# What’s the point of marriage if it’s going to go to shit anyway?



## emptyblu (Jul 10, 2021)

50% of marriage ends in divorce, husband complains the wife is too naggy and uptight, wife complains husband dosent love her like he used to, one of them end up cheating and the kids are forced to witness it all crash and burn.

I recall many people sharing stories of how their friends have dead eyes ever since they got married or how they are so miserable bein stuck with their horrible spouse and you don’t really get appreciated enough in the relationship and your partner unfortunately takes you for granted.

Being a wife or a husband sounds like a thankless job so why do people still bother doing it?


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## KittyGremlin (Jul 10, 2021)

how old are you


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## User names must be unique (Jul 10, 2021)

I like Doug Stanhope's take on marriage. If marriage didn't exist would you invent it? "baby this thing shit we've got between us is so good we have to get a contract and get government, lawyers and judges involved!"


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## Getwhatyou (Jul 10, 2021)

Love shouldn't need marriage to confirm it. Alot of law no recognizes thst you are to share assets after a handful of years anyway.

So why waste it all on marriage?


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## Stephanie Bustcakes (Jul 10, 2021)

Because the nuclear family is essential for society to function.


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## Kabuki Actor (Jul 10, 2021)

That is why marriage is purposeful. You need to secure your own heat when every heart is freezing.


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## TimeTravel_0 (Jul 10, 2021)

You have been the victim of a psyop.


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## Lemmingwise (Jul 10, 2021)

emptyblu said:


> Being a wife or a husband sounds like a thankless job so why do people still bother doing it?


It's with long distance the absolute best you can do for children. And as a result, for society and the future.

Also if marriage was bad for you, you wouldn't be taught to despise it by jews. Who often themselves are married.


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## DumbDude42 (Jul 10, 2021)

in a world with no-fault divorce and legal adultery, marriage is indeed worthless. 
in a world without them, marriage is great.


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## Exigent Circumcisions (Jul 10, 2021)

Men who bitch endlessly about their wives are no men at all. If there are kids involved and you fucked up so badly picking her that you hate her now, that's on you and you should suck it up as another in the long line of mistakes you'll make in your life. Crying to your bros about it just makes you look like a pussy because you're a pussy. 

Most dysfunctional marriages that I've seen are a result of two immature jackasses having a constant power-struggle over the pettiest shit imaginable. So, if you're an immature jackass who gets married, that probably won't go well for you. Neither will the rest of your life though, so it's no real reason to avoid marriage.


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## Absurdist Laughter (Jul 10, 2021)

I think folks are rushing. I've known a few folks who got divorced within a year. Tried to stop'm considering they hadn't even lived with each other for more than a year.


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## Shield Breaker (Jul 10, 2021)

The 50% thing is misleading. Most of those are the same fuck ups marrying and divorcing each other.


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## DoNotReadTheFinePrint (Jul 10, 2021)

I bet the main problem why many marriages don't work out is the fact people marry too early into the relationship, where the rose tinted glasses are still on and make everyone blind to the short comings of the other. What might at first seems endearing can turn over the long run into an annoyance.

There's also the problem where the wedding to one member of the relationship is the ultimate goal (mainly on the women's side but there might also be some dudes like this). A lot of women say they want to have a fancy, big, and perfect wedding but never even think about wanting to have the life of a married person.

To me, personally, marriage is just a contract akin to the fusion of two cooperations and not necessary to have a fulfilled and loving relationship. After all, you gain a few economic benefits through it and that's it. The love won't become more just by wearing a white dress for one single day (or rather just a few hours), throwing some flowers, and exchanging some feel good vows and two pieces of fancy jewellery.


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## Suburban Bastard (Jul 10, 2021)

lol virgin


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## Zero Day Defense (Jul 11, 2021)

Suburban Bastard said:


> lol virgin


lol prostitute


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## Question Mark (Jul 11, 2021)

Normalfags are NPCs that just get married for the sake of marriage. There's no thought put into any of it. They just do it because "That's just what you're supposed to do" or whatever the fuck. The only rational reason to get married is if you value passing on your genes.


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## emptyblu (Jul 11, 2021)

TendieGremlin said:


> how old are you


19


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## emptyblu (Jul 11, 2021)

Exorbital Columnations said:


> Men who bitch endlessly about their wives are no men at all. If there are kids involved and you fucked up so badly picking her that you hate her now, that's on you and you should suck it up as another in the long line of mistakes you'll make in your life. Crying to your bros about it just makes you look like a pussy because you're a pussy.
> 
> Most dysfunctional marriages that I've seen are a result of two immature jackasses having a constant power-struggle over the pettiest shit imaginable. So, if you're an immature jackass who gets married, that probably won't go well for you. Neither will the rest of your life though, so it's no real reason to avoid marriage.


That’s the worst part about marriage. When the honeymoon phase is over the husband or wife starts to bitch about you, and list everything wrong with you and then they go and cheat on someone who makes them feel “young“ and “free” like they were before marriage. Honestly that thought depresses me I don’t want to be the source of someone’s misery and then get blamed by everyone including my own spouse when it goes to shit.


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## Hellbound Hellhound (Jul 11, 2021)

DumbDude42 said:


> in a world with no-fault divorce and legal adultery, marriage is indeed worthless.
> in a world without them, marriage is great.


Without no-fault divorce, you simply create the incentive for spouses to fabricate grievances against one another to drag the process out and inflict maximum damage: a very bad idea. If people actually wanted to stay together, the marriage laws wouldn't matter. To pretend otherwise is simply a cope.

And LOL at the idea of making adultary illegal. Imagine being such a loser that you need the government to stop your spouse from thinking she can do better.


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## KittyGremlin (Jul 11, 2021)

emptyblu said:


> 19


stop listening to dumb boomers who instead of owning up that they've played a part in their messed up marriage decide that it's best to talk shit about the whole institution even though there are plenty of happily married people.


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## Battlecruiser3000ad (Jul 11, 2021)

Don't marry the first whore that touches your pp


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## Unpaid Emotional Labourer (Jul 11, 2021)

Marriage means I have a permanent Waldorf to my Statler. Husbands and wives should be one another’s *accomplices*. Everything you say, do, try, desire, invest in, waste time and energy pursuing...all to support the common cause: your marriage, and any children produced within.

Please consider this description of a successful heterosexual marriage, as observed by a Jewish homosexual in NYC in 1970:



> It's the little things you do together,
> Do together,
> Do together,
> That make perfect relationships.
> ...


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## Zero Day Defense (Jul 11, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> Without no-fault divorce, you simply create the incentive for spouses to fabricate grievances against one another to drag the process out and inflict maximum damage: a very bad idea.


They still do that.

That's in fact the stated reason for the push for no-fault divorce back when it was taking off in the States, but (presumably) nobody ever thought about what happens when the prospects of alimony, child custody, and child support are on the line.

Family court is reportedly a wretched hive.


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## Fliddaroonie (Jul 11, 2021)

Marriage ensures transfer of hard earned assets and wealth upon death, often with tax breaks to minimise loss to the state. Also ensures children are looked after by clearly defined people upon death of one or both parents, avoiding leaving them to the tender mercies of the state.

People bitch and snivel about marriage being shit, but it's often the people who are trash, and any relationship they have would be trash.

