Nice stuff Zippy, a few responses
Zippy wrote:
The hardest thing to do is find someone that you can grow with instead of grow away from. I think men age better than most women on average so marring some 10 to 15 years younger than you is a big plus.
A counter to that is women mature emotionally a lot faster than men, so they say! I remember some report where a guy in his 50s asked a 20 yr old chica why she dated men much older than her. Her reply was somthing like, 'los hombres jovenes ya estan en sus pañales!' (young men are still in their diapers!).
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Over all I feel that the steady state of a good marriage far outweighs the peaks & huge valleys of a mongering life. People I do believe live longer & healthier if they have a better sense of overall well being.
Actually I think that there are stats out there to back it up, that 'happily' married folks live the longest.
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Marriage is such a tough situation at times since people do change over time. It pays to be a good psychologist at times to feed the one you love the right things to help keep her on track. You really do need to read correctly when things start getting out of line & deal with keeping everyone happy before the damage becomes irreversible.
A most important point, and two male experts on relationships come to mind here - one is John Gray, Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus. His concept that men talk and think from the point of view of 'problem solving' whereas women talk just to vent their stress has been a revelation. Women often get upset when you offer a solution to a problem that they're expressing when all they wanted was an ear to listen and a small hug. This alone has saved my ass countless number of times.
Another cat is David Deida, one of his best pieces of advice was to praise your lady at least once daily, no matter how small or insignificant it is, it will feed her deeply. Sometimes I just can't but when I do, it reaps great benefit. He has a lot of stuff to say, friends have gone to his workshops, interesting stuff, has a website.
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Just from what I read about so many men here it just seems many are very bitter about their bad marriages & ugly divorces that they can not even think in terms of another one. This is surely very understandable & once older it would be hard to risk or even find something decent out there. This again stresses to me to take your time & really put the effort & homework into getting it right the first time.
I got married later in life, post 35 yrs and still had a lot to learn, but it helped immensely. God knows the mess if I tied the knot in my early 20s.
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The big fallacy of marriage I consistently see are that people feel they finally caught the one they wanted so now they don’t have to work at maintaining themselves anymore. How many men do we see go for the third PORK CHOP with all the gravy piled on top after marriage. The women seem worse than the men anymore with gaining weight. The expression “fat & happy†seems awfully out of place too me.
Amen brother, the incidence of obesity in this country is epidemic. Strangely enough mongering has been an additional inspiration to work out and get in better shape, thought it doesn't seem to matter too much in P4P. But I may be going through andropause.
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ONE THING FOR DAMN SURE IN THIS LIFE IS THIS CONTRACT IS DEFINITELY GOING TO WORK AGAINST THE ONE THAT HAS THE MOST TO LOSE

! Hum, duh I wonder who this might be

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This is going to change drastically in the future...women are significantly outnumbering men in college and universities and will probably result in reversing the breadwinner tradition. (though what Bilko stated really surprises me - I've never been divorced and just listened to a lot of guys moan about their settlements).