Marriages
-
From_Alamut
- Posts: 666
- Joined: Tue Jan 22, 2008 8:22 am
The Love of Lovers makes their bodiesAnion.Xenon wrote:Thanks Guys I Now Need No Replies, Everything is Over, She is Happy With Her New Boyfriend..And I Too Am Happy If She Is...
But Cant Live This Way :@ Maybe This Is My Last Msg So Let Me Tell You Guys.. She Told Me To Live Happily And She Wont Now Ever Be With Me Nor Will Ever Talk.. And Its All Over.
I Have Not Eaten Anything Or Drunk A Drop, Its 4th day, I Feel So Week And Like At Death's Door, Closing My Eyes Forever And Wasted Away.
P.S: Never Love.
Byez
thin as bowstrings.
But the Love of Beloveds makes
them happy and plump.
~Mataovi~
The truth love is the love of the Beloved.
The day you born and die, it is still ON.
The love of THE Beloved is Eternal but permanent.
The love of the Lovers is nothing but pain,
nothing but unhappiness, nothing but fire.
Again, the truth Love is the Love of the Beloved "God".
My Beloved is my Imam of my TIME.
He has become my Laily and I have become his Majnu.
Ahmad
very sad ending, it was very much same with me but i and my girl survived.
i converted to aga khani then i was told that i could only marry my girl if my whole family is aga khani, which was like impossible.
then me and my girl both decided to marry any how, jamat khana people did not allow us to marry in jamat khana, so we married outside of it. but then a moment of great shame was that no single person from her side attended the marriage not even her siblings.
well now it has past 3 years none of her relative have ever tried of contacting her, she is just cut of from community.
maybe thats why the girl of the guy (sadly who is no more alive), may not want her family to face such shame due to her.
this really is a critical matter, it has destoryed many lives.
one of cousins of my wife also suicided, these are some cases that are infront of us, but there are many that we dont know about.
afte reading about this guy, i feel like ...
and all the evidences he gave, it proves that marriage is allowed than why do we ismaili people dont let our children marry.
i think we ourselves should do something to make ismaili people aware that it is not a sin, well i ask every one reading this please email or tell atleast every one you know that it is allowed, also give them the evidence provided by the person (really makes me cry when i say he is dead).
may allah bless all rest couples in this situation.
i converted to aga khani then i was told that i could only marry my girl if my whole family is aga khani, which was like impossible.
then me and my girl both decided to marry any how, jamat khana people did not allow us to marry in jamat khana, so we married outside of it. but then a moment of great shame was that no single person from her side attended the marriage not even her siblings.
well now it has past 3 years none of her relative have ever tried of contacting her, she is just cut of from community.
maybe thats why the girl of the guy (sadly who is no more alive), may not want her family to face such shame due to her.
this really is a critical matter, it has destoryed many lives.
one of cousins of my wife also suicided, these are some cases that are infront of us, but there are many that we dont know about.
afte reading about this guy, i feel like ...
and all the evidences he gave, it proves that marriage is allowed than why do we ismaili people dont let our children marry.
i think we ourselves should do something to make ismaili people aware that it is not a sin, well i ask every one reading this please email or tell atleast every one you know that it is allowed, also give them the evidence provided by the person (really makes me cry when i say he is dead).
may allah bless all rest couples in this situation.
marrage
YAM,<BR><BR>Hey,<BR>Could anyone give some link o­n the internet to Farmans of HH regarding the Marrage, please. I would be very grateful to you.<BR>I have question as previously state by someone; Example. If I am in love with Cristian girl, and we agreed that she will convert into Ismaili befor marrage, is it allowed in Ismaili???????<BR> If you have some information regarding this issue from Imams words, please send me.<BR>Because as I read from some statements within the Forum, I have got an understanding that many of us have some missunderstanding of who we are - Ismailis!!!!<BR>but it is hard to explain in two words .........<BR><BR>Thanks a lot in advance,<BR>
Re: marrage
I cannot give you a Farman, but you can marry a non-Ismaili. We aren't the Druze... the People of the Book are licit to Muslims, which *explicitly* includes Christians and Jews and generally also includes groups like Parsis-Zoroastrians and often explicitly monotheist Hindus.
They don't even have to convert to Islam.
Also, Princess Zahra married an Anglican man in 1997, so I think you are fine.
They don't even have to convert to Islam.
Also, Princess Zahra married an Anglican man in 1997, so I think you are fine.
-
From_Alamut
- Posts: 666
- Joined: Tue Jan 22, 2008 8:22 am
Re: marrage
Ya Ali Madad and Salam
I just want to share a little though which I was thinking a couple days ago about our Ismaili brothers or sisters before marrying a non Ismaili. The first important thing is before getting "marry" is to think about your "religion". I mean not like first you get marry and then think about religion. Because I think religion is something very important. For example, let say you are married with some Wahhabi Saudi Arabia male or female. So, you keep your faith and Wahhabi person his or her. After a few years, you guys going to have a new first child born. Once, the child grew up, then the Wahhabi person male or female want his or her "Child" to be a "Wahhabi" and the "Ismaili" person want his or her child to be An Ismaili. So, what my point is that in this cast it creates such a big conflict amount the couples. God know, what will happen next. But such a things have already happened. All I want you guys to be aware of everything before getting marry.
"To get marry is to create a new life".
Kindest Regard
I just want to share a little though which I was thinking a couple days ago about our Ismaili brothers or sisters before marrying a non Ismaili. The first important thing is before getting "marry" is to think about your "religion". I mean not like first you get marry and then think about religion. Because I think religion is something very important. For example, let say you are married with some Wahhabi Saudi Arabia male or female. So, you keep your faith and Wahhabi person his or her. After a few years, you guys going to have a new first child born. Once, the child grew up, then the Wahhabi person male or female want his or her "Child" to be a "Wahhabi" and the "Ismaili" person want his or her child to be An Ismaili. So, what my point is that in this cast it creates such a big conflict amount the couples. God know, what will happen next. But such a things have already happened. All I want you guys to be aware of everything before getting marry.
"To get marry is to create a new life".
Kindest Regard
Re: nonismaili marriages
<BR><BR>dear shams bhai<BR>the explanation about haqiqati is correct but bedin doesnt mean verbly by christian or hindu<BR>ALLAH says in QURAN surah 2 ayat 111 and they say none shall enter the garden (or paradise)except he who is jew or christian these are their vain desires say!bring your proof if you are truthful yes whoever submits himself entirely to allah and he is the doer of good (to others)he has his reward from his lord<BR>now regarding about the NOOR thats o­nly for them who are looking for it <BR>our MHI is making bridges among people of different faiths so please becareful<BR>and I beg pardon to you if you felt bad<BR>I married with a girl of o­ne of the shia sect and she is very good girl its 10 years and now she took our religion and (not by heart)I have got 1 boy and insha allah in few days another girl before marriage she agreed to take our religion after marriage she refused still I love her and it is not of physical you can explain ur religion to others but you cannot make him/her believe thats the job of LORD we can o­nly knock the door the men who is attracted with physical body is blind men<BR>the matter of intercast marriages are so complicated that I think from 1000 cases you might find <BR>only 1 case that they agree not to marry<BR>they ask suggestion from everyone but they dont listen to anyone <BR>and they dont even listen to people who had the experienced <BR> you have spent 2 years I have spent 10 years <BR>still no Regret <BR>with patience is the success<BR>best regards<BR>aslam<BR><BR><BR>shamsu wrote:What you are asking is<BR><BR>Should a haqiqati marry a shariati?<BR><BR>If the haqiqati is a true Haqiqati then this question would not arise.<BR><BR>To be a Haqiqati Ismaili o­ne has to follow the Farmans of Imame Mubeen.<BR><BR>Where in the Farmans has our Mowla asked us to marry sunni's.<BR><BR>Please understand that I have personally lived this Hell.<BR><BR>I was married to a christian girl for 10 years and ultimately she fell for another christian man which led to divorce. My son is Ismaili but due to strict court ordered custody arrangements sometimes he misses Mandali Majalises. <BR><BR>Imam Sultam Mohamedshah has made a Farman "Momin potana baccha ne bedin loko thi dur rakhe cche"<BR><BR>Which means that a Momin of Imam keeps his kids away from "bedin" people. <BR><BR>I have already made the mistake of having a child with a bedin woman. what do I do to rectify this. The laws of the land make it extremely unlikely for me to have exclusive custody of my son.<BR><BR>After that marriage I was living in a remote part of Texas where I could o­nly come to Jamatkhana o­nce a week when all my life I had gone to Jamatkhana every single day.<BR><BR>Can you Imagine the torture I subjected my soul to during that time period of almost 2 years.<BR><BR>Then there is the question of dasond. You have no idea how painful giving dasond is for non-ismailies.<BR><BR>They judge the Imam physically and cannot understand why we give dasond to such a wealthy "man".<BR><BR>One thing is for sure, it was the hardest lesson I have learned in my life.<BR><BR>Whatever happens try to learn your lesson as soon as possible and use the words of our beloved Imam to guide you and you will be absolutely safe.<BR><BR>wish you all the best<BR><BR>Ya Aly Madad<BR><BR>Shams
The power of symbolism
By Richard Wagamese, For the Calgary Herald
May 3, 2009
Spring has arrived in the mountains. It came just this week in a blaze of sunshine and the twitter of red-winged blackbirds down by the water. For a while there, my neighbours and I fretted over the length of the winter and wondered if there was ever going to be a break in what seemed to be the first stages of a new Ice Age. But spring, as they say, has sprung.
At our house, we're planning this year's house and home projects. There's exterior painting to be done, a pergola or a roofed porch, perhaps, added to the deck, a wood shed to be built, a garden to put in and our bedroom is the last room in the house to get spruced up and modernized. It sounds like a lot of work, but spring and summer beckon and we actually look forward to it.
