I felt like there was some reason I didn't like you.  Thanks for the reminder!

I have wondered this every now and then. And I think you are kind of on to something. You and your spouse should have at least one thing in common, like thought patterns and maybe even music tastes (not necessarily exactly the same artists), but if you are too alike you might become rivals. Too different though and you will grow intolerant of each other. Like much of life, its about balance.

Now, I feel that two should be possibly happy, maybe even content with each other, but its not going to be perfect and any expectation for it to be as such will result in disaster. The two of you should have some happy moments: why else stay with someone if it is always going to be heck? Trust is also an absolutely vital thing. My father betrayed my mother, and it eventually resulted in them getting divorced.

I don't know, the two married people I'm dating seem really happy and content with each other.

Turns out when you communicate feelings honestly, cool things can happen.

My earlier comment was rude, and I apologize.

If I try to interpret your post in the best way possible, it seems you’re saying that people shouldn’t go into a marriage blinded by infatuation.  You’re probably right about that.  But saying that any and all love should be replaced with hatred sounds like an enormous overcorrection.

“People are at their best when challenged” does not equate to “people are at their best when miserable/hateful.”  You say things like the Hateful Spouse would feel fine speaking up, or someone in a Hateful Marriage would be more productive.  I can’t definitively say that nobody functions that way, seeing as different people are different, but because different people are different, different people will react differently to the same things.  If someone does nothing but lob hatred at you, some people will just crumble.  If you’re saturated with hatred, you may not be able to focus on your work, or not care about maintaining its quality.  And really, why would anyone want to feel a desire to avoid their own home?  I don’t see how that can be beneficial.

You can love someone and commit to working on your relationship with them.  Blind love is dangerous, but love doesn’t have to be blind.  Between love and hatred, I’m inclined to say that love is more likely to lead to understanding and patience (which are useful if not required for successfully interacting with another person for prolonged periods of time) than hatred is, so I don’t understand why you would choose the latter.

Really, I just…don’t understand.  I don’t understand your thought process.  It seems like you’ve constructed two very specific scenarios and feel that they are the only possible results.  If that’s not the case, then I apologize; again, I really just don’t understand.

I have wondered this every now and then. And I think you are kind of on to something. You and your spouse should have at least one thing in common, like thought patterns and maybe even music tastes (not necessarily exactly the same artists), but if you are too alike you might become rivals. Too different though and you will grow intolerant of each other. Like much of life, its about balance.

 

Now, I feel that two should be possibly happy, maybe even content with each other, but its not going to be perfect and any expectation for it to be as such will result in disaster. The two of you should have some happy moments: why else stay with someone if it is always going to be heck? Trust is also an absolutely vital thing. My father betrayed my mother, and it eventually resulted in them getting divorced.

This is the serious side of me talking: My deepest condolences about your parents.  Mine are divorced, too, since my father was and still is very abusive toward his family.  Having such a broken father figure can be devastating.

My honest expectations about marriage is that it's going to be difficult for me if I ever get married, because money will get tight.  I want to see the world, and that's probably something that I should do on my own before I get married.  It doesn't matter if I marry someone who shares my interest in seeing the world, because it would still cause complications.  Even after the exploration phase, there's the complication of wanting a pet wallaby.  What if she wants cats?  You can't have cats and wallabies together, because cat feces carry bacteria deadly to wallabies.  And then what of my business ventures?  I would love to start a small business someday and invest in my community, but it would be risky and it would be difficult to balance such a venture with providing for a household.  These are all things that I'd have too talk about and possibly compromise on if I were to get married, and nobody likes compromising on life goals.  These are things that you have to talk through before getting married.

Also, I suppose that the dark humor of this entry is colored by my chronic depression.  I once was with a woman who didn't understand that in many ways I was much happier if she just let me be miserable.  If I were to get married, it would have to be predicated on the premise that it's okay to be depressed and/or anxious most of the time.  One just needs to have enough patience and faith that happy times will come around every once and a while.