Women martyr themselves to perpetual brats who are incapable, and have learned through their mothers that being useless at chores will mean a woman swoops in and fixes it and does it for them. Women have learned that they can "change" men for the better by nagging. Additionally, women know that a baby ties a man to them forever.


Marriage is fine. It's the people entering into it, often obsessed with an obscenely expensive day they'll go into for, using money they don't have, to buy shit they don't need, to impress people only there for the free bar, to show off, and it sets them off on totally the wrong foot.


Additionally, people rarely discuss the important stuff before entering into it. When it comes to the practicals, love is NOT ENOUGH.  You need shared beliefs and ideas and a willingness to compromise.


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## Zero Day Defense (Jul 11, 2021)

Fliddaroonie said:


> Additionally, people rarely discuss the important stuff before entering into it. When it comes to the practicals, infatuation is NOT ENOUGH.


FTFY. Love _is_ enough, but I reckon many couples don't even know what "love" is.


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## AMERICA (Jul 11, 2021)

50% thing is misleading, your chances of divorce for your first marriage are between 30-40% depending on the study. That's still a 60-70% chance of staying together, not bad. And you can reduce your odds of being one of those divorce cases. I'd recommend premarital counselling, it should be mandatory really. Also your odds of divorce go down drastically if you postpone your first marriage until you're around 25 years old.

By the way, studies consistently show that married men report higher levels of happiness and have better health outcomes throughout life. Here: https://www.health.harvard.edu/mens-health/marriage-and-mens-health


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## WinnieTheJew (Jul 11, 2021)

There are legitimate grievances that people have with marriage as an institution, at least here in the US. If you have children and you're going through a divorce there will be a small hat somewhere in the mix badgering your soon to be ex-wife, poking and prying for any reason at all that could be used to deny you access to your kids. Your finances being tied up with someone else's are the least of your worries at that point. Dumbass baby boomer relatives also have a nasty habit of pressuring younger generations into taking out loans to have extravagant weddings that are outside of their means, driving new families into debt. 

It's garbage all the way down and I don't blame people for turning their noses up at marriage.


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## CAPTAIN MATI (Jul 11, 2021)

If marriage is so bad, why do the gays want it so much even though when they get it, they score in divorce and domestic abuse stats?


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## Willie Thrills (Jul 11, 2021)

What is it with Protestants and divorces? All my English mates seem to either be the child of, or consistently of the opinion that they can have kids "with their ex" - can someone please explain why the hell you would marry somebody with the mindset that you're going to get divorced later on?


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## CAPTAIN MATI (Jul 11, 2021)

Willie Thrills said:


> What is it with Protestants and divorces? All my English mates seem to either be the child of, or consistently of the opinion that they can have kids "with their ex" - can someone please explain why the hell you would marry somebody with the mindset that you're going to get divorced later on?


Cuz they're cucks.


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## MissDrama (Jul 11, 2021)

Stop romanticizing marriage.

Marriage has never been about love or loyalty. Marriage is an economic contract. Did you know that with today's economy it takes 2 people's income to be able to successfully survive in a modern city? See the value of rent of a basic apartment plus the cost of food and bills. It's impossible to do it alone.

And even if one of the two has a large enough income to sustain a family, someone still needs to be in charge of the domestic economy. This mechanic is as old as time and goes back to our prehistoric ancestors. Back in the day marriage was just made to join wealthy families and ensure a good dinasty. 

And that's the point of marriage, my child.


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## Meiwaku (Jul 11, 2021)

I want healthcare


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## Fougaro (Jul 11, 2021)

DumbDude42 said:


> in a world with no-fault divorce and legal adultery, marriage is indeed worthless.
> in a world without them, marriage is great.


I think a more accurate diagnosis is that in a world where women are factually married to the state instead to their husbands, men are kinda SOL.


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## DumbDude42 (Jul 11, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> And LOL at the idea of making adultary illegal. Imagine being such a loser that you need the government to stop your spouse from thinking she can do better.


yeah i guess the billions of people who have lived with illegal adultery and kept it that way for thousands of years were all just massive losers with no clue about anything lol

mind boggling levels of arrogance on display right there


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## Null (Jul 11, 2021)

MissDrama said:


> Stop romanticizing marriage.
> 
> Marriage has never been about love or loyalty. Marriage is an economic contract. Did you know that with today's economy it takes 2 people's income to be able to successfully survive in a modern city? See the value of rent of a basic apartment plus the cost of food and bills. It's impossible to do it alone.
> 
> ...


odd perspective for a foid


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## Lina Colorado (Jul 11, 2021)

Lol in my country, people make a few kids first and if it worked out, THEN they get married. Topsy turvy, all of it... but that's how it is here.
No one is really religious here anyways so they don't care about the spiritual side of anything.

Make sure you actually have something in common before you engage in coitus much less marriage. That would solve alot of dumb problems.


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## Spooky Doot Skelly (Jul 11, 2021)

emptyblu said:


> Being a wife or a husband sounds like a thankless job so why do people still bother doing it?


being in a loving marriage with the right woman/man is probably the best thing anyone could ask for. 
I'm tired of this psyop against marriage. People want kids. People want wives/husbands. Just because the stats are inflated due to urbanites/niggers/whatever doesn't mean you can't still find someone worth marrying.


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## Mr. Skeltal (Jul 11, 2021)

Marriage isn't always for everyone but the fact that it can confer benefits and legal rights above next of kin in the event of a death are not to be taken lightly. Had my late brother-in-law been married to the mother of his children then she would've recieved survivor's benefits like the kids on top of being the ultimate say in the disposition of his remains. 
She wasn't though so she's out of luck on the benefits and the funeral planning was a righteous clusterfuck thanks to all of my wife's siblings and mother-in-law having a say. 
As an aside, if you're ever unsure of the value of life insurance and/or a will then plan a funeral for someone with neither, you'll change your tune right fucking quick.

Beyond that, marriage should only be entertained with skepticism. Choosing a spouse isn't easy. Remember that you're expected to live with this person 24/7/365 for the rest of your life. Something about your partner that annoys you now can and will annoy you 10 years into the marriage. Hash that out before you merge your lives together. Also avoid amalgamating your finances. Having a joint account is fine so long as either party retains their own personal accounts but having only a joint account is stupid and dangerous.

Know the difference between love and infatuation if you're intent on marrying for love. Love takes its time and is gentle whereas infatuation is fast and thrilling. In the same way, the candle that burns twice as bright burns twice as fast; marriages based on infatuation crash and burn more often and more spectacularly than love based ones. Ideally your spouse should compliment your personality and you should compliment theirs.

Marrying for money is trashy unless you come from a culture that still practices arranged marriages, in which case your folks are trashy. You will also have to learn to care for this complete stranger you're now foisted onto/had foisted onto you.

Marrying to take responsibility for a bastard child is, while a good thing, the result of poor decision making. To the bachelor Kiwis, wrap it before you tap it. To the much rarer bachelorette Kiwis, don't put out so easily. If you can't see yourself settling down with a sexual partner then suffer using condoms and spermicide. Don't bring a child into this world and get ye olde shotgun wedding arranged just because you needed to coom.

Thank you for attending my TED talk.