See, we're both kids from the street in a way.We're nomads. Both of us spent years wandering, city to city, job to job, looking for the one place we could really call home. Both of us were married twice. Both of us started our lives as displaced kids, taken away from our natural families and plunked down in someone else's living room and life. So the idea of working together on the place we call "ours" is exciting.
We want to get married soon. That's the big news. Despite having had little success in that department before, we've been together going on seven years now and things just feel right. There have already been trials and tough times. We've seen each other through things. We've learned forgiveness. Our life has become stauncher with love smack dab at its middle.
Last week, we went to town and shopped for a ring. Now, we're both in our early 50s and tarnished some, jaded maybe, cautious, but that experience was revelatory for me and things haven't seemed the same since. See, it's the idea of that ring that altered how I look at things.
I've never been what you might call a conventional man. My life has been marked by dubious choices at times, at others, downright unimaginable and crazy. But I always carried a craving for the sort of set-down life like I saw on The Waltons, say, or loyal and staunch like the Cartwrights. I just never thought I'd get it.
But when we picked out that ring, I felt like a different being. Music hasn't been the same since. I hear things in songs that touch a soft place in me I didn't know existed. Scenes in movies and TV shows get me all emotional. I look at the sky with a sense of wild expectation. Quiet times in front of the fire make me think of us instead of problems and issues. And I smile more.
The gold of that ring glitters. It shines a particular kind of light and even without the diamonds it would be a marvellous thing. Gold exudes the promise of riches beyond measure. It always has. For me, that ring offers hope that a downtrodden life like mine might be sanctified some by the hope that resides in it. Given a newer, hardier light to chase away the shadow of all those gypsy years.
When I saw it on her hand, I felt raised up. Elevated. I felt, right then, as though everything I had ever done in my life had led me to that one shining moment and that is actually the truth of it. Life is a crucible. It is the alchemy that transforms us. What we bring to a marriage, what we carry from our individual histories, becomes the inherent value of the gold in a ring.
That's what I saw. I saw the awesome potential in two spirits joined by the strength of a symbol. I saw the fact that our lives and the choices we make along the way are the rough ore of our becoming. I saw the undeniable truth that we find the truest expression of ourselves in the ones we come to love; parts of us spread out suddenly like the shining vistas of new and undiscovered countries.
When we stand and be-come joined by ceremony, it is the bare fact of our living that brings us together. It is the lesson in the journey that makes it sacred. It is the travelling and not the destination that offers us wisdom, and in the end, it is experience that creates the person we become, the gold we extract from the hardscrabble mines of life and living.
That's what we bring to each other. We marry the whole person. Good and bad, weak and strong, strength and weakness. We stand with all of that. Gold on gold.
One Native Life
Richard Wagamese, a former Calgary herald columnist, is the 2007 recipient of the Canadian authors association award for fiction and a former national newspaper award-winning Columnist.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
By Richard Wagamese, For the Calgary Herald
May 3, 2009
Spring has arrived in the mountains. It came just this week in a blaze of sunshine and the twitter of red-winged blackbirds down by the water. For a while there, my neighbours and I fretted over the length of the winter and wondered if there was ever going to be a break in what seemed to be the first stages of a new Ice Age. But spring, as they say, has sprung.
At our house, we're planning this year's house and home projects. There's exterior painting to be done, a pergola or a roofed porch, perhaps, added to the deck, a wood shed to be built, a garden to put in and our bedroom is the last room in the house to get spruced up and modernized. It sounds like a lot of work, but spring and summer beckon and we actually look forward to it.
See, we're both kids from the street in a way.We're nomads. Both of us spent years wandering, city to city, job to job, looking for the one place we could really call home. Both of us were married twice. Both of us started our lives as displaced kids, taken away from our natural families and plunked down in someone else's living room and life. So the idea of working together on the place we call "ours" is exciting.
We want to get married soon. That's the big news. Despite having had little success in that department before, we've been together going on seven years now and things just feel right. There have already been trials and tough times. We've seen each other through things. We've learned forgiveness. Our life has become stauncher with love smack dab at its middle.
Last week, we went to town and shopped for a ring. Now, we're both in our early 50s and tarnished some, jaded maybe, cautious, but that experience was revelatory for me and things haven't seemed the same since. See, it's the idea of that ring that altered how I look at things.
I've never been what you might call a conventional man. My life has been marked by dubious choices at times, at others, downright unimaginable and crazy. But I always carried a craving for the sort of set-down life like I saw on The Waltons, say, or loyal and staunch like the Cartwrights. I just never thought I'd get it.
But when we picked out that ring, I felt like a different being. Music hasn't been the same since. I hear things in songs that touch a soft place in me I didn't know existed. Scenes in movies and TV shows get me all emotional. I look at the sky with a sense of wild expectation. Quiet times in front of the fire make me think of us instead of problems and issues. And I smile more.
The gold of that ring glitters. It shines a particular kind of light and even without the diamonds it would be a marvellous thing. Gold exudes the promise of riches beyond measure. It always has. For me, that ring offers hope that a downtrodden life like mine might be sanctified some by the hope that resides in it. Given a newer, hardier light to chase away the shadow of all those gypsy years.
When I saw it on her hand, I felt raised up. Elevated. I felt, right then, as though everything I had ever done in my life had led me to that one shining moment and that is actually the truth of it. Life is a crucible. It is the alchemy that transforms us. What we bring to a marriage, what we carry from our individual histories, becomes the inherent value of the gold in a ring.
That's what I saw. I saw the awesome potential in two spirits joined by the strength of a symbol. I saw the fact that our lives and the choices we make along the way are the rough ore of our becoming. I saw the undeniable truth that we find the truest expression of ourselves in the ones we come to love; parts of us spread out suddenly like the shining vistas of new and undiscovered countries.
When we stand and be-come joined by ceremony, it is the bare fact of our living that brings us together. It is the lesson in the journey that makes it sacred. It is the travelling and not the destination that offers us wisdom, and in the end, it is experience that creates the person we become, the gold we extract from the hardscrabble mines of life and living.
That's what we bring to each other. We marry the whole person. Good and bad, weak and strong, strength and weakness. We stand with all of that. Gold on gold.
One Native Life
Richard Wagamese, a former Calgary herald columnist, is the 2007 recipient of the Canadian authors association award for fiction and a former national newspaper award-winning Columnist.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
-
ChrisMacPherson
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Fri Apr 30, 2010 12:53 pm
Hi everyone. <BR><BR>I have been married to an Ismaili lady for almost 8 years. Her family has always been very nice and accepting of me. We have children who are being raised as Ismaili's because I am not religious and it didn't matter to me what religion they are. I was born a Christian but I don't practice. We were married in a religious ceremony but not in Khane. <BR><BR>So interfaith marriages can work!
India to loosen traditional divorce laws
Agence France-PresseJune 11, 2010
Marriage is the central focus of most Indian lives, but the government on Thursday took steps to make divorce easier as nuptial breakdowns become more common.
Traditional Indian marriages are still arranged by parents along lines of caste, religion and wealth -- and the couple are expected to stay together and produce children even if they find themselves unsuited.
However, divorce rates have risen in recent years as the country has undergone rapid economic development, massive migration to cities and an upheaval of established social norms.
Ambika Soni, the minister of information and broadcasting, told reporters the proposed change in the law would help an estranged partner get a divorce "if any party does not come to court or wilfully avoids the court."
Currently divorce in India can be granted for matrimonial fault, mutual consent or if one partner has not been heard of for several years.
The Supreme Court last year said the legal system should try to keep marriages together, but agreed that divorces should not be withheld from couples who had completely split.
The proposed amendment, which was passed by a cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, will include "irretrievable breakdown of marriage" as a legal justification for divorce for the first time.
"In today's day and age it may be a welcome step, but it will only really help urban women," Kamini Jaiswal, a Supreme Court advocate, told AFP. "Rural women will still get a raw deal as they are more oppressed by their husbands."
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 7&sponsor=
Agence France-PresseJune 11, 2010
Marriage is the central focus of most Indian lives, but the government on Thursday took steps to make divorce easier as nuptial breakdowns become more common.
Traditional Indian marriages are still arranged by parents along lines of caste, religion and wealth -- and the couple are expected to stay together and produce children even if they find themselves unsuited.
However, divorce rates have risen in recent years as the country has undergone rapid economic development, massive migration to cities and an upheaval of established social norms.
Ambika Soni, the minister of information and broadcasting, told reporters the proposed change in the law would help an estranged partner get a divorce "if any party does not come to court or wilfully avoids the court."
Currently divorce in India can be granted for matrimonial fault, mutual consent or if one partner has not been heard of for several years.
The Supreme Court last year said the legal system should try to keep marriages together, but agreed that divorces should not be withheld from couples who had completely split.
The proposed amendment, which was passed by a cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, will include "irretrievable breakdown of marriage" as a legal justification for divorce for the first time.
"In today's day and age it may be a welcome step, but it will only really help urban women," Kamini Jaiswal, a Supreme Court advocate, told AFP. "Rural women will still get a raw deal as they are more oppressed by their husbands."
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 7&sponsor=
June 14, 2010, 12:27 pm
Do Kids Still Matter to Marriage?
By TARA PARKER-POPE
One of the more surprising trends in marriage during the past 20 years is the fact that most couples no longer view children as essential to a happy relationship.
A few years ago, the Pew Research Center released a survey called “What Makes Marriage Work?” Not surprisingly, fidelity ranked at the top of the nine-item list — 93 percent of respondents said faithfulness was essential to a good marriage.
But what about children? As an ingredient to a happy marriage, kids were far from essential, ranking eighth behind good sex, sharing chores, adequate income and a nice house, among other things. Only 41 percent of respondents said children were important to a happy marriage, down from 65 percent in 1990. The only thing less important to a happy marriage than children, the survey found, was whether a couple agreed on politics.
