I don't really agree, if you sat down and talked with every single person you walked by throughout the day you would meet many people you clicked with, both on a friendship and romantic level. If the author was that outgoing they probably would have met their partner earlier, or she would have found someone she liked better.
In other words I don't think who we end up with is some 1 in a million cosmic star aligning moment, it's probably more like 1 in 100 and many people would be as good or a better fit than who we end up with. The time you spend with your person is more important than some intrinsic value you both bring at the start.
Your love is one in a million
You couldn't buy it at any price
But of the nine-point-nine-nine-nine hundred thousand other possible loves
Statistically some of them would be equally nice
Or maybe not as nice but, say, smarter than you
Or dumber, but better at sport or... fuckin' tracing?
I'm just saying
I really think that I would, probably
Have somebody else
If I didn't have you
Someone else would do
The 1 in 100 is what keeps my wife busy with family law. The odds of ending up marrying someone vs having a healthy relationship are 2 very different things.
My wife and I dated through undergrad, broke up at "get married or break up." And ended coming back together as adults with more life and relationship experience. Based on plans, we never should have been back in the same city. And when we started hanging out again, neither expected a relationship, just a friendship still being sick of each others' sh. But we had both grown up. We're 24 years into our relationship now. I think it's going well.
That's all purely anecdotal, though.
I don't think real math could be done with this. Success isn't measurable. People often split due to $ or tragedy. People stick it out, miserable the entire time. It walks into Aristotle's eudaimonia. You can't know until it's over. Even then, quantifying quality is folly.
I'm guessing your wife is a divorce attorney? If so, knowing what she knows, what's stopping her dropping out of the marriage and taking half your stuff? Even in a perfect marriage, there's always the incentive.
No, she does general practice. That includes family law, but not dedicated.
It would be an equitable portion of our collective stuff, not 1/2 of mine. There is no “yours” when you’re married. That’s a big part of what marriage means. Even pre-modern and across many cultures, marriage has been viewed as a contract.
Money (or lack thereof) is one of the primary motivators in her experience. A lot of “rich people” get divorces when they’re in debt up to their eyeballs and the consequences hit.
We’re not struggling, not wealthy, and are pretty equally valued. Also, there’s more than stuff. The burden of children, a household, and even our own lives would be much greater solo. We’re a pretty great support system for each other.
There is no perfect marriage. Part of my point. I think mine’s great. We’ll see when we’re dead or divorced.
A "good marriage" isn't guaranteed to be a desirable one past the wedding day. I am in no way suggesting GP's marriage is a ticking time bomb, but I've read enough stories on Reddit and elsewhere to know there's no such thing as a guaranteed marriage even if you do everything right. My expectation is that GP's or his spouse might possess insight.
People who's marriages I thought would go on till death (Bezos's, Gates's, Carmack's, and most recently Tom Brady's) can have the scales tipped into the direction of "leave for reason X and take what you can from him (and sometimes her) on the way out", whether out of vindictiveness or perceived entitlement, even if the money wasn't the primary cause or objective.
I think that's a common misunderstanding about who owns what in a marriage. I'll quote Matt Levine on this:
One thing that I find a little weird about the Bezos divorce is that there are a lot of claims that it will make MacKenzie Bezos “the world’s richest woman.” I suppose there is a technical sense in which that is right, but it assumes not only that she will have a right to half of Jeff Bezos’s assets in divorce, but also that she has no such right in marriage. That strikes me as a strange way to think about marriage, and about the “community property” laws that might give her half the assets in divorce. (Surely those laws imply that she is in a sense a joint owner now?) I would have thought the more straightforward analysis is that she is the world’s richest woman now, because she is a member of a married couple that has more money than any other single person or married couple on the planet, but I guess that is not how the scorekeeping works.
This concept of marital property is speculative, if not fictional, unless both Jeff and Mackenzie made explicit agreements to co-own the shares during their marriage. Prior to their divorce, if Jeff wanted to dump all his Amazon stock, I doubt he needed MacKenzie's permission to do it. If he were deposed by the SEC over alleged claims of market manipulation with Amazon stock, Mackenzie would not be the one held liable. While she may have been able to influence his purchases/selloffs as one half of the world's now-formerly richest couple, she never had ownership of the stock as a legally-recognized property right in itself (and the liabilities the may come with such ownership). She now has such a right (although I would argue that she shouldn't) as a divorcée.
> I would argue this concept of marital property is a fiction
Property is a social construct; marital property no more or less than any other, and likewise no more or less a fiction.
> . Prior to their divorce, if Jeff wanted to dump all his Amazon stock, I doubt he needed MacKenzie's permission to do it.
Yes, marriage is exactly like a general partnership in that, absent explicit agreement or special legal treatment of particular property, any partner can dispose of property of the partnership.
Also, like a general partnership in that the property legally ascribed to the partnership rather than partners individually is divided among the partners as personal property at dissolution.
> Yes, marriage is exactly like a general partnership in that, absent explicit agreement or special legal treatment of particular property, any partner can dispose of property of the partnership.
So pre-divorce MacKenzie could have unilaterally decided to dump Jeff's Amazon shares on the market without his permission?