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## Cool Dog (Jul 11, 2021)

If you're a man there's no point to getting married anymore. Sex its no longer tied to marriage and casual sex its the norm. Not only are long-term relationships the new normal, even fuck buddies are a normal occurrence now and nobody is to kick you out for having a chick only for plowing. Back then being a bachelor got you ostracized to the point some countries had a tax on that so you had to get married to be part of society, you HAD to get married or become a pariah, but not anymore. That social pressure no longer exists, and the religious pressure its even lower

Then theres the shitty divorce laws, and the even shittier domestic abuse ones where even talking back to whatever bitch you are stuck with could land you in jail. Shit, "denying sex" to your wife its a crime in scotland meaning the government basically says your wife raping you its legal. Paternity tests are illegal in france, any random chick can say you're the baby daddy and you cant do shit besides fleeing to a country without an extradition treaty. Divorce has become so easy and consequence-free for women that they are the ones that initiate the process most of the time so its not even up to you to save your marriage. Despite all the feminist shit you wont find any equality at family courts, just look at the number of suicides among divorced men, who wants that? life its hard enough as it is for men. And this is not just the west tho, many other countries including mine have draconian divorce laws too

And if you really want kids you can pay a surrogate to carry yours, cheaper than getting married too and no risk of getting your kids taken from you. Again there's no point anymore which is why a lot of guys are living the life instead of getting shackled to some cunt until the judge gives her half of their shit. The only losers here are the bottom 40% of men who cant get any. It used to be that ugly people married each other because even for the lower classes being single was a big no-no but now even ugly chicks can get some out-of-her-league dick with tinder. Of course after 30 they are fucked and become cat ladies (seen it happening, not a stereotype) that will likely die alone but thats not my problem. But back to that bottom 40% of men, they havent been getting any since the 60's when the sexual liberation began so its not like the status-quo has changed at all for them, if anything its back to the old days when the majority of men died without ever getting laid/having kids

>inb4 "married men are happier/have it easier"

Those stats are cooked af, do they also count how divorced men feel? no, and when they do these studies they count the permavirgin forever alone incels too which is BS because its not like they choose to be single, they were never gonna get any in the current context anyway, as much sense as to ask hobos if they are happy when doing a "how billionaires feel?" study. If anything they should only evaluate married men+divorced men vs men who did choose to not get married, thats the only way you can get a correct measure of happiness and/or success. BTW I also seen this metric being shown alongside that about career choices which TL;DR married men are better for the economy because they are willing to work harder shittier jobs to support their family which the states forces them to do while bachelors are okay taking thing slow and doing whats better for them. How is that a good thing? how is working yourself into an early grave an upgrade?


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## DumbDude42 (Jul 11, 2021)

Cool Dog said:


> BTW I also seen this metric being shown alongside that about career choices which TL;DR married men are better for the economy because they are willing to work harder shittier jobs to support their family which the states forces them to do while bachelors are okay taking thing slow and doing whats better for them. How is that a good thing? how is working yourself into an early grave an upgrade?


working your ass off at a shit job is acceptable if it means that you can have a good family (wife and children), overall that's a good deal
problem is that for more and more men the family part of the equation isn't attainable anymore, so the whole thing degenerates into "work your ass off at a shit job and get nothing in return" which is a really shitty deal


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## Exigent Circumcisions (Jul 11, 2021)

Vingle said:


> Marriages go to shit, when the man isn't an alpha and let the woman get control. As we all know, women are petty and need someone to control them.


You sound like my wife.


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## Spooky Doot Skelly (Jul 11, 2021)

Cool Dog said:


> If you're a man there's no point to getting married anymore. Sex its no longer tied to marriage and casual sex its the norm. Not only are long-term relationships the new normal, even fuck buddies are a normal occurrence now and nobody is to kick you out for having a chick only for plowing. Back then being a bachelor got you ostracized to the point some countries had a tax on that so you had to get married to be part of society, you HAD to get married or become a pariah, but not anymore. That social pressure no longer exists, and the religious pressure its even lower
> 
> Then theres the shitty divorce laws, and the even shittier domestic abuse ones where even talking back to whatever bitch you are stuck with could land you in jail. Shit, "denying sex" to your wife its a crime in scotland meaning the government basically says your wife raping you its legal. Paternity tests are illegal in france, any random chick can say you're the baby daddy and you cant do shit besides fleeing to a country without an extradition treaty. Divorce has become so easy and consequence-free for women that they are the ones that initiate the process most of the time so its not even up to you to save your marriage. Despite all the feminist shit you wont find any equality at family courts, just look at the number of suicides among divorced men, who wants that? life its hard enough as it is for men. And this is not just the west tho, many other countries including mine have draconian divorce laws too
> 
> ...


You sound very unhappy. It’s literally as easy as not choosing a psycho bitch who will ruin you. Women are not hard to figure out, they will give you plenty of red flags if you know what to look out for. Avoid those women and your life will be happier. Are the laws retarded and stupid? Sure. But that shouldn’t stop you from having kids and a family. If you’re working a career and contributing as a single man to society through labor and taxes, that’s all going to other people’s kids. Quite literally cuckoldry. Have your own kids, raise your own kids (unless you want to be clergy). The best way to do that is marriage.


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## Cool Dog (Jul 11, 2021)

mr spongecake said:


> You sound very unhappy.


Whats next? "who hurt you"? pathetic


mr spongecake said:


> Are the laws retarded and stupid? Sure. But that shouldn’t stop


No but the courts will, bet you gonna enjoy jail when you cant make those alimony payments


mr spongecake said:


> . If you’re working a career and contributing as a single man to society through labor and taxes, that’s all going to other people’s kids.


I evade taxes all the time, and thanks to free college I've already cost society more than I will ever give back so fuck it


mr spongecake said:


> The best way to do that is marriage.


Not anymore, what are you a tradcuck? you didn't even disprove any of my points


DumbDude42 said:


> problem is that for more and more men the family part of the equation isn't attainable anymore, so the whole thing degenerates into "work your ass off at a shit job and get nothing in return" which is a really shitty deal


This is what these tradcuck retards dont get, theres simply no incentive to get married anymore and all kinds of benefits to stay a bachelor that didnt exist even a decade ago


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## Hellbound Hellhound (Jul 11, 2021)

DumbDude42 said:


> yeah i guess the billions of people who have lived with illegal adultery and kept it that way for thousands of years were all just massive losers with no clue about anything lol
> 
> mind boggling levels of arrogance on display right there


I really don't care if it's arrogant to call a loser a loser. The fact remains that banning adultary is barely one step removed from the state-enforced tradwives incels like to dream of, and the only people who would ever benefit from such a law are seething cucks and bitter old harridans.

Plus, if you look at the overall quality of the societies which have laws prohibiting adultary verses the ones that don't, it becomes immediately clear that my charge of loserdom is every bit as true at the societal level as it is at the individual one, since the former are invariably less well educated, less innovative, and less economically developed societies than the latter.

In short: cope. Metaphorically running to the principle's office because your wife won't play with you just makes you pathetic.


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## KittyGremlin (Jul 11, 2021)

MissDrama said:


> Stop romanticizing marriage.
> 
> Marriage has never been about love or loyalty. Marriage is an economic contract. Did you know that with today's economy it takes 2 people's income to be able to successfully survive in a modern city? See the value of rent of a basic apartment plus the cost of food and bills. It's impossible to do it alone.
> 
> ...



Yeah but you do need a certain degree of trust and faith in the other person to actually take that leap. So, you either have draconian laws penalizing or outright banning divorce and possibly allocating all power towards the man of the family, or the pair actually has to, you know, love each other.


