Getting married doesn’t make people any happier

Yamureska · 2023-07-31T20:01:39+00:00

Some good relationship advice I've heard recently basically says this: don't look for a partner thinking they'll "fix" you or that the relationship will give you happiness. You've got to be happy already before looking for a relationship.

Dependent_Active_944 · 2023-07-31T20:15:31+00:00

It has for me for ten years.

fathergoose77 · 2023-07-31T21:02:04+00:00

Yes, getting married won’t make an unhappy person happy the same way that just getting a girlfriend or losing your virginity won’t solve all your life problems.

I’m currently engaged. I don’t think my upcoming marriage with automatically bring me happiness. However, I’m pretty content with myself and my life (always room for improvements of course and still working on personal goals), and I love my fiancé and I think we make a really great team, so we want to spend our lives with each other. We understand it is not all rainbows and roses, there will be rough days, but I feel confident that we can work though those rough days because we are both dedicated to making the marriage work and we have been getting pretty damn good at communicating/problem solving together. I want to do life with her - including all the ups and downs.

Expecting marriage to magically bring you happiness is a guarantee for disappointment.

ManWazo · 2023-07-31T23:08:38+00:00

Agreed. I'd be so less happy if I was married!

tromp-et · 2023-08-01T15:12:44+00:00

Marriage is for the children, not for personal happiness. Although I do think getting married to THE RIGHT PERSON would make you happier in the long run. But marriage for a large part is about self sacrifice to create the best possible outcome for your children.

bluemagex2517 · 2023-07-31T22:41:22+00:00

Personally I don't "believe" in marriage. Not that I don't think it exists. I think it's mostly pointless and has a lot of downsides.

The core of this belief is simply that it's superfluous and antiquated. People don't need a ceremony, vows, a contract, extra social pressure, and sometimes mountains of debt, in order to have a healthy and happy long term relationship. Especially non-religious people like my partner and me.

My partner and I have been together 5.5 years, and our relationship is still incredibly strong. We don't fight. We still have passion. We love each other deeply. What would marriage add to that? Other than some legal privileges? I'd rather fight to get those legal privileges without getting married.

It's not that I'm saying married people can't be happy. I have a lot of friends who have gotten married over the last couple of years and I wish them the best. Most of them are very happy too, and I very much enjoyed going to their weddings and celebrating with them. I just don't think it has made them any more happy than when they were merely in long term relationships, and it certainly doesn't make their relationships stronger or better than mine.

It's also a personal thing that came from the way I was raised. My parents were only together briefly. My mom got pregnant and had me. My parents got along great as friends/acquaintances and both did an excellent job as parents. They both got married to other people at different times after I was born. Both those marriages failed miserably. It was so much harder for my little brother to go through a divorce than it was for me to just have parents who weren't together. My mom and stepfather's marriage happened later on, I was in college by the time it ended. They had been in a pretty good relationship before they got married, but the marriage put all kinds of pressures on them. My step dad ended up becoming a hardcore drug addict, not because of the marriage but it also didn't help anything. Instead of just being able to kick him out, my mom had to go through a one sided divorce that was insanely difficult and messy. Meanwhile some of my mom's hippy friends weren't married and are still together to this day. Seeing how marriages could fail and how relationships could succeed without marriage was of full display to me as I grew up.

That's my views on it anyway. I don't like hate anyone who gets married, or think they are dumb. I just think most people haven't really been exposed to an alternative, they hit a milestone and they do the thing. It's sadly kind of automatic. It's also borderline brainwashed into kids, especially little girls. They're encouraged to dream about their wedding from way before they even have any romantic feelings for anyone. That's a little messed up. I just wish people would examine the idea and the institution more closely as adults. Maybe they'll still be into it, but maybe not.

It just seems to me like an institution we could get rid of and it would be a slight net positive for the world.

Title	Getting married doesn’t make people any happier
Author	PutsWomenOnPedestal
Upvotes	6
Comments	25
Date	July 31, 2023 7:45 PM UTC (3 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/ExRedPill
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/exredpill/comments/15epzb1/getting_married_doesnt_make_people_any_happier/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/ExRedPill/getting-married-doesnt-make-people-any-happier.1227042 https://theredarchive.com/post/1227042

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