> there's not really such a thing as a bad marriage so much as selfish participants
Exactly. See, I never worry about myself being selfish, but my biggest fear is that I will get married to someone who just quits caring about me or who "gets bored" (I can't stand that phrase) and leaves me.
I don't like the "gets bored" phrase either ... it's right up there with "he/she changed" (which is a minor variation on "I thought I could changed him/her).
"People don't change" is kind of a funny phrase too - there's some truth in it, but I'm certainly not the same person I was when I married over twenty-seven years ago.
My wife has changed too - we're not young anymore and yet our love (and devotion) to each other is more multi-faceted because we love who we were together as well as who we are now together.
One piece of advice for the nerds out there ... don't stop doing the things you did when you were wooing him/her. It's easy to say "I've caught him/her" and figure that's the end of the project. Just like in software development, at least 80% of the work is maintenance after release/marriage.
People change. Sometimes dramatically and sometimes as a result of trauma. I hope it never happens to you or anyone around you, but it does happen and marriages fail because of it. I do agree that the phrase gets over-used, but I also acknowledge that it describes a legitimate phenomenon.
And people fail, sometimes avoidably, sometimes not. We are rarely tested to our breaking point, and it's easy to be smug when we see others fail, thinking we could have succeeded where they did not. The tendency to believe that anyone who has failed is "making excuses" is understandable, but one of the great things about maker culture is the way it embraces failure: it recognizes that we all can stretch ourselves too far and that there are circumstances where no physically conceivable amount of effort could have created success.
Under such circumstances it's important to fail gracefully, not to deny the possibility of or responsibility for failure. I think this happens a lot in divorce: people blame their partner because they aren't willing to say, "I have failed", and that creates a huge amount of pain and divisiveness, and even worse, it makes lawyers rich.
Failure is always an option. We know this as makers, hackers and engineers. It isn't simply a matter of "trying harder". Some problems cannot be solved under the constraints we are given, and when that happens we have failed, as surely as a girder that has buckled under an excessive load. This conundrum is sometimes known as "the human condition": http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_strain.htm
Me and my wife often say about our marriage that neither of us believes in Happily Ever After. There's no such thing as a point at which you stop having to work on the relationship.
Not to be a jerk, but if you never worry about yourself being selfish, there's a good chance you're missing something about yourself. I haven't met a human in all my days who has no unnecessary self-centeredness! Going into a marriage completely confident of your own dedication while questioning your partner's won't end well in my opinion.
That being said, I've never met you and have no idea who you are, so don't take this too seriously, just some random advice
Sorry, my phrasing was off there. Kind of tired this morning. What I meant is that I don't worry about myself "getting bored". In other words, I would keep working at a marriage rather than abandon it just because I was tired of it. I'm sure I have selfish moments, but the goal is to minimize how many of them I have!
Ah gothcya, sorry if I came across unnecessarily aggressive or self-righteous. Hope that if you do get married, you and your spouse have such admirable commitment to each other! And I hope the same for myself haha, I'm sure it's one heck of a challenge
Exactly. See, I never worry about myself being selfish, but my biggest fear is that I will get married to someone who just quits caring about me or who "gets bored" (I can't stand that phrase) and leaves me.