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## emptyblu (Jul 11, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> I really don't care if it's arrogant to call a loser a loser. The fact remains that banning adultary is barely one step removed from the state-enforced tradwives incels like to dream of, and the only people who would ever benefit from such a law are seething cucks and bitter old harridans.
> 
> Plus, if you look at the overall quality of the societies which have laws prohibiting adultary verses the ones that don't, it becomes immediately clear that my charge of loserdom is every bit as true at the societal level as it is at the individual one, since the former are invariably less well educated, less innovative, and less economically developed societies than the latter.
> 
> In short: cope. Metaphorically running to the principle's office because your wife won't play with you just makes you pathetic.


Lol, this is why i don’t want to get married, you could be the perfect partner put tons of effort into taking care of the kids and trying keep your partner happy and they will still cheat and people like you will defend them and blame the victim for not being “good enough“ or “for being too much of a loser“ for some reason the wife or husband who cheated is always a perfect angel who was too good for me, Fuck that no one should be forced to take that shit.

Attractive, kind, and successful people get cheated on too you know it has nothing to do with being an “ugly loser” No one should take the blame because their spouse decided to ruin their marriage that’s no one’s fault.


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## Not a fake name (Jul 11, 2021)

It makes me sad that so many of you have such a screwed vision of marriage. It seems the media and the gay agenda has done its job to devalue the significance of marriage.

That many of you view marriage as only a way to have sex and pay rent, and why get mixed up in the legal or spiritual components if you can just fuck a roommate and never work on bettering yourself or your partner.

Marriage is a incredibly rewarding, having a person that supports you, cares what happens to you,  understands you, improves you and builds a future with you. It makes you a better person, mentally, physically and spiritually.

Too many people view it as just the next step of a relationship, and underestimate how much work goes into creating a lifelong stable relationship, it’s two people becoming one, you are no longer acting for yourself, you have to communicate and compromise.

Marriage is not easy, people that look like they have easy marriages have put in the work to get there. Don’t be disheartened because it’s hard, it’s hard because it’s worth it.


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## AbyssStarer (Jul 11, 2021)

emptyblu said:


> 19





emptyblu said:


> That’s the worst part about marriage. When the honeymoon phase is over the husband or wife starts to bitch about you, and list everything wrong with you and then they go and cheat on someone who makes them feel “young“ and “free” like they were before marriage. Honestly that thought depresses me I don’t want to be the source of someone’s misery and then get blamed by everyone including my own spouse when it goes to shit.


Keep preaching about multi-year adult relationships, little 19 year old kiddo.

If you put work and dedication into your relationship and you do it with somebody who has a similar value system to yourself whom you can communicate with then marriage is rewarding and worth it. If you get married young with a retard when you don't understand what marriage takes then no shit you'll be unhappy.

Stop letting modern media and popular JewTubers tell you what to think,
oh
and touch grass.


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## Lets Fucking Go! (Jul 11, 2021)

ITT: Cringe walls of texts from incels


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## Hellbound Hellhound (Jul 11, 2021)

emptyblu said:


> Lol, this is why i don’t want to get married, you could be the perfect partner put tons of effort into taking care of the kids and trying keep your partner happy and they will still cheat and people like you will defend them and blame the victim for not being “good enough“ or “for being too much of a loser“ for some reason the wife or husband who cheated is always a perfect angel who was too good for me, Fuck that no one should be forced to take that shit.
> 
> Attractive, kind, and successful people get cheated on too you know it has nothing to do with being an “ugly loser” No one should take the blame because their spouse decided to ruin their marriage that’s no one’s fault.


My derision isn't directed towards anyone who is unfortunate enough to get cheated on; rather, it is reserved for those who are so insecure about the possibility of being cheated on that it turns them into a controlling dork with a prickly sense of entitlement.

If you're simply a decent person who has been betrayed in a relationship, then you have my complete sympathy, but if you're so haughty and indignant that you want the state to come to your defense over it, you're nothing short of pathetic. Grow up and move on.


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## Agent Abe Caprine (Jul 11, 2021)

Battlecruiser3000ad said:


> Don't marry the first whore that touches your pp


Where's the fun in that? I like living dangerously.


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## Zero Day Defense (Jul 11, 2021)

mr spongecake said:


> Women are not hard to figure out, they will give you plenty of red flags if you know what to look out for.


Not everyone can be as socialized as you. Many of us learn from trial and error, and some have the misfortune of not having accumulated enough errors to learn from by the time they make a decision.

It's not that you're incorrect, it's that you still need to proffer actionable advice. Women aren't complicated, but that's only because-- for the vast majority-- rather than having byzantine analytical thought processes, they operate moreso from feelings in a way the average man is unfamiliar with.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> I really don't care if it's arrogant to call a loser a loser. The fact remains that banning adultary is barely one step removed from the state-enforced tradwives incels like to dream of, and the only people who would ever benefit from such a law are seething cucks and bitter old harridans.


...and children, who theoretically wouldn't have to worry about their family breaking apart right under their noses in a society that actively frowns on adultery and has summarily decided it shouldn't even be legally abided.

I haven't fully thought out the consequences of literally criminalizing adultery (I was thinking that what you would do is end no-fault divorce, and make proven adultery an automatic lose condition), but I doubt you've even thought about this at all. You don't even think of the liabilities of adultery such as the complications arising from children born extramaritally (custody isn't cut and dry when the child is provably born from the union of a partner in one relationship and a partner in another relationship) or the fact that your assets would be largely joined to someone that demonstrated that they have no respect for the marriage contract made or the family unit established (since adultery _does_ cause damage to the family unit as a whole, which means it negatively affects children) and is now engaging in this breaking of contract while having access to said joint resources, which is a potential problem for the entire family. Adultery is multifariously bad, well beyond the feeling of betrayal.

It's also asinine to assert that this is anywhere close to "state-enforced tradwives", because the whole point of that meme is that there's a list of women assigned to men, whereas "banning adultery" is the state acting in contracts willingly signed by both parties and recognized by the state because it (ideally) has active interest in the stability of family units.


Hellbound Hellhound said:


> Plus, if you look at the overall quality of the societies which have laws prohibiting adultary verses the ones that don't, it becomes immediately clear that my charge of loserdom is every bit as true at the societal level as it is at the individual one, since the former are invariably less well educated, less innovative, and less economically developed societies than the latter.


Uh huh, yeah, but are their families largely intact? Because that's important for successive generations, unless you mean to tell me that children born in broken homes (an overwhelming reality in present-day America since the 60s or so) is a good or even neutral thing.

Not everyone needs to be at the cutting edge of education, innovation, and economic development, and these things don't automatically create fulfillment or even happiness.


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## Spooky Doot Skelly (Jul 12, 2021)

Zero Day Defense said:


> Not everyone can be as socialized as you. Many of us learn from trial and error, and some have the misfortune of not having accumulated enough errors to learn from by the time they make a decision


I think it’s easier than ever in the modern day to learn what signs to look out for. Thanks to Twitter, youtube, and other social media you can ascertain what the general mannerisms/red flags are of tons of women without actually having to get burned. 
obviously you still need social interaction, but that’s part of growing up.


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## Hellbound Hellhound (Jul 12, 2021)

Zero Day Defense said:


> ...and children, who theoretically wouldn't have to worry about their family breaking apart right under their noses in a society that actively frowns on adultery and has summarily decided it shouldn't even be legally abided.


