it first hand.

3. I had friends whose parents were divorced. It wasn't ideal and it created more than a few miscommunications, but the kids got the attention they needed, they didn't complain about their parents trying to take their anger out on them, and things generally seemed to work out OK.

By "filling in the blanks" in my friend's description of #2 with my own experiences of parental fighting (#1), I believe #2 is a considerably worse state of affairs for all involved than #3.

> projection

Right back at you.

> cheaters, liars project

We are in complete agreement on this point :P

I think we would both agree that there is a "you get out what you put in" effect in marriage. More tolerance and more commitment from either partner greatly increase the strength of the marriage and are generally a good thing. My contentions are that there's a turning point where this stops being true and that contract verbiage is poor at determining this turning point and providing appropriate guidance.

I think you're a little quick on the trigger, it's not just cheaters who assume that people cheat, it's also people who have been cheated upon or lied to.

In general, I think this is asymmetrical. People who have never had to deal with complexity in their lives, tend to assume that people can live by simple rules. Until they discover that the world doesn't work that way. Usually by getting their naive ass bitten.

They don't call them realists for no reason. (Yes, I know, spoken like a realist :-)). I don't place much value on the opinions of people who tell me how perfect they or their family is -- usually they avoid digging too far into the fascade because their self-worth is tied to how well they and their group (family) perform whatever role they are holding up as ideal.

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