I don’t understand this phrase

powercozmik · 2022-12-27T15:19:18+00:00

Investment. People expect some level of security and peace of mind for your future to come with the commitment they make to their spouse. You sacrifice things to achieve this. Think of a 30yr mortgage. At the end of the term you expect to have a forever home for your retirement. What if after 15yrs the bank cancels the mortgage and you're back to renting and you're 15yrs older now. Sure you had a nice place for a few years but if you did your part in your relationship with the bank you gotta feel let down by them. That's why it feels like wasted time for a lot of people because you date for memories, you get married for stability.

SelectionNo3078 · 2022-12-27T15:05:23+00:00

Marriage is presented to be a lifelong relationship

Most understand it as a place where they should be fully open and expect the same from their spouse

Stereotypically one spouse often checks out for years without discussing issues with the other until they can’t do it anymore and leaves…suddenly to the partner that thought things were either great ok or at least not that bad

coffeefrog92 · 2022-12-27T15:17:40+00:00

You put your all into building a family, year after year, and she can knock you back to zero on a whim because she doesn't feel haaaaaaappy :'(

azwildcat74 · 2022-12-27T15:05:52+00:00

All the strife, all the hard times, all the experience, all the trust that was built, all the intimate knowledge of one another, all the memories of good and bad times that you worked together through, it's all gone and it was all for nothing.

And that's not even taking into consideration the financial and material possession side of things that get flushed down the toilet to pay for legal fees, lawyers, etc.

georeddit2018 · 2022-12-27T15:16:26+00:00

I see life now in a more simpler context. Everything will come to an end and people tend to change.

JohnnyLaw281 · 2022-12-27T19:23:34+00:00

I spent nine years together with my wife 4 years of it, we were legally married. Then one day she comes home and blindsides me before my birthday and demand a divorce.

After said divorce, she took the house, my diesel, pick up truck, my tractor, my trailer, my farm animals and the farm. I was functionally homeless and broke for the next 3/4 years.

It’s a way of looking at things. You spend a whole bunch of time building something together with somebody thinking it’s going to benefit the both of you in the long run only for them to throw it away.

Gattsama · 2022-12-27T15:42:26+00:00

First, it's an assumption on your part we got to enjoy that time together 😆 And second think of it as an investment. You put money into the company's 401k every year for 20 years, then year 21 the company goes bankrupt and loses the 401k. You lost all that investment.

Marriage is about ups and downs, highs and lows. The return on investment is you keep at it until death do you part. Now imagine that the story is true and just that simple. You invest your life force, years of life, money, resources, time, you sacrifice and toll. Then one day your spouse says "I'm not happy and want to end this." You need lose 50% of what you've worked for, your family is destroyed, you see your kids 4 days a month if your an everyone weekend dad, and you owe her continued provisions for years.

Then she threw away your investment. The fact you profited some is meanless, just like the lost 401k. It's not about cashing in chips, it's not even lost chips, it's that you earned these chips and them someone comes and just legally steals them and that person is rewarded for it.

Last point, it also means that what they got isn't equal to what they destroyed. We had 15 years of marriage, a family and a certain lifestyle. We now both have it worst : the kids are split, the man is financially devastated, and she almost never finds that happiness she was looking for.

Slow_Way1108 · 2022-12-27T15:05:39+00:00

Dr Peterson lays this out better than I can

https://youtube.com/shorts/Fg7vqybIikU?feature=share

https://youtu.be/ZkDEq4LN-uI

Classic_Dill · 2022-12-27T18:50:59+00:00

Hi, 26 years of marriage absolutely wasted!

Let me explain, you find out very quickly that the spouse you though you knew? was never the spouse you knew, you wish you would have done something with the red flags and saw a more clear version of who they really were. People don't really change, they expand on who they already are. So......those years are wasted, if i were smarter i would be 40 and divorced, not 52! that's the years we feel we wasted, we invested in a complete lie. That being said, I'm hitting a second life peak at 52! soooo, yay for me, lol

Its the time that feels wasted.