Who says they wouldn't have to worry about their family breaking apart? Can the state force the couple to remain living together? Can the state ensure that they still share the same bed, or display enough affection that the child knows they still love each other? Can the state guarantee that the child enjoys a happy home life in the wake of a domestic rift between their parents, who clearly no longer wish to be together?

From the child's perspective, a happy mother and father who remain committed to one another is obviously preferable compared to a broken home, but I've seen no evidence that inorganically forcing their parents to remain in close proximity when it's clearly not working out is.

If you want a real world example of people who are forced to remain with their partners due to threats of violence, simply look at the countless examples we have of homes where domestic abuse and victimization is prevalent. Those homes clearly aren't good for children, and what a ban on adultary would do is effectively sanction and provide cover to such living arrangements. In other words: a bad idea.


Zero Day Defense said:


> Not everyone needs to be at the cutting edge of education, innovation, and economic development, and these things don't automatically create fulfillment or even happiness.


They don't automatically create fulfillment or happiness, but they certainly help; so much so that it's statistically asinine to try to argue otherwise.


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## Zero Day Defense (Jul 12, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> Who says they wouldn't have to worry about their family breaking apart? Can the state force the couple to remain living together? Can the state ensure that they still share the same bed, or display enough affection that the child knows they still love each other? Can the state guarantee that the child enjoys a happy home life in the wake of a domestic rift between their parents, who clearly no longer wish to be together?


They have less to worry about, period, particularly from the fallout caused from adultery versus plain separation. Their family may still break apart, but there'd be less occasion for one of the causes (adultery) because it being able to be proven that you sabotaged your family unit in that way would open you up to a world of legal hurt.

They can't compel couples to continue to live together after the fact. They _can_ make examples, both to married couples as well as those considering state-recognized marriage. Pre-selection, in short.


Hellbound Hellhound said:


> If you want a real world example of people who are forced to remain with their partners due to threats of violence, simply look at the countless examples we have of homes where domestic abuse and victimization is prevalent. Those homes clearly aren't good for children, and what a ban on adultary would do is effectively sanction and provide cover to such living arrangements.


"A ban on adultery would allow domestic violence to persist."

What?

If you ban adultery and make it an auto-lose condition in divorce/family court, it has nothing to do with domestic violence.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> They don't automatically create fulfillment or happiness, but they certainly help; so much so that it's statistically asinine to try to argue otherwise.


Except that several first-world countries struggle with matters like loneliness, mental illness, depression, civil unrest, etc. Being dirt poor is detrimental, but my point was that you don't have to be anywhere near the top in order to find fulfillment or mere happiness.


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## Blobby's Murder Knife (Jul 12, 2021)

Zero Day Defense said:


> ...and children, who theoretically wouldn't have to worry about their family breaking apart right under their noses in a society that actively frowns on adultery and has summarily decided it shouldn't even be legally abided.


What? Don't most societies that seriously practice this punish adultery with oftentimes death? _People still did it anyway_ and got stoned or whatever the punishment was/is. I'd call having your mother or father getting the rope breaking the family apart for sure.

Threads like this are amusing because honestly, why bother doing anything but living in your mom's basement having her bring you Hot Pockets while you play vidya and shitpost on KF 24/7. Why get married (or even in a relationship at all), why have kids, why try to get a job, why do anything worthwhile, everything is stacked against you and you will fail. Jesusfuckingchrist.


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## MasterBaiter (Jul 12, 2021)

AMERICA said:


> By the way, studies consistently show that married men report higher levels of happiness and have better health outcomes throughout life. Here: https://www.health.harvard.edu/mens-health/marriage-and-mens-health


Serious question what about women?


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## Zero Day Defense (Jul 12, 2021)

COCl₂ said:


> Don't most societies that seriously practice this punish adultery with oftentimes death? _People still did it anyway_ and got stoned or whatever the punishment was/is.


People still murder, despite the fact that in some jurisdictions, you get punished with anything up to death. Why bother having laws at all, if _some_ people will still break them?

To keep more people from committing those acts and generating the societal damage that those acts bring, of course. Executions in some cultures are publicized in order to make examples out of the condemned, as well.



COCl₂ said:


> I'd call having your mother or father getting the rope breaking the family apart for sure.


The family's already broken at the point the adultery occurs.



COCl₂ said:


> Threads like this are amusing because honestly, why bother doing anything but living in your mom's basement having her bring you Hot Pockets while you play vidya and shitpost on KF 24/7. Why get married (or even in a relationship at all), why have kids, why try to get a job, why do anything worthwhile, everything is stacked against you and you will fail. Jesusfuckingchrist.


...are you suggesting that in order to answer the thread prompt, we need to be able to answer these kinds of questions?

Or, are you honestly asking?


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## Gravityqueen4life (Jul 12, 2021)

emptyblu said:


> 50% of marriage ends in divorce, husband complains the wife is too naggy and uptight, wife complains husband dosent love her like he used to, one of them end up cheating and the kids are forced to witness it all crash and burn.
> 
> I recall many people sharing stories of how their friends have dead eyes ever since they got married or how they are so miserable bein stuck with their horrible spouse and you don’t really get appreciated enough in the relationship and your partner unfortunately takes you for granted.
> 
> Being a wife or a husband sounds like a thankless job so why do people still bother doing it?


maybe people think it will work for them. maybe they both truly love eachother? some are willing to take that risk


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## Fanatical Pragmatist (Jul 12, 2021)

Zero Day Defense said:


> Not everyone needs to be at the cutting edge of education, innovation, and economic development, and these things don't automatically create fulfillment or even happiness.


Off-topic, but I give it 5 years at most before implying this gets you cancelled to no tomorrow for heresy against the holy gods of society and progress.


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## A Welsh Cake (Jul 12, 2021)

Hello is this the Kiwi Farms?


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## Bonesjones (Jul 12, 2021)

What's the point of living if you are just  going to die anyways?

Life and true happiness are about investment. The more time and energy and care you invest into things the more you can appreciate it. Relationships are like gardens, it only takes a little time and energy to keep them up unless you ignore them and let them to to shit. Then it takes exponential more effort to get them back to what you want.


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## Hellbound Hellhound (Jul 12, 2021)

Zero Day Defense said:


> They can't compel couples to continue to live together after the fact. They _can_ make examples, both to married couples as well as those considering state-recognized marriage. Pre-selection, in short.


And what makes that any of the state's business, much less their responsibility? If your spouse cheats on you, the mature thing to do is to take responsibility and work the issue out between yourselves. It's not the government's job to babysit adults and manage their relationships, and anyone who thinks it ought to be is quite frankly pathetic.

If you're so out of depth when it comes to maintaining a relationship that you need the government to offer you assistance, then you may as well accept the fact that you're not cut out for a relationship, period.


Zero Day Defense said:


> "A ban on adultery would allow domestic violence to persist."
> 
> What?
> 
> If you ban adultery and make it an auto-lose condition in divorce/family court, it has nothing to do with domestic violence.


You really haven't thought this through, have you?

Suppose you were to end no-fault divorce and criminalize adultary, what do you think the most likely outcome would be for those who are stuck in abusive marriages? They can't leave their spouse because they know that their spouse will refuse to grant them a divorce, and they can't turn to anyone else for support because then they'll run the risk of being accused of adultary and face legal consequences.

