Woman, what is your role in dating?

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Ah, that's a good explaination. We sit around and wonder why we can't meet anyone. mostly because none of us know anyone outside of our group.

Yeah, I have no idea what I want. It's all hypothetical. I mentioned the car because I felt guitly, like a sin of omission if I didn't mention it. I mentioned I had reservations about it. I deleted what I wrote because it's too personal. I think an expensive car is a waste of money. I could see that leading to arguments. I drive one of the tiniest cars on the market and there's no way I will willingly buy a gas guzzler. There are environmental concerns I have about cars too.

I am a human being of course I am contradictory. I stand by what I said in the other thread. Generally I do try not to be materialistic, but I am an artist/designer so I am drawn to well designed things. It's difficult to balance that out with drawing a line between wants and needs.

Sigh, I said that n times here, it is very easy for people to say ideal principles and hypothesises and project idealism behind the screen, but all this often doesn't match our reality beyond the house's door.

That is something I think you can find, I think. And I don't think it would be out-of-line to say that in a first date, along the lines of, "I really hope for a relationship of equals, where we basically take turns doing something nice for each other, asking each other out, etc." I would not keep an actual scorecard (in your head or otherwise), because that will be doomed (after all, in order for a relationship to be 50/50, both parties have to FEEL they are doing at least 60/40) , but overall the idea of equals and trade offs does not seem like an unreasonable way to go. Some women won't like the idea, but then maybe they aren't the ones for you anyway.

I don't think this means to take it as far as you suggest. This is advice, really, for a woman who is about to give up her career in order to raise the kids. If she has come into the marriage with cash, and her husband none, then it makes sense for her to keep that separate simply because down the line she may find herself both divorced and unemployable.

I live in a community property state and, once in a marriage, I believe that everything you do as a couple should truly be 50/50. After all, you decide together to have children and by having children you basically agree to figure out what is going to be best for them, which may involve a spouse giving up a career. Here, you have to work specifically against comingling to do otherwise, and that is not a conflict worth creating. What is up for grabs may be what you have brought into the marriage, and what you might inherit along the way. You don't have to do anything too drastic to keep that separate, if you have reasons for doing so, and those can include situations that have nothing to do with divorce (inheritance rights for children from a previous marriage, or for nieces and nephews, are common reasons).

Did you know that in my state an anti-nuptial (the real name for a pre-nup) is invalid if it is written in anticipation of divorce?

Mostly the agreements are designed to protect inheritance/property rights and business interests. Sure, they also function as a guide to dividing property in a divorce, but that is not supposed to be the overriding goal.

I think what that author meant was that women used to do nothing, and I mean nothing, to protect their interests going into a marriage. You do have to at least think about it, and be ready in some way for all options. But you should never act as if it is practically inevitable.

We went through all the tough questions during our year long engagement. We had actually casually talked about pretty much all of it while dating, but the engagement period is when you basically should be challenging yourselves to make sure no stone has been left unturned. We didn't find very many, so that was good.

I do think of marriage as a contract, but a very malleable one. Different people want different relationships and different roles in those relationships, and as long as it works for both people involved, no one else should judge it. But life does throw things at you that you never expected, and you have to adjust accordingly. It would be counter-productive to say, "oops, sorry, that is not what I agreed to."

oh now hang on a minute this man isn't ignorant. He is intelligent and kind and that is the main draw.if he was a moronic show off I wouldn't give him the time of day. I will never ever end up with someone shallow. I tend to freak out shallow people anyway. They don't know what to do with me, so the odds of one being attracted to me is slim, thankfully.

I don't know if I'm ever going to find out if I will stick to my ideals or not. I feel the chances of getting together with someone to be slim. My love life is a vast Sahara.

I assumed nothing of that sort about him, I just called him successful and social.

Ah, ok. I was just being overly defensive.

That is true, which might be one reason for so much conflict exsists between the sexes. In a way the societal and technological changes have outpaced our genetic predisposition and physiology, not to mention long standing cultural traditions.

But the speed at which changes can be made genetically is a subject of increased study, and recent findings point to changes occurring much more rapidly then was previously thought.

For example, in Portugal a comprehensive study showed women's skulls had changed from smaller and with finer structure to nearly identical to men's in only the space of 400 years. It is not known why.

Another study showed that when parents underwent some extremely traumatic event, their was measurably more change in the offspring's genes then the control group.



Teachers hate that!

In fourth grade, I was in a Catholic school and for the school science fair I sculpted 4 busts of early Hominids showing the progression of evolution. I was completely clueless about it being at variance with certain teachings and mystified about the weird response I got from some of the Nuns and Priests. I guess my own teacher who was not a nun backed me up because I did get to show it at the fair. She was a pistol and I had the biggest crush on her!

Catholics believe in evolution, the religion keeps science and faith separate. Although they will teach that evolution is a God-guided process.

I understand what you are saying. I'm old enough to remember the days when divorce meant a man would lose almost everything and support his ex-wife for the rest of her life. That was true, even if she initiated the divorce and had no reason, other than she chose to. When no-fault divorce was widely adopted and gender became less of a deciding factor, a lot of women ended up with 50% of the equity, which could be less than nothing, due to debt. Marriage contracts were initiated to help men from being cleaned out, in case of divorce. However, they have proven useful for all parties. Today, divorce is normal and marriages are really temporary. So, why not have a graceful exit plan? Think about this - most of the women in the sub-forum probably were very compatible with men, at some earlier point. However, something changed and their first thoughts are to analyze everything a man does to see if something can be interpreted as abuse. What if a man marries a woman and, due to influences outside of the marriage, she becomes incompatible with a male significant other? That happens regularly.