No_Analyst_5235 · 2022-12-27T15:39:19+00:00

What is not to understand ? The person threw away a friendship/partnership / marriage. They gave up on it and let it die after years of someone investing in them and the future together.

“ throwing it away “ is just a euphemism.

Look at the family’s financial situation before and after a divorce . That’s just one of many things thrown away

Small_Quarter_3673 · 2022-12-27T17:54:53+00:00

It's the memories and other financial and emotional investments. People always say that because they in their mind if they made a different choice or had chosen someone else the outcome would be what they hoped for

ashton_w_1 · 2022-12-27T22:03:23+00:00

I feel like maybe it comes from the fact that a lot of us are told from a young age that there is some special person out there who we will fall in love with and spend the rest of our life with. If we don't find, then spend our entire life with that 1 person, we failed or threw it away, in a sort of way.

Seemedlikefun · 2022-12-27T17:21:37+00:00

It's the same value system that keeps men trapped in shit marriages because of sunken cost fallacies. Quantifying helps some people process, even when it's not helpful.

dritmike · 2022-12-27T16:02:24+00:00

I’ve heard the happy years only counted. As in we were married for 3 amazing years. Scattered over a decade of bull

pk2at · 2022-12-27T18:26:49+00:00

It makes sense to me as all the cash and wealth in those 15 years gets thrown away, irrespective of enjoying or suffering those 15 years

ConnectionPuzzled402 · 2022-12-27T22:08:14+00:00

Because there could have been many more good years hadn't she thrown it away.

thrownaway41422 · 2022-12-27T22:19:10+00:00

When people get married they do so for life. You put all this time and effort into a relationship thinking you'll last until you die. Anything short of that is less than ideal and viewed as wasted, especially when it's thrown away for another person.

MightBusiness7231 · 2022-12-28T16:09:29+00:00

You invest in someone and then they do something stupid that irreparably damages a relationship that could have been saved. Maybe you were going through a bad patch and things would get better. Maybe you were simply disillusioned at what marriage would be like and you're acting childishly. The relationship, particularly when there are kids involved, is something worth keeping a lot of the time.

dday_throwaway3 · 2022-12-27T16:14:02+00:00

It's called gaslighting. Look it up so you understand and can identify it. Then you can ignore it.

jimsmythee · 2022-12-27T16:52:55+00:00

Both women and men will say that. They get blindsided by a divorce, because a lot of times, they are clueless at how unhappy their spouse is.

They're like those dead people from Sixth Sense. They only see what they want to see.

I've seen a lot of marriages and relationships crumble, and a lot of times, they're very one-sided. As in, "one side is a horrible wretch, and the other side just can't take it anymore."

But why say "Throwing away those years?" It's because that jilted person is saying, "why didn't you say anything to me?" It's because they were told a hundred time and in a hundred different ways how unhappy their spouse was. They just didn't want to see it before it was too late.

Roto2esdios · 2022-12-27T20:17:42+00:00

Men have high expectations for themselves and the lifestyle they can provide to a woman. A woman for that men have low expectations. That's the recipe for disasters.

They invested all in a low woman and now they do not understand what did happen. Some even forgive cheating for the sake of these expectations being unaltered.

spongemonkey2004 · 2022-12-27T22:49:19+00:00

im in this exact situation and yes i do feel like she has wasted the last 13 years of my life. i wanted a partner who would stand by my side till the end, not cheat on me when things get a little rough and tell me they just didnt even want to try and fix the relationship.

644pacf · 2022-12-28T02:36:15+00:00

I never thought divorce was an option with us. I thought we would be together for the rest of our lives.

Both of us had parents who were married and divorced multiple times, and they were still miserable.

This is an unpopular opinion, but my life was way better in an unhappy marriage than it is now. Now I'm just miserable.

Title	I don’t understand this phrase
Author	BurnDownTheMission68
Upvotes	9
Comments	33
Date	December 27, 2022 2:58 PM UTC (3 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/Divorce_Men
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/Divorce_Men/comments/zwhh9l/i_dont_understand_this_phrase/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/Divorce_Men/i-dont-understand-this-phrase.1145592 https://theredarchive.com/post/1145592

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