Abusive relationships are rarely equal, and by making it harder for people to leave abusive relationships, you're giving abusive partners more power over their victims. It's that simple.


Zero Day Defense said:


> Except that several first-world countries struggle with matters like loneliness, mental illness, depression, civil unrest, etc. Being dirt poor is detrimental, but my point was that you don't have to be anywhere near the top in order to find fulfillment or mere happiness.


First World countries struggle with loneliness and mental illness because they're wealthy enough that people can isolate themselves without starving to death. It has nothing to do with First World countries being less functional, and the level of civil unrest in developing countries frequently dwarfs that of their more developed counterparts.

A lot of this goes back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Once the basic needs of food, safety, and shelter are provided for, people then need a purpose in life. That many people in developed countries fall short of that is not necessarily the fault of their society.


Zero Day Defense said:


> To keep more people from committing those acts and generating the societal damage that those acts bring, of course.


Except this doesn't work. People who commit crimes generally don't count on getting caught, which is precisely why criminologists reject severe deterrence as a method of combatting crime. If you actually want people to behave a certain way, the most effective method is to provide them with the incentive and the opportunity to do so.


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## big ups liquid richard (Jul 12, 2021)

Aw the boys who are terrified of women are ranting that they'll never get married. Don't worry, nobody's lining up to hitch themselves to you.


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## Zero Day Defense (Jul 12, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> And what makes that any of the state's business, much less their responsibility?


They produce the marriage licenses that many of these couples sign, which is why they're even able to go to divorce/family court when they decide to separate legally. The state is invariably implicated in the standard marriage, and it has an active interest in marriage and the creation of family units so that it can maintain societal stability. Barring that clear interest, rather than criticizing the idea of having the state be involved in "managing relationships" (which it already does, thus divorce/family courts), you should go one step back and criticize the idea of _any_ government involvement in marriage.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> You really haven't thought this through, have you?
> 
> Suppose you were to end no-fault divorce and criminalize adultary, what do you think the most likely outcome would be for those who are stuck in abusive marriages?


No, *you* haven't thought this through. You keep jumping from "ban adultery" to "abusive marriages", because you seemingly don't understand that "fault divorces" aren't just conducted because of adultery but because of whatever the state considers a valid reason for divorce (which often includes domestic abuse and even long-term abandonment). The flow of your logic implies that adultery is somehow implicated in the context of domestic violence, like the abused will engage in an extramarital affair.

We're talking about the prospect of the criminalization (or at least the illegalization) of adultery. Domestic abuse is already illegal.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> They can't leave their spouse because they know that their spouse will refuse to grant them a divorce


The spouse isn't the one granting the divorce, it's the *state* that grants them the revocation of the license that they granted in the first place. You don't need your spouse's cooperation to file a fault divorce, though you _do_ need your spouse's cooperation in at least some jurisdictions for a _no-_fault divorce in the first place.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> and they can't turn to anyone else for support because then they'll run the risk of being accused of adultary and face legal consequences.


Turn to someone trusted for support and call the cops to report a domestic violence case. Perhaps just flee to a police station in the first place to do this. Now you have record that you made an attempt to rectify a hostile situation from which you had to flee, casting doubt on the notion that you committed adultery (which the spouse would still have to prove). Not only that, but even _if_ adultery was actually committed, being able to argue that one was "provoked" into adultery on account of seeking safety from said abuse is an adequate defense from such a charge in fault divorce.

Not only _that_, but perhaps those considering marriage should be more discerning about who they decide to legally join themselves to, in the first place.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> First World countries struggle with loneliness and mental illness because they're wealthy enough that people can isolate themselves without starving to death. It has nothing to do with First World countries being less functional


I don't know what point you're trying to make. I'm telling you first-world countries still have problems such as the aforementioned despite being technologically, academically, and economically advanced. You're agreeing that they do but you're trying to justify this... by saying that those advantages cause the very problems that I talked about... while the other part of my point is that lack of fulfillment and happiness can still exist with those advantages.

_You've argued that these advantages caused the problems I brought up._ I only said that they can still happen. And I wasn't even talking about the macro-functionality of a country in the first place.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> Except this doesn't work. People who commit crimes generally don't count on getting caught, which is precisely why criminologists reject severe deterrence as a method of combatting crime.


What does their expectation of getting caught have to do with anything? People don't commit crimes to get caught committing them in the first place.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> If you actually want people to behave a certain way, the most effective method is to provide them with the incentive and the opportunity to do so.


So, what does this mean in the case of criminals? Because I was of the understanding that "not being dead" or "not living a sizable chunk of your life in a jail cell" were largely adequate incentives in a civilized society.


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## Enjoy_the_Soylence (Jul 12, 2021)

If you are not _committed to making it work for a lifetime_, you should never get married. Too many people do it lightly.


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## Bonesjones (Jul 12, 2021)

JamesFargo said:


> Uhh.
> 
> We joke, but existentialism is a thing.
> 
> IMHO, the fact that we, as humans, have a sense of mortality is the cause of so much dysfunction.


Sorry you are an idiot


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## Uncle Phil (Jul 13, 2021)

If you're in a position to ignore the financial breaks and you're going purely on lifestyle choice, marriage makes sense only if kids are part of your plan.

If you're parents together, that's the reason to work on a relationship that isn't working anymore. Absent that, people should be free to move on when the magic is gone.


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## KittyGremlin (Jul 13, 2021)

JamesFargo said:


> Uhh.
> 
> We joke, but existentialism is a thing.
> 
> IMHO, the fact that we, as humans, have a sense of mortality is the cause of so much dysfunction.


Feel free to prove your point by pulling out your dick and spinning it like a helicopter in front of a retirement home since morals are so stupid and all. If you do that, we'll maybe consider your argument.


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## Mr Snek (Jul 14, 2021)

emptyblu said:


> 50% of marriage ends in divorce, husband complains the wife is too naggy and uptight, wife complains husband dosent love her like he used to, one of them end up cheating and the kids are forced to witness it all crash and burn.
> 
> I recall many people sharing stories of how their friends have dead eyes ever since they got married or how they are so miserable bein stuck with their horrible spouse and you don’t really get appreciated enough in the relationship and your partner unfortunately takes you for granted.
> 
> Being a wife or a husband sounds like a thankless job so why do people still bother doing it?


All I'm gonna say is that back in highschool, my class had a discussion and realised that 3 out of the 20 or so students had parents that weren't divorced. I'm aware that's probably a disproportionate ratio compared to society at large, but that always left an impact on me and effectively ruined my view of marriage and relationships as a whole.


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## FatalTater (Jul 14, 2021)

Marriage can be useful when it comes to inheritance and stuff, but it's not magically going to make a relationship last.
If you get married, remember that a person can still walk out the door at any time. (Assuming you aren't keeping them in a cage in the basement or summat.)


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## T0oCoolFool (Jul 14, 2021)

In my experience, most couples that ended up divorcing were really not surprising or unexpected cases. I can't tell you the number of friends, families, and co-workers I have witnessed that decided to get married when it was very obvious the relationship would not last. Couples that fight and break up all the time. Boyfriends that are known cheaters, or girlfriends that are known shit stirrers. etc. These are couples that should have broke up with each other long ago, yet instead they decided to get married, and later decide to bring kids into the mix.