So why do kids rank so low on the list? The fact is, marriages today are increasingly adult-centered, rather than child-centered, an issue identified in a sweeping 2008 report from Rutgers marriage researcher Barbara Dafoe Whitehead. In the report, called “Life Without Children: The Social Retreat From Children and How It’s Changing America,” Dr. Whitehead notes that the percentage of our lives that we devote to parenting is shrinking. Because married couples are delaying children and having fewer kids, they start parenting later and finish parenting sooner than couples of earlier generations. She writes:
For most of the nation’s history, Americans expected to devote much of their adult lives to the nurture and rearing of children. Life with children has been central to norms of adulthood, marriage and the experience of family life. Today however, this historic pattern is changing. Life without children is becoming the more common social experience for a growing percentage of the adult population.
The decline of the child-centered marriage is particularly relevant this week, as lawyers in California offer closing arguments on Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage in the state. In January, a supporter of Proposition 8 argued that children would be hurt by same-sex marriage, an issue reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Extending marital rights to couples who cannot conceive children would change marriage from “a child-based public institution to an adult-centered private institution” and “weaken the role of marriage generally in society,” David Blankenhorn, founder of the Institute for American Values, testified at a trial in San Francisco federal court on the constitutionality of the state’s ban on same-sex marriage.
The ruling on same-sex marriage in California will likely not be the last word on the issue. And as Dr. Whitehead goes on to explain, the changing patterns and timing of marriage and parenting don’t mean that we don’t love or remain committed to our children. It just means that children are less central to our lives than they were in the past.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/1 ... T-0616-L14
Do Kids Still Matter to Marriage?
By TARA PARKER-POPE
One of the more surprising trends in marriage during the past 20 years is the fact that most couples no longer view children as essential to a happy relationship.
A few years ago, the Pew Research Center released a survey called “What Makes Marriage Work?” Not surprisingly, fidelity ranked at the top of the nine-item list — 93 percent of respondents said faithfulness was essential to a good marriage.
But what about children? As an ingredient to a happy marriage, kids were far from essential, ranking eighth behind good sex, sharing chores, adequate income and a nice house, among other things. Only 41 percent of respondents said children were important to a happy marriage, down from 65 percent in 1990. The only thing less important to a happy marriage than children, the survey found, was whether a couple agreed on politics.
So why do kids rank so low on the list? The fact is, marriages today are increasingly adult-centered, rather than child-centered, an issue identified in a sweeping 2008 report from Rutgers marriage researcher Barbara Dafoe Whitehead. In the report, called “Life Without Children: The Social Retreat From Children and How It’s Changing America,” Dr. Whitehead notes that the percentage of our lives that we devote to parenting is shrinking. Because married couples are delaying children and having fewer kids, they start parenting later and finish parenting sooner than couples of earlier generations. She writes:
For most of the nation’s history, Americans expected to devote much of their adult lives to the nurture and rearing of children. Life with children has been central to norms of adulthood, marriage and the experience of family life. Today however, this historic pattern is changing. Life without children is becoming the more common social experience for a growing percentage of the adult population.
The decline of the child-centered marriage is particularly relevant this week, as lawyers in California offer closing arguments on Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage in the state. In January, a supporter of Proposition 8 argued that children would be hurt by same-sex marriage, an issue reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Extending marital rights to couples who cannot conceive children would change marriage from “a child-based public institution to an adult-centered private institution” and “weaken the role of marriage generally in society,” David Blankenhorn, founder of the Institute for American Values, testified at a trial in San Francisco federal court on the constitutionality of the state’s ban on same-sex marriage.
The ruling on same-sex marriage in California will likely not be the last word on the issue. And as Dr. Whitehead goes on to explain, the changing patterns and timing of marriage and parenting don’t mean that we don’t love or remain committed to our children. It just means that children are less central to our lives than they were in the past.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/1 ... T-0616-L14
The findings come from a new CDC report on U.S. marriage and cohabitation. The data were collected in 2002 in one-on-one interviews with a nationally representative sample of some 7,600 women and 5,000 men.
Which Marriages Last 10 Years?
Get married young, break up young. The odds of a marriage lasting at least 10 years are:
• 54% for women and 47% for men who get married between ages 15 and 19
• 64% for women and 65% for men who get married between ages 20 and 25
• 76% for women and 73% for men who get married at 26 or older
Do children affect marriages? Apparently so. The odds of a marriage lasting at least 10 years are:
• 34% for women and 37% for men who have no children during the marriage
• 55% for women and 65% for men who have a first child by their eventual husband or wife before marriage
• 79% for women and 79% for men whose first child is born at least eight months after marriage
• Having children doesn't mean the marriage lasts a lifetime. 1997 data show that only 57% of marriages last 15 years, and only half last 20 years.
Will your marriage last longer if you first explore living together? Maybe not -- even if you cohabit with your eventual spouse. The odds of a marriage lasting at least 10 years are:
• 60% for women and 62% for men who ever cohabited
• 61% for women and 63% for men who cohabited with their first spouse
• 66% for women and 69% for men who never cohabited
Education makes a difference. But there's at least one surprise here: Just getting a high school diploma doesn't help, but a college degree makes a big difference. The odds of a marriage lasting at least 10 years are:
• 54% for women and 56% for men with a high school diploma or GED
• 63% for women and 61% for men with no high school diploma or GED
• 62% for women and 64% for men with some college but no degree
• 78% for women and 81% for men with a bachelor's degree or higher
Your family structure makes a difference, too, most markedly for women. The odds of a marriage lasting at least 10 years are:
• 67% for women and 66% for men who lived in a two-parent household at age 14
• 48% for women and 63% for men who did not live in a two-parent household at age 14
Marriage success rates differ by race and ethnicity. The odds of a marriage lasting at least 10 years are:
• 51% for black, non-Hispanic men and women
• 64% for white, non-Hispanic men and women
• 68% for Hispanic women and 75% for Hispanic men
Cohabitation Facts
The CDC data offer fascinating glimpses of U.S. cohabitation:
• From 1987 to 2002, the percentage of women who ever cohabited more than doubled, from 30% to 61%.
• For women ages 19 to 44, more than half of marriages from 1990 to 1994 began as cohabitations.
• More than half of births outside marriage occur in cohabitations.
• Over 40% of U.S. children will spend some time in a cohabiting household.
• For women ages 18 to 19, cohabitation is over twice as common as marriage (11% vs. 5%).
• For women ages 25 to 44, marriage is nearly eight times more common than cohabitation (62% vs. 8%).
• More than half of couples in their first cohabitation marry within three years.
Which Marriages Last 10 Years?
Get married young, break up young. The odds of a marriage lasting at least 10 years are:
• 54% for women and 47% for men who get married between ages 15 and 19
• 64% for women and 65% for men who get married between ages 20 and 25
• 76% for women and 73% for men who get married at 26 or older
Do children affect marriages? Apparently so. The odds of a marriage lasting at least 10 years are:
• 34% for women and 37% for men who have no children during the marriage
• 55% for women and 65% for men who have a first child by their eventual husband or wife before marriage
• 79% for women and 79% for men whose first child is born at least eight months after marriage
• Having children doesn't mean the marriage lasts a lifetime. 1997 data show that only 57% of marriages last 15 years, and only half last 20 years.
Will your marriage last longer if you first explore living together? Maybe not -- even if you cohabit with your eventual spouse. The odds of a marriage lasting at least 10 years are:
• 60% for women and 62% for men who ever cohabited
• 61% for women and 63% for men who cohabited with their first spouse
• 66% for women and 69% for men who never cohabited
Education makes a difference. But there's at least one surprise here: Just getting a high school diploma doesn't help, but a college degree makes a big difference. The odds of a marriage lasting at least 10 years are:
• 54% for women and 56% for men with a high school diploma or GED
• 63% for women and 61% for men with no high school diploma or GED
• 62% for women and 64% for men with some college but no degree
• 78% for women and 81% for men with a bachelor's degree or higher
Your family structure makes a difference, too, most markedly for women. The odds of a marriage lasting at least 10 years are:
• 67% for women and 66% for men who lived in a two-parent household at age 14
• 48% for women and 63% for men who did not live in a two-parent household at age 14
Marriage success rates differ by race and ethnicity. The odds of a marriage lasting at least 10 years are:
• 51% for black, non-Hispanic men and women
• 64% for white, non-Hispanic men and women
• 68% for Hispanic women and 75% for Hispanic men
Cohabitation Facts
The CDC data offer fascinating glimpses of U.S. cohabitation:
• From 1987 to 2002, the percentage of women who ever cohabited more than doubled, from 30% to 61%.
• For women ages 19 to 44, more than half of marriages from 1990 to 1994 began as cohabitations.
• More than half of births outside marriage occur in cohabitations.
• Over 40% of U.S. children will spend some time in a cohabiting household.
• For women ages 18 to 19, cohabitation is over twice as common as marriage (11% vs. 5%).
• For women ages 25 to 44, marriage is nearly eight times more common than cohabitation (62% vs. 8%).
• More than half of couples in their first cohabitation marry within three years.
Grand Mufti wants Emiratis to marry local
Herald News Services
August 25, 2010
The Grand Mufti of Dubai has called for a curb on marriages between locals and foreigners as the price of marrying native brides has risen to more than $490,000.
The number of Emiratis marrying foreigners has risen by 10 per cent in the past four years, according to recent figures.
Officials and religious leaders blame the rising costs of dowries and wedding ceremonies for persuading "ordinary" local men to seek foreign wives, who cost less to marry.
Ahmad al-Haddad, the Grand Mufti, the emirate's most senior Islamic scholar, wants to restrict foreign marriages to allow only Muslim Arab spouses.
For a man, it would have to be his first and only wife.
"In Islam, choosing your life partner is a personal freedom," the Grand Mufti said at a gathering in honour of the holy month of Ramadan, "but personal freedoms can be restricted for the benefit of the public interest."
