Attn divorcees, do you regret getting divorced?

[fingercuffs]

not too far from tejas, ya know....

It's miles away, ya loon :icon_lol:

Made me look though.

 

[Lead]

My father had a past divorce that I didn't even know about until 2 years ago. My brother and sister both have previous marriages.

For my brother, the woman was awful and our family knew it was a bad set up. She made him work crazy hours a week to afford stupid shit they didnt need and then would continually nag at him when he wasnt working. Then, she eventually wanted out and it tore him apart. He was left with pretty much an empty apartment and no money. About five years later he found a girl who was the complete opposite. He is far happier now and had his first kid recently.

For my sister, she married a guy from college and had a child with him. He was an alcoholic and I think she always had that "I can fix him" mindset with him. She was wrong and his drinking got worse until there was a divorce. Now they both got remarried, live a few blocks from each other and both have had another kid in the new marriage but also married people who had previous kids too. The family dynamic is a bit crazy when I try to think how my young nephews view all of it. I think everyone is happier now however.

With all that history, I fear I'll fail at a marriage. I've always had a view pretty early in my life that I wanted to have a good stable family and happy kids. With my siblings, I kinda realized it isn't just all about you trying but you need to make sure you find a partner who will also during the rough times. That's really something you need to be sure of when you are dating someone and considering it.

 

[CarbonFistprint]

This would only make sense if people chose to get cancer after trying it out for a few years to see if it was right for them. Then deciding that cancer made them so happy they wanted to spend the rest of their life with it. So they invited all of their friends and loved ones to a big, expensive ceremony where they proclaimed their eternal love for cancer and made solemn vows that, "for better or for worse," they would stand by cancer's side in holy matrimony. Then they consummated their love by having little melanoma babies.

So marriage is a little bit different from cancer, I'd say.

Are you actually confusing a wedding with a marriage? Proclaiming love for someone and inviting friends and family to a ceremony aren't the same as a marriage, for one thing.

And not every marriage is a cancer. I'm happily married. But I'm also divorced. And I'll use the cancer analogy again, just for you:

Find something that a person might enjoy that can, but doesn't always, result in cancer. Say smoking, drinking, exposure to the sun, eating meat, using artificial sweeteners, etc. When (if) that cancer develops, what was once something you enjoyed -- loved even -- has resulted in a nasty, burdensome, debilitating, hell even life-threatening condition.

...and you're at least partially to blame, because you chose the agent responsible for your condition. Yes indeed.

But there's a way out. Involving harm to you, for sure -- for cancer it is surgery and/or chemotherapy and/or radiation treatments, which leave you weakened and scarred, but hopefully, in the end, cancer-free. Some are able to escape this condition before it drags them into the grave.

The equivalent to cancer removal in a marriage gone bad is divorce. Unpleasant, expensive, and with consequences of its own, but it rids you of that burden, that disease that's afflicted you. The disease you never had the intention of contracting, but that got you anyway.

So yeah, my analogy fits. I "regret" getting divorced just like I'd "regret" having a tumor removed.

 

[Yompton]

I thoroughly enjoyed both the analogy and the rebuttal

 

[CarbonFistprint]

Except, some people could be in a place where they regret their divorce for some reason. be it the kids, the financial impact, the relationship, the lack of effort, etc...

If you amputated your leg because you thought there was a life-threatening tumor in it, but later found it was just a cyst, you'd regret the amputation. It's important to know how bad things really are before taking drastic action.

Divorce is for the truly disastrous marriage that will get nothing but worse. Two people together that should not have married to begin with, and it's bringing them both down irretrievably.

Fortunately, a divorced couple could get re-married if they want to.

 

[CarbonFistprint]

I thoroughly enjoyed both the analogy and the rebuttal

Thank you for saying so.

I mean what I say, that's for sure. Divorce is a lesser of two evils, but in my case, far, far lesser.

 

[Leagon]

Are you actually confusing a wedding with a marriage? Proclaiming love for someone and inviting friends and family to a ceremony aren't the same as a marriage, for one thing.

And not every marriage is a cancer. I'm happily married. But I'm also divorced. And I'll use the cancer analogy again, just for you:

Find something that a person might enjoy that can, but doesn't always, result in cancer. Say smoking, drinking, exposure to the sun, eating meat, using artificial sweeteners, etc. When (if) that cancer develops, what was once something you enjoyed -- loved even -- has resulted in a nasty, burdensome, debilitating, hell even life-threatening condition.

...and you're at least partially to blame, because you chose the agent responsible for your condition. Yes indeed.

But there's a way out. Involving harm to you, for sure -- for cancer it is surgery and/or chemotherapy and/or radiation treatments, which leave you weakened and scarred, but hopefully, in the end, cancer-free. Some are able to escape this condition before it drags them into the grave.

The equivalent to cancer removal in a marriage gone bad is divorce. Unpleasant, expensive, and with consequences of its own, but it rids you of that burden, that disease that's afflicted you. The disease you never had the intention of contracting, but that got you anyway.

So yeah, my analogy fits. I "regret" getting divorced just like I'd "regret" having a tumor removed.

That's a fair explanation, but small correction.

In your analogy, cutting off the tumor would be fixing the marriage, not divorce. Divorce would be stopping whatever habit developed the cancer (sun exposure, sweeteners, etc). I'd also add that it's an imperfect analogy because people can change whereas things like smoking, sun exposure, etc can not.

The problem I have with people saying that divorce is what happens when two people realize they are truly wrong together is that divorce rates have skyrocketed in the last few decades. So either people somehow now suck at choosing partners (which is possible, but I don't see how or why), or it has less to do with the partner you choose and more to do with the attitudes towards marriage.

 

[CarbonFistprint]

That's a fair explanation, but small correction.

In your analogy, cutting off the tumor would be fixing the marriage, not divorce. Divorce would be stopping whatever habit developed the cancer (sun exposure, sweeteners, etc). I'd also add that it's an imperfect analogy because people can change whereas things like smoking, sun exposure, etc can not.

The problem I have with people saying that divorce is what happens when two people realize they are truly wrong together is that divorce rates have skyrocketed in the last few decades. So either people somehow now suck at choosing partners (which is possible, but I don't see how or why), or it has less to do with the partner you choose and more to do with the attitudes towards marriage.

In my analogy, "removing the tumor" would relate directly to removing the spouse from the picture, legally. It won't fix the unfixable (the marriage). It just allows life to go on. It's not a perfect analogy but name one that is.

I also think the divorce rate is too high, and agree that it has to do with attitudes towards marriage. People enter into marriages that are doomed to fail, knowing that they could get a divorce if it goes south.

How many more people would smoke if there was a sure-fire cure for lung cancer -- a zero-percent chance of dying from smoking?

It used to be socially abhorrent to get divorced. Now it's commonplace and as culturally accepted as getting one's teeth whitened. Which is why people:

1. Enter into doomed marriages, and

2. Bail out of marriages that just need work.

It's just that low-risk. It's sad that marriage has been diluted to this point.

A good marriage is now, in my opinion, as sign of two people who have gotten their acts together, no pun intended. Statistics still show a downside to unmarried parenting and life in general. I don't think it's because marriage cures any ills, I think it's because people who have figured out how to stay married have figured out a few more of life's mysteries as well.

/current rant.