I have been married to the same woman for 25 years. One and only marriage.
The best things you can do are all before getting married:
- Make sure the other person is sane, seems obvious but I have come to the conclusion it isn't
- Make sure the other person isn't a fixer-upper. Most (keyword most) people don't change and you can't change them, even if your last name is Freud.
- Make sure you agree on whether or not to have children (this is hard because people's desires do change)
- Make sure the two of you are sexually compatible. If she/he doles out Sex like its money in the great depression and you want it everyday you are going to have a bad time.
- Give your significant other space, don't be in their shit 24/7.
- Make sure you are your potential mates first priority. Are you really best friends, or are things just convenient? Do they choose others over you when given the choice?
- Be wary of people with extreme personalities. For example if you are marrying an independent loner type, be prepared to well, be alone with your thoughts. If you are marrying an extreme introvert, then be prepared for quiet. Once again this seems obvious, but so many people seem to believe people will change their stripes after marriage. Doesn't happen in my experience
- Lastly, stay away from people who are addicted to drugs, alcohol, gambling, or power. Your life will suck and your spouse will be the cause.
- If you aren't religious and your girl is (or vice versa) then you are going to have a bad time.
All in all understand this. Life is fucking short, marrying the wrong person is brutal. Time warps people. Bad generally goes to worse, good tends to great.
Understand this as well, good people do dumb things from time to time. You will have to forgive and forget.
Good post. I would expand the last point about religion to values in general, including political/ideological ones. But the main thrust of the post is correct, which boils down to:
Evaluate the candidate for the role she’s being considered for, rather than assuming that strong feelings are paramount.
I think the people rolling their eyes and writing off the institution of marriage altogether are being a little lazy. Sure, a marriage is fraught with risk. So is starting a company, which could fail at great financial and psychological cost. Yet nobody says, “lol at entrepreneurship, I’ve never started a business and never will, it’s for suckers.”
Don’t get me wrong — I recognize that a woman can badly derail you. I am unmarried and very wary of settling down. But the people I know who are in a (relatively) solid partnership that has produced children have a dimension to their life that mine lacks.
Some day I will probably give it a shot. If it doesn’t work out, so be it. If you properly vet the woman and maintain the proper frame in the relationship, the romantic relationship can be dissolved without undue drama. And if you’ve properly managed your career/business/financial interests, it shouldn’t break you and send you to the streets to pony up for the kid.
I think the MGTOW philosophy has provided a useful counterpoint to the ridiculous Disney/RomCom worldview that led so many men to shattered expectations and misery. But it shouldn’t be accepted whole-cloth as a replacement orthodoxy. I hate to use a cringe term like “alpha”, but if you are properly alpha across all dimensions of your life, women and children can enrich that life. If you recognize in yourself an inability to attract and manage stable, desirable women, and/or if earning enough money to do more than subsist is a struggle, then it’s probably wise to go MGTOW — at least temporarily. But I would recommend using the free time that doing so creates to correct those two underlying deficiencies, as opposed to dwelling in some MGTOW echo chamber parroting cliches about how shitty women are.