His proposals are unlikely to be welcomed, and he may have difficulty persuading Dubai's ruler to approve his suggestion.
Sheikh -bin Rashid al-Maktoum took -Jordanian princess as his second wife and would have fallen foul of the rules.
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 4&sponsor=
Herald News Services
August 25, 2010
The Grand Mufti of Dubai has called for a curb on marriages between locals and foreigners as the price of marrying native brides has risen to more than $490,000.
The number of Emiratis marrying foreigners has risen by 10 per cent in the past four years, according to recent figures.
Officials and religious leaders blame the rising costs of dowries and wedding ceremonies for persuading "ordinary" local men to seek foreign wives, who cost less to marry.
Ahmad al-Haddad, the Grand Mufti, the emirate's most senior Islamic scholar, wants to restrict foreign marriages to allow only Muslim Arab spouses.
For a man, it would have to be his first and only wife.
"In Islam, choosing your life partner is a personal freedom," the Grand Mufti said at a gathering in honour of the holy month of Ramadan, "but personal freedoms can be restricted for the benefit of the public interest."
His proposals are unlikely to be welcomed, and he may have difficulty persuading Dubai's ruler to approve his suggestion.
Sheikh -bin Rashid al-Maktoum took -Jordanian princess as his second wife and would have fallen foul of the rules.
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 4&sponsor=
July 3, 2011
More Perfect Unions
By ROSS DOUTHAT
In 44 states, the future of gay marriage still depends on legislatures, governors and voters — and eventually, perhaps, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. But in New York, as in five states before it, gay marriage’s future is in the hands of gay couples themselves.
Over the decades ahead, their choices will gradually transform gay marriage from an idea into a culture: they’ll determine the social expectations associated with gay wedlock, the gay marriage and divorce rates, the differences and similarities between gay and lesbian unions, the way marriage interacts with gay parenting, and much more besides.
They’ll also help determine gay marriage’s impact on the broader culture of matrimony in America.
One possibility is that gay marriage will end up being a force for marital conservatism, among gays and straights alike. In this vision, the norms of heterosexual marriage will be the template for homosexual wedlock. Once equipped with marriage’s “entitlements and entanglements,” Jonathan Rauch predicted in his book “Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America,” “same-sex relationships will continue to move toward both durability and exclusivity.” At the same time, the example of gay couples taking vows will strengthen “marriage’s status as the gold standard for committed relationships.”
At the other end of the spectrum from Rauch’s gay conservatism are the liberationists, who hope that gay marriage will help knock marriage off its cultural pedestal altogether. To liberationists, a gay rights movement that ends up reaffirming a “gold standard” for relationships will have failed in its deeper mission — which Columbia law professor Katherine M. Franke recently summarized in a Times Op-Ed article as the quest for “greater freedom than can be found in the one-size-fits-all rules of marriage.”
That’s the kind of argument that makes social conservatives worry about polygamy (and worse). But liberationism has been gradually marginalized in the gay community over the last two decades, and gay conservatism seems to have largely carried the day. The desire to be included in an existing institution has proved stronger than the desire to eliminate every institutional constraint.
Still, there’s a third vision that’s worth pondering — neither conservative nor liberationist, but a little bit of both. This vision embraces the institution of marriage, rather than seeking to overthrow it. But it also hints that the example of same-sex unions might partially transform marriage from within, creating greater institutional flexibility — particularly sexual flexibility — for straight and gay spouses alike.
This idea is most prominently associated with Dan Savage, the prolific author, activist and sex columnist who was profiled in Sunday’s Times Magazine. Savage is strongly pro-marriage, but he thinks the institution is weighed down by unrealistic cultural expectations about monogamy. Better, he suggests, to define marriage simply as a pact of mutual love and care, and leave all the other rules to be negotiated depending on the couple.
In “The Commitment,” his memoir about wedding his longtime boyfriend, Savage described the way his own union has successfully made room for occasional infidelity. “Far from undermining the stable home we’ve built for our child,” he writes, “the controlled way in which we manage our desire for outside sexual contact has made our home more stable.”
The trouble is that straight culture already experimented with exactly this kind of model, with disastrous results.
Forty years ago, Savage’s perspective temporarily took upper-middle-class America by storm. In the mid-1970s, only 51 percent of well-educated Americans agreed that adultery was always wrong. But far from being strengthened by this outbreak of realism, their marriages went on to dissolve in record numbers.
This trend eventually reversed itself. Heterosexual marriage has had a tough few decades, but its one success story is the declining divorce rate among the upper middle class. This decline, tellingly, has gone hand in hand with steadily rising disapproval of adultery.
There’s a lesson here. Institutions tend to be strongest when they make significant moral demands, and weaker when they pre-emptively accommodate themselves to human nature.
Critics of gay marriage see this as one of the great dangers in severing the link between marriage and the two realities — gender difference and procreation — that it originally evolved to address. A successful marital culture depends not only on a general ideal of love and commitment, but on specific promises, exclusions and taboos. And the less specific and more inclusive an institution becomes, the more likely people are to approach it casually, if they enter it at all.
In courts and now legislatures, this has been a losing argument. But as gay New Yorkers ponder what they want their marriages to mean, they should consider one of its implications: The hardest promises to keep are often the ones that keep people together.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/04/opini ... emc=tha212
More Perfect Unions
By ROSS DOUTHAT
In 44 states, the future of gay marriage still depends on legislatures, governors and voters — and eventually, perhaps, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. But in New York, as in five states before it, gay marriage’s future is in the hands of gay couples themselves.
Over the decades ahead, their choices will gradually transform gay marriage from an idea into a culture: they’ll determine the social expectations associated with gay wedlock, the gay marriage and divorce rates, the differences and similarities between gay and lesbian unions, the way marriage interacts with gay parenting, and much more besides.
They’ll also help determine gay marriage’s impact on the broader culture of matrimony in America.
One possibility is that gay marriage will end up being a force for marital conservatism, among gays and straights alike. In this vision, the norms of heterosexual marriage will be the template for homosexual wedlock. Once equipped with marriage’s “entitlements and entanglements,” Jonathan Rauch predicted in his book “Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America,” “same-sex relationships will continue to move toward both durability and exclusivity.” At the same time, the example of gay couples taking vows will strengthen “marriage’s status as the gold standard for committed relationships.”
At the other end of the spectrum from Rauch’s gay conservatism are the liberationists, who hope that gay marriage will help knock marriage off its cultural pedestal altogether. To liberationists, a gay rights movement that ends up reaffirming a “gold standard” for relationships will have failed in its deeper mission — which Columbia law professor Katherine M. Franke recently summarized in a Times Op-Ed article as the quest for “greater freedom than can be found in the one-size-fits-all rules of marriage.”
That’s the kind of argument that makes social conservatives worry about polygamy (and worse). But liberationism has been gradually marginalized in the gay community over the last two decades, and gay conservatism seems to have largely carried the day. The desire to be included in an existing institution has proved stronger than the desire to eliminate every institutional constraint.
Still, there’s a third vision that’s worth pondering — neither conservative nor liberationist, but a little bit of both. This vision embraces the institution of marriage, rather than seeking to overthrow it. But it also hints that the example of same-sex unions might partially transform marriage from within, creating greater institutional flexibility — particularly sexual flexibility — for straight and gay spouses alike.
This idea is most prominently associated with Dan Savage, the prolific author, activist and sex columnist who was profiled in Sunday’s Times Magazine. Savage is strongly pro-marriage, but he thinks the institution is weighed down by unrealistic cultural expectations about monogamy. Better, he suggests, to define marriage simply as a pact of mutual love and care, and leave all the other rules to be negotiated depending on the couple.
In “The Commitment,” his memoir about wedding his longtime boyfriend, Savage described the way his own union has successfully made room for occasional infidelity. “Far from undermining the stable home we’ve built for our child,” he writes, “the controlled way in which we manage our desire for outside sexual contact has made our home more stable.”
The trouble is that straight culture already experimented with exactly this kind of model, with disastrous results.
Forty years ago, Savage’s perspective temporarily took upper-middle-class America by storm. In the mid-1970s, only 51 percent of well-educated Americans agreed that adultery was always wrong. But far from being strengthened by this outbreak of realism, their marriages went on to dissolve in record numbers.
This trend eventually reversed itself. Heterosexual marriage has had a tough few decades, but its one success story is the declining divorce rate among the upper middle class. This decline, tellingly, has gone hand in hand with steadily rising disapproval of adultery.
There’s a lesson here. Institutions tend to be strongest when they make significant moral demands, and weaker when they pre-emptively accommodate themselves to human nature.
Critics of gay marriage see this as one of the great dangers in severing the link between marriage and the two realities — gender difference and procreation — that it originally evolved to address. A successful marital culture depends not only on a general ideal of love and commitment, but on specific promises, exclusions and taboos. And the less specific and more inclusive an institution becomes, the more likely people are to approach it casually, if they enter it at all.
In courts and now legislatures, this has been a losing argument. But as gay New Yorkers ponder what they want their marriages to mean, they should consider one of its implications: The hardest promises to keep are often the ones that keep people together.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/04/opini ... emc=tha212
THE SATURDAY ESSAY
JULY 9, 2011
The Divorce Generation
Having survived their own family splits, Generation X parents are determined to keep their marriages together. It doesn't always work.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... lenews_wsj
Excerpt:
"Whatever happens, we're never going to get divorced." Over the course of
16 years, I said that often to my husband, especially after our children
were born. Apparently, much of my generation feels at least roughly the
same way: Divorce rates, which peaked around 1980, are now at their lowest
level since 1970. In fact, the often-cited statistic that half of all
marriages end in divorce was true only in the 1970s—in other words, our
parents' marriages.
Not ours. According to U.S. Census data released this May, 77% of couples
who married since 1990 have reached their 10-year anniversaries. We're
also marrying later in life, if at all. The average marrying age in 1950
was 23 for men and 20 for women; in 2009, it was 28 for men and 26 for
women....