This is a classic scenario: When I was in graduate school, I met a man who had a happy marriage, until his kids left home for college and his wife got a job. Within a short time, due to conversations with some of her coworkers, she was telling him that a man having sex with a woman who has not given her explicit verbal permission was a form of rape. That led to a huge blow-up with him angry because she was effectively contending that their two sons were created by rape. The couple was instantly estranged and didn't communicate - it was one of those arguments that resulted in him sleeping in one of the extra bedrooms - they never made up. They had a split foyer home and he ended up living downstairs while she lived upstairs. Ironically, he said he was much better off, because he was spending time at the gym and other activities and he was in much better shape. He was upset for about three months and missed spending time with his wife, but he had adjusted and referred to his relationship as "a marriage of convenience." He had lost interest in his wife, but had no immediate plans for divorce and he didn't see any indicators his wife was planning one, so he was satisfied with the status quo. He usually left home about 5:45 AM and he made sure not to return before 9:00 PM. For him, home was like a motel room, and that was fine. But, if divorce had been chosen, a marriage contract would be handy - he didn't have one. I met him while he spent three days at the university sitting in on classes and hanging around to see if he wanted to go back to school. To set the time frame, 1992 was "The Year of the Woman" and Hillary Clinton was wife of the President from 1992 to 2000. I was in grad school from 1993 to 1996 (part-time evening program for working professionals), so women's issues were on fire and being pressed really hard. People change, and sometimes a change occurs due to something entirely outside of the relationship, but the effect on the relationship can be tremendous.

But that's only a recent revision, Catholic belief wasn't like that a decade ago.

The devout Maronites in my country (part of Eastern Catholic church, decendant of Syriac church) don't believe much in evolution.

I find it really hard to believe that their sex was a form of rape and was ok with it, and yet she learned later it was rape, I mean come on.

From what I can tell, she never actually accused her husband of rape or implied that was the case. She had become resentful of him for having developed a career while she sat at home and women's issues, along with the male-dominated society thing, became regular topics at home - he was already getting worn thin by the subject. At that time, he had a really good job and she was in an unskilled entry-level clerical position. They had gotten married right out of college and had their first kid quickly, so she hadn't worked in something like 22 years and never in her field of study. She got the job to take up some time, because she didn't want to sit around an empty house all day with nothing to do and missing her children. So, as he told the story, she made the general statement about non-expicitely-consentual sex being a form of rape and he got really insulted and blew a fuse. His oldest son's old bedroom was downstairs, so that is where he spent the night. The next day, while having lunch with coworkers, he told them about the situation and said he wasn't anxious to go home. One of them invited him to a gym to look around. When he got home, he went straight to his son's bedroom and the situation with his wife never changed. He said the marriage had been happy, but I'm guessing it was stale and just amicable, which is often the case. So, the coincidence of the argument with his wife and the coworker who invited him to the gym, changed his life.

Now that I think about it, two different sets of coworkers were critically involved in changing and redirecting his life: 1) The group that changed his wife's attitude toward men; 2) The folks who encouraged him to try going to the gym, instead of spending the evening with his wife. There is more to the story, but it's way off topic.

Post edit: Well, I'll tell you a bit more, because it's kind of cool. He got up a 5:45 AM so he could get to the gym around 6:00 AM, when it opened. In the morning, he would do some aerobic exercise, shower, shave, and go to work or weekend activities. In the evening, he would eat a light supper and head to the gym about 7:00 PM for either weight lifting or some sporting activity, like racket ball or basketball. Sunday was a light day with only range-of-motion exercise to allow his muscles and joints to recover. The gym closed at 9:00 PM, so he would shower and head home shortly before then. He'd been working out for about five months at the time I saw him, and he almost looked like he was ready for a triathlon. However, in his driver's license photo, he looked like the Pillsbury Dough Boy. Five months of dedicated diet and exercise can make a big difference. Prior to that, his only exercise was a nightly walk around the block with his wife, which was just a slow stroll.

It is been that way for my entire life. I was never, ever pressured to believe in creationism; that was always a story simplification. I cannot speak for different sub-groups within the church.

That later couple probably never should have married. But, I realize that is hard to foresee at the front end. Either that, or they are idiots who let other people direct their lives and never choose to do the work it takes to rediscover why you married each other. Either way, there is some commitment lacking and maybe some selfishness involved. Why can't the guy work out AND see if he can rebuild his relationship with his wife?

I see tons of people completely misunderstanding what marriage is about, confusing lust with love. Lust wears off. Love evolves.

Marriages are not MEANT to be temporary. They are MEANT to be for life. Sometimes you can't help it and realize that you've made a bad decision, but if you go into marriage thinking marriages are temporary, then yours most certainly WILL be temporary.

NO WAY would I have stayed in a long term relationship with a man who felt that marriages were temporary, and it most certainly would have come out. Shoot, I can tell you right now which men I dated that seemed to feel that way. It was usually the beginning of the end for me, a fundamental life difference that would never be overcome and that rendered us incompatible.

Only 50% of marriages end in divorce, and many of those involve the same people getting married for the 2nd or 3rd time. Most of us actually do stay in our marriages.