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I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned âforeverâ into the only acceptable definition of success.
Like⊠if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, itâs a âfailedâ business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you donât actually want to keep doing that, youâre a âfailedâ writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, itâs a âfailedâ marriage.
The only acceptable âwin conditionâ is âyou keep doing that thing foreverâ. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a ârealâ friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a âphaseâ - or, alternatively, a âpityâ that you donât do that thing any more. A fandom is âdyingâ because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.
| just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And itâs okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success⊠I donât think thatâs doing us any good at all.
Agree with most of these I guess, but marriage specifically is the one thing thatâs intended to be forever. Til death do us part and all that jazz.
I think it definitely applies to relationships. It does you and any of your partners a disservice to say your relationship was only a success if one of you died.
A person isnât a thing you possess. They have needs that grow and change with them. If those needs ever stop being compatible with the relationship, then the relationship should end. Thatâs not failure. Itâs wanting the person you love to be happy.
Marriage is not just another relationship. Itâs literally defined by people deciding, and vowing to stay together forever.
Then I guess you, like me, dislike the concept of marriage. Because the whole point is forever. The forever part is not even what I hold against it though. Some people can and want to be together forever. Feeling forced to be by culture is a bad thing though.
The âdeath do us partâ thing is a tradition, but marriage is a legal status. Not everyone is going to follow that tradition, and surely you wouldnât argue this ought to bar them from the legal status
Thereâs nothing wrong with forever, but it shouldnât be some sort of âstandardâ we hold everything to.
My wife just moved out after 30 years of marriage, and it sure feels like a failure to me. Maybe some people get to the point where itâs not working, and they arenât invested in the marriage so much that walking away is painful. I think most people would say they shouldnât have been married if they werenât that invested in making it work though.
A lot of people have suggested that we should have marriage contracts that have a renewable time limit. Like, âHey, letâs get married for ten years and see how that goes.â I could see that being a good thing, but I also think itâs fundamentally a different mindset than the traditional expectation of forever.
The game Outer Worlds touches upon this concept a bit, although itâs set in a space-capitalist dystopia.
Like a more administrative declaration of vow renewal, in a sense. Can feel a bit cold and could cause a lot of bureaucratic headache however.
Iâm sorry for your loss/pain though, on a more serious note.
I would agree if we stopped making marriage the end goal of relationships.
I tend to agree with you there. There are a lot of things intended to be temporary, and a lot of things intended to be permanent.
Wasnât there a study about that Man instinctively looks for other partners after while, this being the natural behavior?
Given that, christianity sets unrealistic expectations.