Adultery is far more devastating for us than it was for our parents or
grandparents. A 2003 study by the late psychologist Shirley Glass found
that the mores of sexual infidelity are undergoing a profound change. The
traditional standard for men—love is love and sex is sex—is dying out.
Increasingly, men and women develop serious emotional attachments with
their would-be lovers long before they commit adultery. As a result, she
found, infidelity today is much more likely to lead to divorce.
Call us helicopter parents, call us neurotically attached, but those of us
who survived the wreckage of split families were determined never to
inflict such wounds on our children. We knew better. We were doing
everything differently, and the fundamental premise was simple: "Kids come
first" meant that we would not divorce.
JULY 9, 2011
The Divorce Generation
Having survived their own family splits, Generation X parents are determined to keep their marriages together. It doesn't always work.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... lenews_wsj
Excerpt:
"Whatever happens, we're never going to get divorced." Over the course of
16 years, I said that often to my husband, especially after our children
were born. Apparently, much of my generation feels at least roughly the
same way: Divorce rates, which peaked around 1980, are now at their lowest
level since 1970. In fact, the often-cited statistic that half of all
marriages end in divorce was true only in the 1970s—in other words, our
parents' marriages.
Not ours. According to U.S. Census data released this May, 77% of couples
who married since 1990 have reached their 10-year anniversaries. We're
also marrying later in life, if at all. The average marrying age in 1950
was 23 for men and 20 for women; in 2009, it was 28 for men and 26 for
women....
Adultery is far more devastating for us than it was for our parents or
grandparents. A 2003 study by the late psychologist Shirley Glass found
that the mores of sexual infidelity are undergoing a profound change. The
traditional standard for men—love is love and sex is sex—is dying out.
Increasingly, men and women develop serious emotional attachments with
their would-be lovers long before they commit adultery. As a result, she
found, infidelity today is much more likely to lead to divorce.
Call us helicopter parents, call us neurotically attached, but those of us
who survived the wreckage of split families were determined never to
inflict such wounds on our children. We knew better. We were doing
everything differently, and the fundamental premise was simple: "Kids come
first" meant that we would not divorce.
-
avrozmaredia
- Posts: 33
- Joined: Tue Oct 25, 2011 10:35 pm
- Location: San Antonio, TX
-
avrozmaredia
- Posts: 33
- Joined: Tue Oct 25, 2011 10:35 pm
- Location: San Antonio, TX
Marriage between other Shia Muslims
YAM,
I am a Shia Muslim. I was born and raised an Ithna Asheri but have been dating an Ismaili for over 2 years now. As time goes on and we become more serious, the next step is obviously to sanctify the relationship in matrimony. However, I am facing various issues amongst both communities. My biggest issue right now is that many people tell me it's not okay for an Ismaili to marry a non-Ismaili. Is this true? In doing my own research, I have learned a lot about MHI and the beautiful religion of Ismailism...so much that I have become interested in converting. I have attended various Ismaili events, whether they be sports tournaments, community picnics, or lectures regarding MHI. Obviously, I have never attended Jamat Khana, but inshAllah one day. However, one thing that confuses me is that MHI always preaches unity and to love our fellow Muslim brethren. If this is a universal message, then why is it not ok for an Ismaili to marry a non-Ismaili (specifically, an Ithna Asheri Muslim)? I'm not saying I would be against converting, I am simply very interested in knowing the truth behind the statement. Every time I ask somebody I get a different or less-than-satisfying answer.
Shukar
I am a Shia Muslim. I was born and raised an Ithna Asheri but have been dating an Ismaili for over 2 years now. As time goes on and we become more serious, the next step is obviously to sanctify the relationship in matrimony. However, I am facing various issues amongst both communities. My biggest issue right now is that many people tell me it's not okay for an Ismaili to marry a non-Ismaili. Is this true? In doing my own research, I have learned a lot about MHI and the beautiful religion of Ismailism...so much that I have become interested in converting. I have attended various Ismaili events, whether they be sports tournaments, community picnics, or lectures regarding MHI. Obviously, I have never attended Jamat Khana, but inshAllah one day. However, one thing that confuses me is that MHI always preaches unity and to love our fellow Muslim brethren. If this is a universal message, then why is it not ok for an Ismaili to marry a non-Ismaili (specifically, an Ithna Asheri Muslim)? I'm not saying I would be against converting, I am simply very interested in knowing the truth behind the statement. Every time I ask somebody I get a different or less-than-satisfying answer.
Shukar
Re: Marriage between other Shia Muslims
YAM, as per the many posts in this thread, I think the main issue about marriage between an Ismaili and a non-Ismaili would be how to deal with raising the children. Have you thought about it? If so what are your thoughts?akaz90 wrote:YAM,
I am a Shia Muslim. I was born and raised an Ithna Asheri but have been dating an Ismaili for over 2 years now. As time goes on and we become more serious, the next step is obviously to sanctify the relationship in matrimony. However, I am facing various issues amongst both communities. My biggest issue right now is that many people tell me it's not okay for an Ismaili to marry a non-Ismaili. Is this true? In doing my own research, I have learned a lot about MHI and the beautiful religion of Ismailism...so much that I have become interested in converting. I have attended various Ismaili events, whether they be sports tournaments, community picnics, or lectures regarding MHI. Obviously, I have never attended Jamat Khana, but inshAllah one day. However, one thing that confuses me is that MHI always preaches unity and to love our fellow Muslim brethren. If this is a universal message, then why is it not ok for an Ismaili to marry a non-Ismaili (specifically, an Ithna Asheri Muslim)? I'm not saying I would be against converting, I am simply very interested in knowing the truth behind the statement. Every time I ask somebody I get a different or less-than-satisfying answer.
Shukar
Re: Marriage between other Shia Muslims
Thank you for the response. Yes, we have discussed it and the conclusion was that the children would be raised as Ismailis, because I will convert. But my initial question is, if one is to not convert, why is it taboo for an Ismaili to marry a non-Ismaili.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you for your time.
-
avrozmaredia
- Posts: 33
- Joined: Tue Oct 25, 2011 10:35 pm
- Location: San Antonio, TX
Marriage
People who marry Non-Ismaili mostly (not all of them) leave their faith for sake of marriage and breaks up allegiance with our Imam. It is a Gunah-e-kabira to break allegiance.Thank you for the response. Yes, we have discussed it and the conclusion was that the children would be raised as Ismailis, because I will convert. But my initial question is, if one is to not convert, why is it taboo for an Ismaili to marry a non-Ismaili.
Thank you for your time.
But, if he/she like to practice faith even after marriage then problem arises is as posted by Maher bhai
It is an better option to get convert into ismaili. In Alwaez Abu Aly Waez i hear that one should practice ismaili faith for 6-12 months and then decide to accept it or not.YAM, as per the many posts in this thread, I think the main issue about marriage between an Ismaili and a non-Ismaili would be how to deal with raising the children.
I have also hear in waez that Maulana Hazar Imam said to Abu Aly missionary that he dont like conveying marriages.
In this matter, it is best to take opinion of Religious Scholar or Missionaries.
Re: Marriage between other Shia Muslims
I don't think it is taboo anymore. MHI during his GJ visits to the Jamats met with non-Ismaili spouses. So long as the interests of children are taken care of there is no issue of inter-marriages.akaz90 wrote:Thank you for the response. Yes, we have discussed it and the conclusion was that the children would be raised as Ismailis, because I will convert. But my initial question is, if one is to not convert, why is it taboo for an Ismaili to marry a non-Ismaili.
Thank you for your time.
5 marriage myths you should never believe
Marriage is rewarded with gifts, tax breaks, and shared health insurance. The pooling of resources makes it easier to rent a nicer apartment, buy a house, and even travel. Directly and indirectly, we are told marriage will make you happy, but will it? A happy marriage does a lot for health, wealth, and personal fulfillment. One study found that marriage is as stabilizing as earning over $100,000 a year and the health equivalent of quitting smoking, but an unhappy marriage undoes all that and then some. Here are five myths that can challenge even the most promising marriages.
1.Love is all you need: While it's certainly a prerequisite, it won't get you much farther than the altar. Communication, shared values, tolerance, realistic expectations, commitment, and kindness are just a few requirements for a good marriage.
2.You complete each other: Complementing each other is definitely a benefit of a good relationship, but expecting another person to make up your shortcomings is an unrealistic expectation.
3.You share everything: Sharing may be caring, but sharing everything is unrealistic, too. What will be shared and what will be kept separate is different for every couple. Telling yourself otherwise just creates another problem.
4.Babies bring you closer: Babies definitely make parents forever entwined, but several studies show the birth of a first child often pushes people apart. I'd say the worst loneliness is one felt in a relationship, because it contradicts everything we expect to feel.
5.Everything will fall into place with Mr. or Mrs. Right: How often have you heard of people breaking up because "it shouldn't be so hard"? While there may be some truth to that, expecting a relationship to run on autopilot if it's right removes all responsibility from the only two people who can make it work.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/lifestyle/rela ... lsignoutmd
*****
Infidelity by the numbers
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/lifestyle/rela ... md#image=1
Marriage is rewarded with gifts, tax breaks, and shared health insurance. The pooling of resources makes it easier to rent a nicer apartment, buy a house, and even travel. Directly and indirectly, we are told marriage will make you happy, but will it? A happy marriage does a lot for health, wealth, and personal fulfillment. One study found that marriage is as stabilizing as earning over $100,000 a year and the health equivalent of quitting smoking, but an unhappy marriage undoes all that and then some. Here are five myths that can challenge even the most promising marriages.
1.Love is all you need: While it's certainly a prerequisite, it won't get you much farther than the altar. Communication, shared values, tolerance, realistic expectations, commitment, and kindness are just a few requirements for a good marriage.