You can avoid divorce by being honest with yourself when you consider your marriage partner. Don't marry someone right away, and don't ignore red flags. Don't settle with someone you know deep down you don't like just because you think you can't do any better.


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## Hellbound Hellhound (Jul 14, 2021)

Zero Day Defense said:


> They produce the marriage licenses that many of these couples sign, which is why they're even able to go to divorce/family court when they decide to separate legally. The state is invariably implicated in the standard marriage, and it has an active interest in marriage and the creation of family units so that it can maintain societal stability. Barring that clear interest, rather than criticizing the idea of having the state be involved in "managing relationships" (which it already does, thus divorce/family courts), you should go one step back and criticize the idea of _any_ government involvement in marriage.


This is a very paternalistic view. In a modern context, the state doesn't grant marriage licenses to couples for the benefit of itself, but for the benefit of the couples who want to get married. Those couples are still free people, and it isn't the state's business to regulate their relationship beyond what the couple are willing to agree to themselves.


Zero Day Defense said:


> No, *you* haven't thought this through. You keep jumping from "ban adultery" to "abusive marriages", because you seemingly don't understand that "fault divorces" aren't just conducted because of adultery but because of whatever the state considers a valid reason for divorce (which often includes domestic abuse and even long-term abandonment). The flow of your logic implies that adultery is somehow implicated in the context of domestic violence, like the abused will engage in an extramarital affair.
> 
> We're talking about the prospect of the criminalization (or at least the illegalization) of adultery. Domestic abuse is already illegal.


The point I think you're missing is that by creating legal consequences for infidelity, you're adding weight to the notion that a monogamous relationship should be upheld by some degree of coercion, and no one is going to like that idea more than an abusive spouse who enjoys victimizing their significant other.

Whether someone has actually committed adultary, or is likely to be prosecuted for it, is irrelevant: a sufficiently meek person who is trapped in a toxic relationship isn't going to be empowered, or have their lives made any easier, by the idea that manipulative accusations could carry the additional stress of legal consequences, especially if they lacked the confidence to defend themselves.


Zero Day Defense said:


> I don't know what point you're trying to make. I'm telling you first-world countries still have problems such as the aforementioned despite being technologically, academically, and economically advanced. You're agreeing that they do but you're trying to justify this... by saying that those advantages cause the very problems that I talked about... while the other part of my point is that lack of fulfillment and happiness can still exist with those advantages.
> 
> _You've argued that these advantages caused the problems I brought up._ I only said that they can still happen. And I wasn't even talking about the macro-functionality of a country in the first place.


My point was not that First World living standards create dysfunction, but that they can make dysfunction more visible since people's basic needs have already been met. For example: a society which is so destitute that most people don't live beyond the age of 40 obviously isn't going to have the same degree of people suffering from dementia as a wealthy society where people commonly reach the age of 90; this doesn't mean that wealth causes dementia.

Similarly, mental illness is more visible in the developed world because it's presence, while often debilitating, is generally not fatal. A depressed/anxious/lonely person in the developed world might abuse prescription medication and live as a NEET all day; while a similar person in the developing world will simply die from lack of support.

I should really be the one asking you what your point was, because saying that First World countries have the problems you mentioned is about as profound as saying that someone who isn't dying of cancer can still be unhappy.


Zero Day Defense said:


> So, what does this mean in the case of criminals? Because I was of the understanding that "not being dead" or "not living a sizable chunk of your life in a jail cell" were largely adequate incentives in a civilized society.


There is nothing civilized about severe deterrence or retributive justice. Civilized societies attempt to identify the social causes of crime, and work to provide people with opportunities that will steer them away from it. When that fails, they invest in rehabilitation for those who can be rehabilitated, and provide sanctuary for those who cannot.


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## Zero Day Defense (Jul 14, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> This is a very paternalistic view.


You can call it whatever you wish-- that is fundamentally implied in a state issuing marriage licenses to married couples instead of having nothing to do with the institution like they arguably should. The state involves itself in institutions because it has an investment in it or wants to develop such, so that they can develop more control within it. The state doesn't provide marriage licenses and privileges (such as tax breaks, which is effectively the feds shorting themselves) _just_ to make people happy-- that's a naive notion at best for an act that technically doesn't need the state at all, especially since we're talking about money in addition to the institution of marriage that they manage.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> The point I think you're missing is that by creating legal consequences for infidelity, you're adding weight to the notion that a monogamous relationship should be upheld by some degree of coercion, and no one is going to like that idea more than an abusive spouse who enjoys victimizing their significant other.


1. The coercion of the state is incomparable to the coercion of an abusive spouse, which is already outlawed and is _additionally_ grounds for fault divorce.
2. The "illegality" of adultery, as I've so far discussed it, has been strictly in the sense of it being a due cause for fault divorce in a scenario where it completely supplants no-fault divorce.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> Whether someone has actually committed adultary, or is likely to be prosecuted for it, is irrelevant: a sufficiently meek person who is trapped in a toxic relationship isn't going to be empowered, or have their lives made any easier, by the idea that manipulative accusations could carry the additional stress of legal consequences, especially if they lacked the confidence to defend themselves.


In addition to what's already been said, domestic violence only accounts for ~25% of all divorces in the States, and the majority of domestic violence cases are known to be reciprocal (i.e. the relationship is globally toxic). We're _largely_ not talking about domestic violence cases when we talk divorce and you're describing a minority scenario on top of that.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> My point was not that First World living standards create dysfunction


That's what you argued, though.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> First World countries struggle with loneliness and mental illness because they're wealthy enough that people can isolate themselves without starving to death.


I understood you describing a cause for loneliness here. How am I mistaken? The example that you give about dementia is one where dementia doesn't manifest because early death doesn't allow it to manifest in the first place, but in what I just quoted, you argue that loneliness and mental illness is something first world countries struggle with because they have the means to isolate without starving to death. At the very least, you're arguing here that wealth an exacerbating factor, but you didn't argue about mere visibility_._



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> I should really be the one asking you what your point was, because saying that First World countries have the problems you mentioned is about as profound as saying that someone who isn't dying of cancer can still be unhappy.


You're right. It's as profound as what you describe, but it's still a salient point to make when your original argument was a false correlation between divorce laws and arguably superficial quality of life metrics such as wealth and "innovation".



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> There is nothing civilized about severe deterrence or retributive justice.


According to _whom?_ Civilizations of past and present have handled crime in various ways, whether it be through "severe" deterrence/retributive justice (are you really going to argue that Mesopotamia wasn't a civilization?) or whatever it is you're describing.


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## DNA_JACKED (Jul 14, 2021)

As a man, I have to be in the top 10% of earners, be ripped, 6' tall, handsome, and willing to be the primary breadwinner as well as handle home chores and help raise the kids. But my wife isnt expected to cook, clean, or maintain the home at all, in fact she is encouraged to work and avoid learning any household skills. I will be expected to prioritize my wife's interests and hobbies over my own. Major purchases will be expected to pass her muster.

If she decides to divorce me, the family courts have a greater then 90% chance of giving her primary custody of our kids. Over 50% chance she gets sole custody, even if she is a shit heel of a human being. I will likely have to hand over 55-60% of my yearly earnings, plunging me into poverty, between child support and alimony. If I get a raise, she'll come for it, but if my wages get cut I'm told to eat shit. She will more then likely either get the house I PAID FOR, or I will be forced to give her half the value of said house. If she feels particularly nasty, she can easily lie about things I've "done" to her, and I'm guilty until proven innocent. Oh, and she gets a chunk of my pension as well.