I don't know, the two married people I'm dating seem really happy and content with each other.

 

Turns out when you communicate feelings honestly, cool things can happen.

You're...two-timing with married people?  If that's controversial, I don't know what is.

But seriously, I'm assuming that you're referring to double-dates.  Anyway, I completely agree, and I think that communication is really essential to a marriage, or really any relationship.  It sounds blatantly obvious, but I've encountered many people who are terrible communicators, and/or passive aggressive.  Some of these are within my own family, so it hurts pretty bad.  In any case, open communication is a difficult habit to get into, especially when it requires us to be assertive, but it's definitely preferable to passive, passive aggressive, and aggressive communication.  I think that a key step in getting there is recognizing the four different communication styles.

#thethingsyoulearnincounseling

@BirdMomPahrak To answer some of your thoughts, I'd like to say that I wrote this blog entry when I was in a very cynical state of mind, and this attempt at humor was my way of processing through it.  Someone in my family is going through a divorce and dark humor is one of the ways that I'm dealing with it.  I can't really guarantee that this entry should be humorous for others, but it fulfilled the needs that I had for myself.  I got a chuckle out of it, the type that can best be described through the quote "Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think."

If you want my honest opinion, I definitely would take love over hatred any day.  The idea of learning to choose to love someone in spite of differences that you might have with them, though, interests me.

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As in the two people I am dating are married to each other. The three of us talk and laugh and have similar interests and don't "challenge" each other because that's irresponsible and rude. We actively support each other and it's the happiest and healthiest I've felt in my entire life.

If someone gets hurt and upset, it gets communicated and we collectively work forward with that yo make sure it's never repeated.

I guess that this is the way I'm wired, but it's difficult for me to imagine a relationship that I'd be content in if I wasn't being challenged.  I'd always be seeking improvement in myself and in the relationship.

I think that this page about ENTPs in romantic relationships really describes me quite well.

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I appreciate the logic of the angle you're taking. Less...shall we say, refined, personality types will miss it and take offense, but I understand the positive intent and the nuance of your logic that's technically threading the needle. Stimulates the intellect, for sure.

I think the ultimate conclusion is to filter it through a bit of Aristotle--mean between the extremes (balance). Consider, my wife and I have been married for several years as an ISFJ and INTP. This is one of the more classically difficult pairs to mingle, and it doesn't help that I tilt almost purely NT. To your point, our radically different personalities force us to be extremely intentional about communication all the time, and even a cursory glance reveals that she and I are dramatically more in-tune than my coworkers as a result (granted, outside observer). Consistently starting with the opposite interpretation really forces you to understand the entire picture, every single time.

​Really hard work for sure, but the payoff is a stacked deck where each spouse counters the other's weaknesses. It's all about how conflict is resolved, not whether or not it occurs.

​Back on the principle of balance though, as powerful as it is, xNTP + xSFJ is fatiguing. There is a need for there to be love and place for enjoying the other person. We've tapped into introversion. It's a shared weakness at times, but nothing makes us prouder than ignoring the world on a Friday night and playing Overwatch for 4 hours. It's really important to recharge, and it's refreshing to look at an invite to the neighbor's bbq and groan together that it's 5 hours of people.

I think there's a point of maximum efficiency where disagreement and ease intersect, and it results in better-rounded people. If I hated being at home, you're right, I'd roll pure type-A, overachieve, burn out, and have no support network. The value of happiness in a marriage is that it provides that base of trust and environment to recharge, and that's more important to a stable economy than you'd think.

​For what it's worth, I do, intellectually, like the idea of arranged marriages. Heck, a benevolent dictatorship, in general, seems like a wonderful way to eliminate a tremendous amount of the stupidity people introduce when left to their own devices. Probably can't exist, but the theory is fun.

For what it's worth, I do, intellectually, like the idea of arranged marriages. Heck, a benevolent dictatorship, in general, seems like a wonderful way to eliminate a tremendous amount of the stupidity people introduce when left to their own devices. Probably can't exist, but the theory is fun.