2.You complete each other: Complementing each other is definitely a benefit of a good relationship, but expecting another person to make up your shortcomings is an unrealistic expectation.
3.You share everything: Sharing may be caring, but sharing everything is unrealistic, too. What will be shared and what will be kept separate is different for every couple. Telling yourself otherwise just creates another problem.
4.Babies bring you closer: Babies definitely make parents forever entwined, but several studies show the birth of a first child often pushes people apart. I'd say the worst loneliness is one felt in a relationship, because it contradicts everything we expect to feel.
5.Everything will fall into place with Mr. or Mrs. Right: How often have you heard of people breaking up because "it shouldn't be so hard"? While there may be some truth to that, expecting a relationship to run on autopilot if it's right removes all responsibility from the only two people who can make it work.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/lifestyle/rela ... lsignoutmd
*****
Infidelity by the numbers
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/lifestyle/rela ... md#image=1
Mixed unions: The ideal? Or ‘brownwashing?’
http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2015/07/2 ... /dashboard
Ethnically mixed couples — involving whites, blacks, Japanese, Hispanics, Chinese, South Asians or others — were heralded not long ago as the wave of a tolerant, open, non-racist future.
National Geographic and Time magazine ran cover features with photos of mixed-race people, celebrating The New Face of America. The hero in the Warren Beatty movie, Bulworth, trumpeted inter-marriage as the way to end racial discrimination.
Polls consistently reveal many whites, blacks, Asians and other women and men are attracted more to other ethnicities than their own, particularly for dating. British writer Laura Smith, who has a Guyanese mother and Scottish father, says she’s often told her mixed-race children “look cool.”
In the age of multi-ethnic celebrities such as Paula Abdul, Vin Diesel, Barack Obama, Tiger Woods, Halle Berry and Mariah Carey, Smith, who frequently writes about mixed unions, says white mothers, in particular, confess to her they yearn for mixed offspring; they want a society that’s less white and more “brown.”
But three cultural trends are shaking up this utopian dream, which places inter-ethnic couples at the vanguard of cultural fusion.
The first shift is demographic. Canadian statisticians have documented how the growth of ethnic groups in the Western world is actually making inter-ethnic couples less likely in major cities.
Secondly, many of the countries with traditional cultures that produce immigrants to the West remain resistant to ethnic intermarriage, often because of concerns about offsprings’ religious identities.
Thirdly, some race activists and social scientists are criticizing what they call the “brownwashing” of the population, arguing a mixed-union revolution is mostly sought by white liberals.
Despite such forces against it, the largely Western ideal of a world of mixed unions has for several decades had a great deal of persuasive power.
The desire for it is exemplified by educational consultant Brian Bailey, who has worked for the Vancouver school board and Capilano University.
“In a perfect world, almost every marriage would be a mixed one, in order to eliminate the scourge of racism,” says Bailey.
Societies full of intermarriages, Bailey said, would “take care of global warfare.”
Contrary to common perceptions, however, the rate of intermarriage is stalling in Canada’s cities, even as the proportion of visible minorities greatly expands through immigration.
Feng Hou is among the University of Victoria researchers who have found that the larger an ethnic group becomes in a city the less likely its members are to marry outside their group.
The overall rate of mixed unions in Canada is expanding slowly, by about one percentage point a decade. Inter-ethnic unions account for 4.6 per cent of couples in Canada (about half the rate of the U.S. and Britain). Yet a much larger portion, 20 per cent, are now visible minority.
A study published this year by Hou, Zheng Wu and Christoph Schimmele found the intermarriage rate among members of an ethnic group goes down in regions that house a large cohort of that group. No one is quite sure why.
The intermarriage rate in mid-sized Canadian cities such as Kelowna, Victoria and Trois-Rivières, where there are relatively few visible minorities, is reaching almost 40 per cent. People there appear motivated to go outside their ethno-cultural group for friends, dates and, importantly, marriage partners.
On the other hand, in Canadian metropolises where visible minorities, mostly Asians, account for almost half the population, the intermarriage rate is much lower. In Metro Vancouver it’s just 9.6 per cent. In multi-racial Toronto it’s only 8.2 per cent.
People seem to feel little need to find a partner outside their ethno-cultural group when living among hundreds of thousands of people with familiar backgrounds.
For instance, South Asians and ethnic Chinese make up the largest immigrant groups to Canada. But Statistics Canada reports they’re among the least likely to intermarry. Only 19 per cent of Chinese-Canadians in a couple, and 13 per cent of South Asian-Canadians, are in a mixed union.
Hou admits researchers can’t explain the complicated causes of intermarriage. But he cautioned against “blindly treating the prevalence of intermarriage as the litmus test of inter-group relations.” Hou says, “The prevalence can be low or go down simply for demographic reasons.”
Regardless of the reasons for the decline, however, since seven out of ten recent immigrants to Canada are choosing to live in either Metro Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal, the study by Hou et al suggests intermarriage rates are not about to rise rapidly.
And could the low rate of inter-ethnic marriage in Canada’s big cities partly reflect the power of traditional ethno-cultural groups to hold sway once they have, through immigration, formed enclaves based on proximity, religion and language?
Outside North America and Europe, patriarchy remains powerful in traditional cultures. And one of the key traits of patriarchy is that fathers and mothers believe they have a lot of influence in arranging who their offspring will marry. In many countries of Asia and the Middle East inter-ethnic unions are rare.
Faizal Sahukhan, a Vancouver therapist who specializes in inter-cultural couples, has seen the difficulties first hand. While people might date outside their ethnic group, “the biggest barrier to mixed marriages is parental influence,” he says. “Many people who are immigrants to Canada want to preserve homogeneity when their children begin to marry.”
If these two anti-mixed union trends weren’t worrying enough, a new sign that the times are changing is that many “progressives” are raising objections to mixed unions.
Many believe mixed unions will combat racism. But the editors of Mixing it Up: Multiracial Subjects, suggest the melting pot ideal, in which people of different ethnicities make babies together, is a “problematic” form of “brownwashing.” Creative Commons photo by FacemePls.
Many believe mixed unions will combat racism. But the editors of Mixing it Up: Multiracial Subjects, suggest the melting pot ideal, in which people of different ethnicities make babies together, is a “problematic” form of “brownwashing.” (Creative Commons photo by FacemePls)
Social activists and academics who believe they are champions of minority rights are growing cool to the utopian dream of mass inter-ethnic couplehood.
That’s not only because ethnic media in Britain and North America regularly feature articles expressing worry about how increased intermarriage could deplete the size of certain ethnic groups.
Scholars SanSan Kwan and Kenneth Spiers, editors of Mixing it Up: Multiracial Subjects, also maintain the melting pot ideal, in which people of different ethnicities inevitably join up to make babies together, is a “problematic” form of “brownwashing.”
“To embrace a ‘brown’ or raceless society and to dispense with concepts of race are to deny the beauty there is in difference,” say Kwan and Spiers.
“Brownwashing hopes to erase the ugly patterns of racism and in one grand gesture homogenize us all.”
Roosevelt University Professor Heather Dalmage’s book also questions the vision of a society replete with mixed marriages. In The Politics of Multiracialism: Challenging Racial Thinking, contributors criticize white people who seek a “colour-blind” society, claiming they just want to deny the prevalence of racism.
British researcher Miri Song, of Kent University, also suggests a Western inter-marriage involving a white person can lead to questionable “assimilation,” in which the ethnic minority loses their identity to the so-called “dominant culture.”
Instead of being a sign of cultural success, Song writes, mixed marriages could “engender deep ambivalence” for minority members.
Evidently, the once-strong utopian vision of a predominantly mixed-union society is growing dimmer, on at least these three fronts.
This unparalleled way to intertwine cultures — a mixed partnership that creates mixed offspring — is being undermined by demographics, while being rejected by many on the so-called right and, surprisingly, even the trendsetting left.
Despite Western societies becoming more multi-ethnic through immigration, there seem few reasons to believe mixed unions will anytime soon become the new normal in Canada or beyond.
[email protected]
http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2015/07/2 ... /dashboard
Ethnically mixed couples — involving whites, blacks, Japanese, Hispanics, Chinese, South Asians or others — were heralded not long ago as the wave of a tolerant, open, non-racist future.
National Geographic and Time magazine ran cover features with photos of mixed-race people, celebrating The New Face of America. The hero in the Warren Beatty movie, Bulworth, trumpeted inter-marriage as the way to end racial discrimination.
Polls consistently reveal many whites, blacks, Asians and other women and men are attracted more to other ethnicities than their own, particularly for dating. British writer Laura Smith, who has a Guyanese mother and Scottish father, says she’s often told her mixed-race children “look cool.”
In the age of multi-ethnic celebrities such as Paula Abdul, Vin Diesel, Barack Obama, Tiger Woods, Halle Berry and Mariah Carey, Smith, who frequently writes about mixed unions, says white mothers, in particular, confess to her they yearn for mixed offspring; they want a society that’s less white and more “brown.”
But three cultural trends are shaking up this utopian dream, which places inter-ethnic couples at the vanguard of cultural fusion.
The first shift is demographic. Canadian statisticians have documented how the growth of ethnic groups in the Western world is actually making inter-ethnic couples less likely in major cities.
Secondly, many of the countries with traditional cultures that produce immigrants to the West remain resistant to ethnic intermarriage, often because of concerns about offsprings’ religious identities.
Thirdly, some race activists and social scientists are criticizing what they call the “brownwashing” of the population, arguing a mixed-union revolution is mostly sought by white liberals.
Despite such forces against it, the largely Western ideal of a world of mixed unions has for several decades had a great deal of persuasive power.
The desire for it is exemplified by educational consultant Brian Bailey, who has worked for the Vancouver school board and Capilano University.
“In a perfect world, almost every marriage would be a mixed one, in order to eliminate the scourge of racism,” says Bailey.
Societies full of intermarriages, Bailey said, would “take care of global warfare.”
