Sure, I get all the practical stuff.

My original comment was more towards USAnians fixating on before and after marriage, even for couples who have been in LTRs for well, a long time. Like OH NOW WE'RE REALLY SERIOUS, the last five years was just playing house!! Which, in some regard is true, because of the above stuff...but it's a big disconnect for many Euros. I suspect the bolded plays a bigger part than the practical/legal stuff there.

FTR I don't want to get married because the institution in itself, even devoid of religious context, is meaningless to me. But it's not a very strongly held conviction so I'll prob get married since it matters to my gf (which sounds weird to call someone I have a wife with, but hey, English language and all). Would have to insist on the non-religious variant though.

I agree that many people ****ting on LTRs/marriage prob come from a less than fortunate family situation.

Ah, OK, got it. Oh. Oh, that's worse; I'm trying to get back to work after a few years full time caretaking. Sure hope you and all that economic research AIOTT mentioned are wrong.

Specific case was not typical, I guess. We didn't go on to have kids which may have thrown the "we can afford it" calculation into flux, for one. Not entirely certain about that though, since I've heard from several couples that their nanny costs significantly more than one of their salaries. Granted these are Aholes.

It's possible this catches on solely as a way to keep gays from using the term "marriage" because that might make them happy or something. After all, how can you encourage someone who's choosing to spend eternity in hell? If you're doing that maybe god will send you to hell for not doing everything you could to "save" them.

Soulbro: marriage in usa#1 isnt viewed how you think it is, at least not among my friends.

I think the common occurrence of divorce, lack of practicing religion, and some other factors have made it seem far less serious.

Been married a year. Seems fine. Sample size, I know.

Being unmarried does not protect you from miserable relationships or difficult break-ups. IMO, having kids is more of a commitment than marriage, and should be seen as such regardless of marriage. The real issue is how people choose to get into relationships, not how they get out of them.

Monte, I didn't think you understood because your statement is inconsistent in that regard. Just because you put alimony as a parenthetical at the end has nothing to do with the truth value of Soulman's claim which you said was, "factually incorrect"

If you say it's factually incorrect that 10 years has an effect on earnings potential then why is alimony a legitimate thing designed to mitigate it?

ETA: regarding later posts I agree with Monte that alimony is a good mechanism for this in lieu of any alternative I can conceive of

[ ] lies
[ ] damn lies
[?] statistics

Good luck out there my man

Uh, we weren't talking about degree of earnings impact; he tried to assert that someone in the situation Holliday described would only have the ability to get a minimum wage job if ten years removed from the work force and Holliday decided to divorce her. Not only is that insulting and incredibly tone deaf given their present situation, it's also patently absurd based on what little information we have about her previous employment history.

That it likely adversely affects your future earning potential to be out of the work force for years isn't something I thought I had to acknowledge to keep my woke points, but here we are, I suppose. The broader point is that it's not really up to any of us to legislate the consequences of personal familial decisions (at least not to that degree) that are presumably made with eyes reasonably wide open by consenting partners. Divorce law, including property rights, alimony, and child support, has been developed to address this exact issue. Whether staying home with the kids will affect her (or his!) income is something prospective parents have to evaluate for themselves. That you or Soulman thinks a decision is wokigiastically deficient is, thankfully, not yet relevant to most people when making their own determination.

Monte,

Soulman didn't literally mean that she specifically would only be able to get a minimum wage job. He was abstracting and hyperbolizing to make a point about future income potential for a non-specific future for a non-specific person. ie: future earning potential

AIOTT,

1) That wasn't clear, and I'm not convinced that actually was his individual intent, and

2) Apart from what I previously noted, the comment is also incredibly patronizing and paternalistic for a number of reasons (assuming that neither Holliday or Holliwife would have realized and/or discussed it, dismissing her agency both for being a part of the discussion and ultimately making the decision for her own personal and professional life, etc).

This is starting to resemble a Politics forum conversation, so I'll just acknowledge I'm a huge piece of **** and we can move on.

I watched a few movies on the plane:

About a Son: Kurt Cobain documentary. Gripping. Awesome. Kinda short.