It worked wonderfully for Friedrich II Hohenstaufen, King of Prussia, also know as Fredrick the Great. He pioneered Enlightened Despotism. The problem with it, is that though one person can be a great leader, the heir most likely wont be nearly as great as the enlightened despot and thus its not worth it. One generation of prosperity for an eternity of enslavement. Heh, also reminds me of the Roman Empire, with Octavian and then the remainder of the Empire over the course of 1500 years.

I'm not going to try and refute the entire argument despite it seeming extremely sketchy to me, but I'd like to point out that life in general can be challenging enough without having to make marriage into a battlefield. If I ever got married I'd want it to be with someone who could help me through my own challenges and whom I could help in turn, not someone who I would constantly be at odds with even during the many external struggles that would be sure to arise.

 If there's anything that I've learned from romantic comedies

I stopped reading here, because I remember enough of the original yikes-fest, and because...

Look. The people in romantic comedies do not behave like actual healthy human beings. At best, they are an exaggeration of human traits designed to communicate the idea of personality in broad strokes when you have less than five hours to get to "know" the characters (and to hit all of the familiar buttons to make the audience laugh, because rom-coms are nothing if not formulaic).

At worst, they are a collection of false images copied from decades of bad storytelling, influenced by a wide array of social mores that are not only mostly antiquated, but are often not even compatible with each other, and which often reflect a rosy view of a past that never really existed while simultaneously attempting to insist that the vision they show is fresh, modern, and real.

I'm not going to say they're the lowest form of cinematic storytelling, because goodness knows there's a pretty thrilling race to the bottom in that category (Hi, Adam Sandler!), but if you can learn anything true from them, it's that people can misunderstand basic human behavior in a number of exciting ways, despite being human themselves.

If we married someone that we liked, we'd no longer be motivated to do anything.

False. I know of people who are happily married to people that they like, and - and I know this is going to sound fake, but bear with me here - they do not struggle to find the motivation to do things. They go to work, because they enjoy not starving (or, if you want to be cynical, because starving would make them unhappy, and you are at least correct insofar as the avoidance of future unhappiness is a powerful motivator), they play board games together, because they enjoy each others' company and also enjoy playing board games, why, one such couple even cooks meals together, because it's something they both enjoy, that they can do together!

And if there is a problem, between these people who like each other, do they just say "I'm fine" and pretend there isn't a problem? No, of course not, that would be silly. In fact, they talk it out calmly, because in addition to liking each other, they respect each other enough to be honest, and to treat each other as reasonable people they can compromise with if they know what the other wants, needs, and feels.

arranged marriages! Statistically, those end in divorce less often than normal marriages

The reason for this is generally because it is legally forbidden to divorce unless under very specific circumstances that have to be verified by an outside source (that is predisposed to avoid sanctioning a divorce), because there is a strong social stigma against divorce, such that one or both parties (but usually the woman, let's be honest here) is viewed as having greatly diminished worth if a divorce happens, or hey, even both of those things at the same time. It is not because arranged marriages produce happier couples.

If you marry someone that you hate from the get-go, you know that there's nothing that can tear you two guys apart!

Not to be morbid, but I'm willing to bet that people pushed into that kind of scenario, without divorce as a practical option, tend to find, eventually, that physical force is sufficient to tear at least one of them apart.

Okay, now, I'm gonna let Kraggh off the hook for a second.

 a benevolent dictatorship, in general, seems like a wonderful way to eliminate a tremendous amount of the stupidity people introduce when left to their own devices.

Wow. You know, I've never liked Hobbesian thinking at the best of times, but there's something very... wannabe-paternal in the idea of a "benevolent dictatorship." I think the very idea is a contradiction in terms, in any real society, because there is nothing benevolent in one person deciding they have the right to take, by force, the right of others to choose how to live their own lives - and if it is to be a dictatorship, rather than someone merely giving out suggestions, then that threat of force must be present.

In summation,

Y i k e s.