Contrary to common perceptions, however, the rate of intermarriage is stalling in Canada’s cities, even as the proportion of visible minorities greatly expands through immigration.
Feng Hou is among the University of Victoria researchers who have found that the larger an ethnic group becomes in a city the less likely its members are to marry outside their group.
The overall rate of mixed unions in Canada is expanding slowly, by about one percentage point a decade. Inter-ethnic unions account for 4.6 per cent of couples in Canada (about half the rate of the U.S. and Britain). Yet a much larger portion, 20 per cent, are now visible minority.
A study published this year by Hou, Zheng Wu and Christoph Schimmele found the intermarriage rate among members of an ethnic group goes down in regions that house a large cohort of that group. No one is quite sure why.
The intermarriage rate in mid-sized Canadian cities such as Kelowna, Victoria and Trois-Rivières, where there are relatively few visible minorities, is reaching almost 40 per cent. People there appear motivated to go outside their ethno-cultural group for friends, dates and, importantly, marriage partners.
On the other hand, in Canadian metropolises where visible minorities, mostly Asians, account for almost half the population, the intermarriage rate is much lower. In Metro Vancouver it’s just 9.6 per cent. In multi-racial Toronto it’s only 8.2 per cent.
People seem to feel little need to find a partner outside their ethno-cultural group when living among hundreds of thousands of people with familiar backgrounds.
For instance, South Asians and ethnic Chinese make up the largest immigrant groups to Canada. But Statistics Canada reports they’re among the least likely to intermarry. Only 19 per cent of Chinese-Canadians in a couple, and 13 per cent of South Asian-Canadians, are in a mixed union.
Hou admits researchers can’t explain the complicated causes of intermarriage. But he cautioned against “blindly treating the prevalence of intermarriage as the litmus test of inter-group relations.” Hou says, “The prevalence can be low or go down simply for demographic reasons.”
Regardless of the reasons for the decline, however, since seven out of ten recent immigrants to Canada are choosing to live in either Metro Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal, the study by Hou et al suggests intermarriage rates are not about to rise rapidly.
And could the low rate of inter-ethnic marriage in Canada’s big cities partly reflect the power of traditional ethno-cultural groups to hold sway once they have, through immigration, formed enclaves based on proximity, religion and language?
Outside North America and Europe, patriarchy remains powerful in traditional cultures. And one of the key traits of patriarchy is that fathers and mothers believe they have a lot of influence in arranging who their offspring will marry. In many countries of Asia and the Middle East inter-ethnic unions are rare.
Faizal Sahukhan, a Vancouver therapist who specializes in inter-cultural couples, has seen the difficulties first hand. While people might date outside their ethnic group, “the biggest barrier to mixed marriages is parental influence,” he says. “Many people who are immigrants to Canada want to preserve homogeneity when their children begin to marry.”
If these two anti-mixed union trends weren’t worrying enough, a new sign that the times are changing is that many “progressives” are raising objections to mixed unions.
Many believe mixed unions will combat racism. But the editors of Mixing it Up: Multiracial Subjects, suggest the melting pot ideal, in which people of different ethnicities make babies together, is a “problematic” form of “brownwashing.” Creative Commons photo by FacemePls.
Many believe mixed unions will combat racism. But the editors of Mixing it Up: Multiracial Subjects, suggest the melting pot ideal, in which people of different ethnicities make babies together, is a “problematic” form of “brownwashing.” (Creative Commons photo by FacemePls)
Social activists and academics who believe they are champions of minority rights are growing cool to the utopian dream of mass inter-ethnic couplehood.
That’s not only because ethnic media in Britain and North America regularly feature articles expressing worry about how increased intermarriage could deplete the size of certain ethnic groups.
Scholars SanSan Kwan and Kenneth Spiers, editors of Mixing it Up: Multiracial Subjects, also maintain the melting pot ideal, in which people of different ethnicities inevitably join up to make babies together, is a “problematic” form of “brownwashing.”
“To embrace a ‘brown’ or raceless society and to dispense with concepts of race are to deny the beauty there is in difference,” say Kwan and Spiers.
“Brownwashing hopes to erase the ugly patterns of racism and in one grand gesture homogenize us all.”
Roosevelt University Professor Heather Dalmage’s book also questions the vision of a society replete with mixed marriages. In The Politics of Multiracialism: Challenging Racial Thinking, contributors criticize white people who seek a “colour-blind” society, claiming they just want to deny the prevalence of racism.
British researcher Miri Song, of Kent University, also suggests a Western inter-marriage involving a white person can lead to questionable “assimilation,” in which the ethnic minority loses their identity to the so-called “dominant culture.”
Instead of being a sign of cultural success, Song writes, mixed marriages could “engender deep ambivalence” for minority members.
Evidently, the once-strong utopian vision of a predominantly mixed-union society is growing dimmer, on at least these three fronts.
This unparalleled way to intertwine cultures — a mixed partnership that creates mixed offspring — is being undermined by demographics, while being rejected by many on the so-called right and, surprisingly, even the trendsetting left.
Despite Western societies becoming more multi-ethnic through immigration, there seem few reasons to believe mixed unions will anytime soon become the new normal in Canada or beyond.
[email protected]
10 Things Children of Divorce Wish Their Parents Wouldn't Do
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/lifestyle/fami ... md#image=1
Marriages come and go, but divorce is forever, to quote the late, great Nora Ephron. While you may be able to move on to another man, your children will always be tied to you and your ex—and any drama from that relationship. With this in mind, adult children of divorce share what bothered them as kids—and still irks them today—about their parents’ post-split behavior. Plus, experts weigh in on what divorced parents should do instead.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/lifestyle/fami ... md#image=1
Marriages come and go, but divorce is forever, to quote the late, great Nora Ephron. While you may be able to move on to another man, your children will always be tied to you and your ex—and any drama from that relationship. With this in mind, adult children of divorce share what bothered them as kids—and still irks them today—about their parents’ post-split behavior. Plus, experts weigh in on what divorced parents should do instead.
John and Ann Betar: Couple married for 83 years give relationship advice on Twitter
It was 1932 when John and Ann met. He was a 21-year-old Syrian refugee and salesman in the seaside town of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and Anne, 17, was a high school senior and his neighbour.
Her father wanted her to marry a man two decades older than her, as the depression of the 1930s gripped the US. But she couldn’t face a future without John, so the pair ran away to Harrison, New York, and eloped in November 1932.
Some 83 years later, the pair are still together aged 100 and 104-years-old, and claim to be the longest married couple in the US, the Washington Post reported.
To mark Valentine’s Day, the pair shared their wisdom on life and love that they have learned in the eight decades they have spent together.
The pair answered questions on Twitter, in a chat hosted by the app Handy.
Here are some of their most interesting answers:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/lifestyle/rela ... lsignoutmd
Speaking to the Washington Post before the Twitter Q&A, Mr Betar said his one tip for a happy life was to: “Live day to day within your means. Be content with what you have. Don’t spend more than you have. Respect each other.”
"We’re just lucky to be together. So fortunate," he said, adding that what makes him happiest is "just simply being together,"
*********
9 most common reasons couples get divorced
Statistics show 42 per cent of marriages end in divorce, and 34 per cent of married couples divorce before their 20th wedding anniversary.
However, a study from Relate found 87 per cent of couples said they were in a good relationship, and that half rarely or never argued.
The statistics show that many couples who were previously in good relationships end up getting divorced within 20 years of their nuptials.
Relate counsellor and sex therapist Peter Saddington has given the nine most common reasons for divorce he sees in couples.
1. Money problems
Problems can arise when it comes to money if husband and wife have different value bases, for instance, if one person likes spending money freely and the other is more frugal and prefers saving.
2. Affairs
If one person is having an affair, this is likely to break down trust and lead to difficulties in establishing honesty in a relationship.
3. Interfering ex-partners
When establishing a new relationship, an ex getting your partner’s attention can create tension.
It can feel like they’re still married to the ex, or that the ex is more important.
4. Differences in sexual libido
It's a stereotype but not far off the mark. Many men want more sex than women and if couples have different levels of sexual libido this will lead to problems in the relationship.
5. Children from previous relationships
There is a big difference between how people react to their own children and how they react to children they have become parent to. Parents make different allowances for children who are their own. When they are somebody else’s children, it may be more difficult to establish the same relationship.
6. Intrusive parents
If parents are interfering, or if a partner perceives them to be, this can be a problem.
If one partner spends too much time talking with their mother, for example, this can create a breakdown of intimacy in the relationship.
7. Difference in how you resolve conflict
If someone has grown up in a family where arguing is very common and they’re in a relationship with someone who doesn’t like arguing or isn’t used to it, this can cause difficulty.
Since you have different ways of solving problems, it’s likely that these problems will never get resolved.
8. Differences in communication
If one partner is the type of person who shares all their intimate thoughts, but their partner is not, this can cause problems.
If one partner isn’t sharing with the other, this will often be interpreted by the other as meaning ‘they don’t love me, they’re not interested in me’.
9. Privacy problems
Another problem can be when one person has a different view of what should be kept within the relationship
If one person shares all the intimate details of the relationship with their friends or over Facebook, this can be an increasingly difficult thing to manage.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/lifestyle/rela ... tmd#page=2
It was 1932 when John and Ann met. He was a 21-year-old Syrian refugee and salesman in the seaside town of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and Anne, 17, was a high school senior and his neighbour.
Her father wanted her to marry a man two decades older than her, as the depression of the 1930s gripped the US. But she couldn’t face a future without John, so the pair ran away to Harrison, New York, and eloped in November 1932.
Some 83 years later, the pair are still together aged 100 and 104-years-old, and claim to be the longest married couple in the US, the Washington Post reported.
To mark Valentine’s Day, the pair shared their wisdom on life and love that they have learned in the eight decades they have spent together.
The pair answered questions on Twitter, in a chat hosted by the app Handy.