Ready Player One: Complete trash, couldn't make it more than an hour in. Shocked spielberg's name was attached to it and that it has a 7.5 on IMDB. You can expect references to nerd culture sans any satire or commentary passing for a story in a way similar to The Big Bang Theory coupled with obnoxious disney-esque tropes and irritating in your face visuals for children.

White Boy Rick: Holy **** that was awesome. TOO REAL. If you liked shows like The Wire or Sopranos, this is pretty close in style/theme/tone but with some perhaps on accident humorous parts. Mat MacConaughey is ace as always. Currently sitting at a 6.5 imdb of course lmao.

Venom: Didn't finish b/c we landed. Tolerable; most marvel movies make me wanna gouge my eyes out, but I can say I somewhat enjoyed this one. This was watchable even if the first third was insultingly predictable and uncompelling.

Oh it's definitely patronizing and paternalistic when applied to an individual couples choice but:

a) way less so than our youtube hero
b) people actually are probably really bad about estimating how these choices will affect their future earnings
c) people are probably really bad about estimating how likely their marriages are to be successful
d) people discount future earnings so much that this truism may barely even factor into their decision making

I recon this is sarcastic but just in case I should say that I don't think that at all. If I'd have interpreted soulman's post as you did I'd have felt the same way.

TD season 3 thoughts?

It's out!? Oh fuuucckk!

Spoiler tags please. I'm gonna binge after the season is done.

Haven't watched any myself but consensus in ootvland was that it is very good although derivative of s1. That was only through the first few episodes though.

I've enjoyed the first 4 episodes, though I agree on the charges of derivative. Still up in the air though, still a lot of story to come out in the final 4.

Havne't seen anything about s3, but were I the CEO of HBO i'd be telling those dudes to derive the **** out of S1 after that disaster of a S2 happened.

Based on Holliday's original post above, my alternative would mostly be large structural changes in society, such as not focusing so much on working your ass off all the time. That would include shorter working days, more time off for holidays, social circumstances etc mandated by law, much better parental leave etc. This would likely lead to fewer couples feeling overwhelmed by work.

After all that, people should obviously be free to not work. I don't really have any thoughts about how much alimony should be paid to the non-working party under various circumstances.

I'm happy (I think, slippery slope to poly marriage with dogs and cats notwithstanding) to hear that and wouldn't be surprised to hear that the trend holds in US society at large.


This.

Exactly this. I would hope that Holliday's specific circumstances meant that my comment would have been absolutely ridiculous if I wasn't commenting in the abstract.

Holliday also seems like a guy who wouldn't take offense for using his comment as a jumping off point.

If I were commenting on their specific circumstance, sure. I would take for granted that they had done all of the above since it's Holliday and not N1H.



I don't think it was mine nor AIOTT's intention to educate you - I don't think anyone doubts you being a very well-read and educated guy. Debating is another matter though, no?

I was a bit confused about the hostility, but given the recent string of posts I get it. Seems like AIOTT and others didn't read me that way.

Agreed. Mahershala Ali's really, really good in his part so far.

Got some pretty **** news about wife's tumor yesterday. Not the worst thing we could have heard. I do not feel very articulate today, but I'm going to have to figure out a way to explain this to people soon. It is not growing aggressively but there are signs of activity and...like internal growth or building pressure, in a way. With eating involved. Picture a garden hose with gas running through it. Now imagine it runs through a balloon filled with fire. Also the gas is *really* needed upstream. Gradual. Little leaks cause little reactions and **** compounds so it will keep getting worse and risks of *major event* keep increasing. Not sure that's the right metaphor because it's really the outside of the balloon that's like fire getting gasoline poured on it but anyway, that's *one of* the degenerations they see going on, and that going up a notch is the most likely explanation for the wife's recent rough couple of weeks. If left to its own devices like we have been for a while now, it will continue to deteriorate and will eventually win.

There are interventions. We've already looked into most of them but that was nearly 4 years ago and there have been some promising developments. There's a particular trial her neuro oncologist thinks is quite promising and low on side effects. I expect we'll at least try that while her team investigates surgical possibilities and/or locations.