I was going to post this in Franchiseblade's thread with the similar title but given that there might be more single people here in CF.net I was thinking this might deserve its own thread. Perhaps its just me but a lot of married people that I know and see on a regular basis are in bad marriages or grip about their spouses, kids, and etc. a lot. At the moment I am happily single, I'm not having a problem getting sex, make enough money to lead a decent life without having to support someone else, and I enjoy having my own house and the freedom to do what I want when I want like playing electric guitar or inviting friends over for a beer and BBQ without asking my SO if its OK. At the moment things seem good for me as a single guy and I don't feel like I'm missing all of the fun stuff with a wife that Franchiseblade mentioned. From my standpoint it seems like most of the married guys I know are missing out on all of the fun stuff that I get to do. I sometimes joke around with some friends of mine when they gripe about their wives and kids, "people wonder why I'm not married and I point to (indicating one of my married friends) as my rebuttal." I feel though I have to be more careful with some of them whose marriages appear to be on the rocks and have been in situations where they and their wives have started sniping at each other. So as a single person it seems to me like I have to be tactful around married people as much as FB feels he has to around singles. Just to add I'm not against marriage and if I meet the right person probably will but at moment am in no rush.
well ive never been married. but i have lived with 4 DIF girls/women. im single at the moment. and my head is so twisted when i comes to serious relationships that i dont know what to do. hopefully a girl comes along one day that i like and respect enough that i will want to treat her the way that you supposed to treat someone you love.
I think the difference is not the marriage but the kids. If you have kids, you can never become truly single again.
^ Not always. I know some people who are married and don't have kids and still seem pretty unhappy. For instance you only need to look up the Isabel Ferdinand Hangout saga to see a situation of a married couple without kids that became pretty miserable.
I wasn't talking about happiness. I was talking about whether you can get back to single life or not. If you don't have kids, then you can divorce. Most likely spousal support won't last long enough to amount for anything.
I can't count the number of times I've heard from married men some permutation of, "Stay single as long as you can", "Don't get married young", "If I could go back and do it all again...", etc and so on. That isn't to say that all the people who have said these things to me were unhappily married. Even the happily married guys have said some of these things to me (including my grandfather who just had his 50th wedding anniversary last year). I guess the moral of the story is, don't rush into getting married. If you're unhappy while single, chances are a relationship/marriage aren't magically going to make you happy. With it being more acceptable for my generation to marry considerably later than previous generations, I don't see myself getting married until some time in my 30s (and that will be after dating the girl for multiple years). I'm just about 23 years old for reference.
A lot of marriage threads lately... I think waiting until your 30's to get married is a good idea. I know there are plenty of examples of people getting married in their 20's that have worked out, so don't bother posting them. I just think you have to be single for a while before deciding that marriage is right for you. I loved being single for the same reasons every other guy loves being single. But after a while, it gets old. You want to find someone to spend the rest of your life with.
I have no tact around married folks who want to be single. I let them tell me about their weekend...taking the kids here, taking the kids there, having dinner at Chucky Cheese, going to school functions. Then I tell them about my weekend....partying, recording sessions, gigs & naked sexy time with my girlfriend. Then I watch them slowly slink away.
i think this might become the new norm. most people i know in ny waited 'til mid thirties or later. don't know if that's the case in texas just yet. and despite meowgi's knee-jerk name calling, i don't think people are idiots for being married and not having kids, i just wouldn't bother to go through the formality otherwise.
Sounds like someone is still bitter about the Rockets.. Then again that someone might be most of Clutchfans..
I think there are brief lapses when I think about the single life, but like I said, I stayed single for longer than most people, and packed a lot into that. Plus my married life doesn't involve kids. My wife and I can go out whenver we feel, we can stay in, work on things together. But I also know a lot of people who aren't happy in their marriages. Or at least they seem to gripe about them a lot. That doesn't always mean they aren't happy overall. I would not recommend getting married until 30's or even later unless kids are a priority. As long as folks are happy being single why change it? One day maybe someone will come along to make the single people feel their life will be less without that person, and want to get married or maybe not. Either way as long as folks are happy that is all that matters.
Marriage is pretty scary stuff. I've been there (and someone else even brought up my story before I got in here to do it). Whenever someone says they're getting married, I feel like sending condolences. The thing is, I like security. It's my ideal to have a guy as my best friend and more. I want to have a family. The idea of life revolving around kid and family type stuff actually doesn't seem bad to me, and I was never much for partying anyway. But that awful trapped feeling... hopefully it won't happen in the right situation, but I don't want to mess up again. Right now it feels so good not being attached. I give myself headaches asking myself how much of it was me, how much was Ferdinand, how much was the bad dynamic between us, about my actions, my feelings, Ferdinand's hangups, and I know nothing other than that I should have never been there in the first place. I'm starting over from here on out, and I just hope I won't go making more mistakes...
I think another big factor with unhappy marriages is that people just don't think things through. Peer pressure and the status quo can be huge influences on a person's life. I think there are a decent number of people that if they really thought things through wouldn't have gotten married to X-person at Y-time. And I also think there are a decent number of people that didn't think things through before having kids. Having kids is probably the biggest responsibility there is and I think many people make the decision to take on that responsibility too lightly.
I've got a rather long tale of being a "late bloomer," so to speak re: figuring out what I want out of life. I'll nut-shell it as best I can: I went to college right out of high school. I had no direction while I was in college, and despite countless trips to my adviser, career counseling, and career aptitude tests, nothing seemed to fit. I was truly lost, and it was not for lack of trying. The only thing I knew was what some others considered typical idealistic drivel that was of huge importance to me, personally: that I wanted to be my own person and not some cog in some corporate machine. I didn't want a 9-5. I didn't want an office. I didn't want a cubicle. And I sure as hell didn't want a house in the 'burbs with a white picket fence, 2.5 kids, a Volvo, a wife I didn't like, and to be constantly wondering what else was out there. I wanted to be on my feet, be myself, work when I want, work with people, do my job and then go and do whatever the hell I wanted to do. Bottom line: I was 27 and counseling kids in an in-patient psych hospital before I figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up: Registered Nurse. I'm now 31 and will finish my pre-reqs this summer to apply for RN programs. I'll hopefully be no older than 33 when I'm all said and done with this. Then its travel nursing, living in different parts of the country for various periods of time and, if I'm lucky, different parts of the world. I've got way too much sh*t that I want to do. I've never really wanted kids, and I've never really wanted to get married. I know very few people who are in happy marriages....actually, of my close friends, I don't know ANYONE in a happy marriage. I'm happy for those who are, but I think entirely too many people get married and have kids because they think that they are somehow supposed too. Anyway. That's my story/opinions.