Here are some of their most interesting answers:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/lifestyle/rela ... lsignoutmd
Speaking to the Washington Post before the Twitter Q&A, Mr Betar said his one tip for a happy life was to: “Live day to day within your means. Be content with what you have. Don’t spend more than you have. Respect each other.”
"We’re just lucky to be together. So fortunate," he said, adding that what makes him happiest is "just simply being together,"
*********
9 most common reasons couples get divorced
Statistics show 42 per cent of marriages end in divorce, and 34 per cent of married couples divorce before their 20th wedding anniversary.
However, a study from Relate found 87 per cent of couples said they were in a good relationship, and that half rarely or never argued.
The statistics show that many couples who were previously in good relationships end up getting divorced within 20 years of their nuptials.
Relate counsellor and sex therapist Peter Saddington has given the nine most common reasons for divorce he sees in couples.
1. Money problems
Problems can arise when it comes to money if husband and wife have different value bases, for instance, if one person likes spending money freely and the other is more frugal and prefers saving.
2. Affairs
If one person is having an affair, this is likely to break down trust and lead to difficulties in establishing honesty in a relationship.
3. Interfering ex-partners
When establishing a new relationship, an ex getting your partner’s attention can create tension.
It can feel like they’re still married to the ex, or that the ex is more important.
4. Differences in sexual libido
It's a stereotype but not far off the mark. Many men want more sex than women and if couples have different levels of sexual libido this will lead to problems in the relationship.
5. Children from previous relationships
There is a big difference between how people react to their own children and how they react to children they have become parent to. Parents make different allowances for children who are their own. When they are somebody else’s children, it may be more difficult to establish the same relationship.
6. Intrusive parents
If parents are interfering, or if a partner perceives them to be, this can be a problem.
If one partner spends too much time talking with their mother, for example, this can create a breakdown of intimacy in the relationship.
7. Difference in how you resolve conflict
If someone has grown up in a family where arguing is very common and they’re in a relationship with someone who doesn’t like arguing or isn’t used to it, this can cause difficulty.
Since you have different ways of solving problems, it’s likely that these problems will never get resolved.
8. Differences in communication
If one partner is the type of person who shares all their intimate thoughts, but their partner is not, this can cause problems.
If one partner isn’t sharing with the other, this will often be interpreted by the other as meaning ‘they don’t love me, they’re not interested in me’.
9. Privacy problems
Another problem can be when one person has a different view of what should be kept within the relationship
If one person shares all the intimate details of the relationship with their friends or over Facebook, this can be an increasingly difficult thing to manage.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/lifestyle/rela ... tmd#page=2
Three Views of Marriage
Two years ago the Northwestern University psychologist Eli Finkel had an article in The Times describing how marriage is polarizing: The best marriages today are better than the best marriages of generations ago; the worst marriages now are worse; over all, the average marriage is weaker than the average marriage in days of yore.
Expectations about marriage have risen, Finkel wrote. People now want marriage to satisfy their financial, emotional and spiritual needs. But while some people spend a lot of one-on-one time working on their marriage, and reap the benefits, most people spend less time, and things slowly decay.
The way we talk about marriage is polarizing, too. If you read the popular literature, there are three different but not mutually exclusive lenses through which to think about marriage decisions.
Most of the popular advice books adopt a psychological lens. These books start with the premise that getting married is a daunting prospect. Forty-five percent of marriages end in divorce; 10 percent of couples separate but do not divorce.
The psychologists want you to think analytically as well as romantically about whom to marry. Pay attention to traits. As Ty Tashiro wrote in “The Science of Happily Ever After,” you want to marry someone who scores high in “agreeableness,” someone who has a high concern for social harmony, who is good at empathy, who is nice. You want to avoid people who score high in neuroticism — who are emotionally unstable or prone to anger.
Don’t think negative traits will change over time, Tashiro wrote, because they are constant across a lifetime. Don’t focus on irrelevant factors, like looks. Don’t filter out or rationalize away negative information about a partner or relationship.
The second lens is the romantic lens. This is the dominant lens in movie and song. More than people in many other countries, Americans want to marry the person they are passionately in love with.
Their logic is that you need a few years of passionate love to fuse you together so you’ll stay together when times get hard. It’s a process beautifully described by a character in Louis de Bernières’s novel “Corelli’s Mandolin”:
“Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it. We had roots that grew toward each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.”
In “The Good Marriage,” Judith Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee concluded that 15 percent of couples maintain lifelong romantic marriages.
The third lens is the moral lens. In this lens a marriage doesn’t exist just to exist or even just for procreation. It exists to serve some higher purpose, whether it is seeking God’s kingdom for the religious or in service to some joint cause or humanity-enhancing project for the secular.
In “The Meaning of Marriage,” Tim Keller argued that marriage introduces you to yourself; you realize you’re not as noble and easy to live with as you thought when alone. In many marriages there’s an unspoken agreement not to talk about what you don’t admire in the other, because the truth from a loved one can be so painful. But in a good marriage you identify your own selfishness and see it as the fundamental problem. You treat it more seriously than your spouse’s selfishness.
The everyday tasks of marriage are opportunities to cultivate a more selfless love. Everyday there’s a chance to inspire and encourage your partner to become his or her best self. In this lens, marriage isn’t about two individuals trying to satisfy their own needs; it’s a partnership of mutual self-giving for the purpose of moral growth and to make their corner of the world a little better.
It’s probably best to use all three lenses when entering into or living in a marriage. But there are differences among them. The psychological lens emphasizes that people don’t change much over a lifetime. Especially after age 30, people may get a little more conscientious and agreeable, but improvements are modest.
In the romantic view, the heart is transformed by love, at any age. In the moral view, spiritual transformation — over a lifetime, not just over two passionate years — is the whole point. People have great power to go against their own natures and uplift their spouses, by showing a willingness to change, by supporting their journey from an old crippled self to a new more beautiful self.
The three lenses are operating at different levels: personality, emotions, the level of the virtues and the vices. The first two lenses are very common in our culture — in bookstores, songs and in movies. But the moral lens, with its view of marriage as a binding moral project, is less common. Maybe that’s one of the reasons the quality of the average marriage is in decline.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/opini ... pe=article
Two years ago the Northwestern University psychologist Eli Finkel had an article in The Times describing how marriage is polarizing: The best marriages today are better than the best marriages of generations ago; the worst marriages now are worse; over all, the average marriage is weaker than the average marriage in days of yore.
Expectations about marriage have risen, Finkel wrote. People now want marriage to satisfy their financial, emotional and spiritual needs. But while some people spend a lot of one-on-one time working on their marriage, and reap the benefits, most people spend less time, and things slowly decay.
The way we talk about marriage is polarizing, too. If you read the popular literature, there are three different but not mutually exclusive lenses through which to think about marriage decisions.
Most of the popular advice books adopt a psychological lens. These books start with the premise that getting married is a daunting prospect. Forty-five percent of marriages end in divorce; 10 percent of couples separate but do not divorce.
The psychologists want you to think analytically as well as romantically about whom to marry. Pay attention to traits. As Ty Tashiro wrote in “The Science of Happily Ever After,” you want to marry someone who scores high in “agreeableness,” someone who has a high concern for social harmony, who is good at empathy, who is nice. You want to avoid people who score high in neuroticism — who are emotionally unstable or prone to anger.
Don’t think negative traits will change over time, Tashiro wrote, because they are constant across a lifetime. Don’t focus on irrelevant factors, like looks. Don’t filter out or rationalize away negative information about a partner or relationship.
The second lens is the romantic lens. This is the dominant lens in movie and song. More than people in many other countries, Americans want to marry the person they are passionately in love with.
Their logic is that you need a few years of passionate love to fuse you together so you’ll stay together when times get hard. It’s a process beautifully described by a character in Louis de Bernières’s novel “Corelli’s Mandolin”:
“Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it. We had roots that grew toward each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.”
In “The Good Marriage,” Judith Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee concluded that 15 percent of couples maintain lifelong romantic marriages.
The third lens is the moral lens. In this lens a marriage doesn’t exist just to exist or even just for procreation. It exists to serve some higher purpose, whether it is seeking God’s kingdom for the religious or in service to some joint cause or humanity-enhancing project for the secular.
In “The Meaning of Marriage,” Tim Keller argued that marriage introduces you to yourself; you realize you’re not as noble and easy to live with as you thought when alone. In many marriages there’s an unspoken agreement not to talk about what you don’t admire in the other, because the truth from a loved one can be so painful. But in a good marriage you identify your own selfishness and see it as the fundamental problem. You treat it more seriously than your spouse’s selfishness.
The everyday tasks of marriage are opportunities to cultivate a more selfless love. Everyday there’s a chance to inspire and encourage your partner to become his or her best self. In this lens, marriage isn’t about two individuals trying to satisfy their own needs; it’s a partnership of mutual self-giving for the purpose of moral growth and to make their corner of the world a little better.
It’s probably best to use all three lenses when entering into or living in a marriage. But there are differences among them. The psychological lens emphasizes that people don’t change much over a lifetime. Especially after age 30, people may get a little more conscientious and agreeable, but improvements are modest.
In the romantic view, the heart is transformed by love, at any age. In the moral view, spiritual transformation — over a lifetime, not just over two passionate years — is the whole point. People have great power to go against their own natures and uplift their spouses, by showing a willingness to change, by supporting their journey from an old crippled self to a new more beautiful self.
The three lenses are operating at different levels: personality, emotions, the level of the virtues and the vices. The first two lenses are very common in our culture — in bookstores, songs and in movies. But the moral lens, with its view of marriage as a binding moral project, is less common. Maybe that’s one of the reasons the quality of the average marriage is in decline.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/opini ... pe=article
Video - Social Welfare Board Mindful Marriage Workshop
http://www.iicanada.org/national/articl ... l-marriage
http://www.iicanada.org/national/articl ... l-marriage