She could have burnt down Bezos's Medina home to bits and he couldn't sue for damages, even if he payed for the construction, property taxes, other bills, and was sole owner of the deed?
She could have access to any separate bank accounts he owned, and blown it all?
> Also, like a general partnership in that the property legally ascribed to the partnership rather than partners individually is divided among the partners as personal property at dissolution.
A partnership in and of itself doesn't create any obligations other than the acknowledgement of said partnership. There isn't a presumption of combined ownership. A partnership is the explicit creation of a contract that both parties agree to. If a contract is voided, one is no longer required to perform any duties or continue providing resources.
In a marriage, the terms are set by the state and there is a presumption of combined ownership. Even if a prenup to the effect of "I keep what I earned, you keep what you earned" exists, a judge can ignore it.
> A partnership is the explicit creation of a contract that both parties agree to.
So is a marriage. In both cases, there are default consequences in law that apply in the absence of contrary explicit agreement, particularly (relevant to thr current issue) as regards property attributable to the relationship, including which property that is.
> If a contract is voided
That’s not relevant, here. Voiding a contract is cancellation, due to a legal defect that makes it categorically invalid (if completely prohibited) or voidable at the discretion of a party (such as when one party was a child when making it); the marital case of voiding a contract is annulment, not divorce.
Divorce is termination of a contract, not voiding.
> In both cases, there are default consequences in law that apply in the absence of contrary explicit agreement, particularly (relevant to thr current issue) as regards property attributable to the relationship, including which property that is.
I'm aware of that and seeing as the Bezos's marriage did not have a pre-nup, Jeff was relatively fortunate. But my concern is with how marriages are treated as legal institutions apart from how commercial contracts are upheld.
In a partnership, two private parties can create a contract by themselves. The state is not involved in the creation of a contract. The state will only involve itself with the contract's enforcement or the resolution of any suits arising from its dissolution. The state works within the body of laws it's upheld, but almost all rights stated in the contract supersede the default assumptions held by the state.
When it comes to marriage, the state (via the court) is deemed its creator, enforcer, and dissolver. A divorce can only be granted under the acceptance of the state's terms. A judge can decide to ignore precedent or the upholding of a pre-nup.
Many who are / have been in bad marriages complain loudly about it. The many in good marriages rarely talk about it ("bragging").
Thus, take such stories online with a grain of salt. Especially since many are blind to their own faults, and therefore can't include them in their stories.
There are many good marriages in which at least one spouse brags about a happy (however that's defined) life of 20+ years and many bad marriages that aren't evident as such until the inevitable "he/she left me and I don't know why" post on Reddit.
I agree that it is important to take a person's examination of his/her self or his/her (ex-)spouse with a grain of salt. And while people are blind to their own faults, you're making the mistake of thinking that divorces are based on falsifiable and rational assessments. Some are. Some aren't. But one isn't likely know the true reason a long time after the fact, if at all.
> I don't think who we end up with is some 1 in a million cosmic star aligning moment, it's probably more like 1 in 100
I suspect that you're right for most people, but those odds will be better or worse depending on the person and their circumstance. For some people, it probably is closer to 1 in a million, or could even be worse. Some go their entire lives meeting people and never finding one. There's probably not much harm in feeling a bit lucky to have found your person, especially if you suspect at least one of your odds were worse than most.
Exactly. Many people don't realize, that the more people you are interacting with, the greater the odds are to finding what you seek. Probably this is more true for men, as oppose to women, as men tend to be more proactive. However, men still need to overcome any shyness or fear of rejection, to unlock such greater possibilities.
I actually think that your comment is probably saying something similar to the above. It potentially is about 1 in 100 as you state, but the timing of it makes it far less likely for 1 in 100 to work out because both people may not actually be mentally or emotionally ready to settle into a monogamous relationship. At least, my own experience has led me to that sort of a worldview.
I've had relationships not work out for varying reasons, including going on vacation 'at the wrong time', or someone's ex visiting the city and making her feel like she can't 'move on' at the moment, stuff like that.
And I went through my own dating phase in which I was less mature and not ready to settle down with many of the people I met. Quite a few of them were perfectly great women with whom I likely could have lasted in a long-term relationship (of course, we can never really know). As I see it, the timing wasn't right, either for me (mostly for me) or for them. It was only after a few years of this that I was in the right mindset to stay with the person I happened to be dating at the time. Sure, that probably doesn't sound great, and I probably won't discuss this at length with my wife, but it's the way I view the world. I'd wager that something like 80% of the people I went on more than three dates with were 'compatible' enough that I'd pursue a relationship with them, but it only worked out long-term with the last one because we were both in the same mindset to give an earnest effort at making our relationship work at the same place and same time.
So, using dumb analogy math, 1/X (compatible person) chance times 1/Y (right timing, maturity, life experience, etc.), it works out to a lower probability 1/(X*Y).
In other words I don't think who we end up with is some 1 in a million cosmic star aligning moment, it's probably more like 1 in 100 and many people would be as good or a better fit than who we end up with. The time you spend with your person is more important than some intrinsic value you both bring at the start.