When a man marries in modern day America, he loses. There is nothing to gain and everything to lose. Even if you find your perfect woman, once you get married get ready for her personality to change radically over the next 3-5 years. I see others here advocating "oh well if you're not a boomer the rate is REALLY only 30-40%.". Is that supposed to make me feel better? In the professional world, a failure rate of 5% is considered catastrophic, but in the marriage world where half of everything you will make for the next 30 years is at state a 40% failure rate is suddenly acceptable?

The modern world of no fault divorces and women who have no idea how to cook or maintain a house any better then most bachelors, combined with the atrocious family courts, create a situation where you are betting your financial life on the other party never changing or wanting to take advantage of you, and after literal decades of watching this happen over and over again to countless men, from the gentleman down the street to jonny depp, I have to wonder who is dumb enough to get married today.

In the past there was social pressure to avoid things like adultery. Women who slept around or were unfaithful were ostracized by society. Having children out of wedlock? Same thing. Getting divorced was a MAJOR ordeal and did not happen just because one party got bored of the other. Today there is no social penalty, in fact quite the opposite, women who "liberate" themselves from their husbands are celebrated. You cant even cover your wife on your health insurance these days. Outside of "muh true love" there is no reason for most people to marry.



Mr Snek said:


> All I'm gonna say is that back in highschool, my class had a discussion and realised that 3 out of the 20 or so students had parents that weren't divorced. I'm aware that's probably a disproportionate ratio compared to society at large, but that always left an impact on me and effectively ruined my view of marriage and relationships as a whole.


Out of the 94 students in my graduating class, there were *7* whose parents had not divorced. If you go through the student list of any large public school, you'll see that a good 80+% of the children enrolled do not have the same last names as their parents or siblings. Nearly all of my coworkers are either divorced or fall into the "happy wife happy life dead eyes" categories. 

And people wonder why I think marriage is a total sham.


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## Hellbound Hellhound (Jul 15, 2021)

Zero Day Defense said:


> You can call it whatever you wish-- that is fundamentally implied in a state issuing marriage licenses to married couples instead of having nothing to do with the institution like they arguably should. The state involves itself in institutions because it has an investment in it or wants to develop such, so that they can develop more control within it. The state doesn't provide marriage licenses and privileges (such as tax breaks, which is effectively the feds shorting themselves) _just_ to make people happy-- that's a naive notion at best for an act that technically doesn't need the state at all, especially since we're talking about money in addition to the institution of marriage that they manage.


In a democratic society, the state is responsive to the needs and wants of it's citizens, which is precisely the reason that in many jurisdictions marriage comes with tax breaks: political parties obviously want the votes of married couples, since they tend to constitute the majority of the population. Personally, I don't believe that marriage should come with tax breaks, so I'm not that interested in arguing this point. I'm more interested in why you seem to think that the state should seek to intervene and manage people's personal relationships, irrespective of those people's wishes.


Zero Day Defense said:


> In addition to what's already been said, domestic violence only accounts for ~25% of all divorces in the States, and the majority of domestic violence cases are known to be reciprocal (i.e. the relationship is globally toxic). We're _largely_ not talking about domestic violence cases when we talk divorce and you're describing a minority scenario on top of that.


Only? That's literally a quarter of all divorces in the United States. Hardly an insignificant minority.


Zero Day Defense said:


> I understood you describing a cause for loneliness here. How am I mistaken? The example that you give about dementia is one where dementia doesn't manifest because early death doesn't allow it to manifest in the first place, but in what I just quoted, you argue that loneliness and mental illness is something first world countries struggle with because they have the means to isolate without starving to death. At the very least, you're arguing here that wealth an exacerbating factor, but you didn't argue about mere visibility_._


It's not a cause, but an effect. Depression, anxiety, and loneliness are all an inherent part of the human condition, just as dementia in old age is. They appear to manifest more frequently in developed countries for the simple reason that developed countries provide the material conditions for such people to survive; plus, developed countries are better prepared to diagnose and treat such afflictions because all of the more pressing concerns have largely been taken care of.


Zero Day Defense said:


> You're right. It's as profound as what you describe, but it's still a salient point to make when your original argument was a false correlation between divorce laws and arguably superficial quality of life metrics such as wealth and "innovation".


There is nothing superficial about wealth and innovation as it relates to quality of life. A society without wealth and innovation is destitute and stagnant, while a society with an abundance of those things is dynamic and empowering. I also reject the implication that there is no correlation between the quality of life a society is able to provide for it's citizens and the philosophy which underpins it's laws; the common denominator is how enlightened the society is.


Zero Day Defense said:


> According to _whom?_ Civilizations of past and present have handled crime in various ways, whether it be through "severe" deterrence/retributive justice (are you really going to argue that Mesopotamia wasn't a civilization?) or whatever it is you're describing.


According to anyone who has studied history. The definition of civilized is an advanced state of social and cultural development (read: more enlightened), and if you have to go back thousands of years to point out a time when your ideas could have been considering thus, you're losing the argument.


----------



## Sperghetti (Jul 15, 2021)

You have to remember there’s a lot of people out there who, when their relationship is going poorly, will try to fix it by upping the commitment level.

Having problems with your significant other? _Let’s get married!_

Your marriage isn’t the greatest? _Let’s have kids!_

Surely this major new obligation on you both will make everything better!


----------



## Don't Tread on Me (Jul 15, 2021)

TendieGremlin said:


> stop listening to dumb boomers who instead of owning up that they've played a part in their messed up marriage decide that it's best to talk shit about the whole institution even though there are plenty of happily married people.


I have a large family. Happy marriages are very rare.


----------



## Zero Day Defense (Jul 15, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> I'm more interested in why you seem to think that the state should seek to intervene and manage people's personal relationships, irrespective of those people's wishes.


The simplest answer is that they could have just decided to _not _have a state-recognized marriage in the first place, but chose to submit their marriage to the interests of the state, which usually involves keeping stable and growing family units.

You appear to fail to understand the consequences and implications of the state issuing marriage licenses, facilitating divorces, and drafting laws around marriage as they recognize it, or the consequences of opting into this system. You certainly fail to understand the consequences inherent to someone giving you money or lessening your debt ostensibly free of charge (there is no such thing).

If you want to argue that the state shouldn't be involved in the institution at all, then we need to have _that_ conversation, because we are not starting from there-- we are starting from a position where the state is already involved in the marriage and has investment in the institution, and are therefore talking about how it uses leverage we already grant it by opting into their system.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> Only? That's literally a quarter of all divorces in the United States.


Read that again-- that's arguably less than 13.5% of marriages that fit the "sufficiently meek" bill you were describing earlier.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> It's not a cause, but an effect. Depression, anxiety, and loneliness are all an inherent part of the human condition, just as dementia in old age is. They appear to manifest more frequently in developed countries for the simple reason that developed countries provide the material conditions for such people to survive; plus, developed countries are better prepared to diagnose and treat such afflictions because all of the more pressing concerns have largely been taken care of.


That explanation flatly assumes that there could never be anything particularly wrong with a given society even if it's "sufficiently advanced", or that there's no problem with the providence of said material conditions in and of themselves that would contribute to the breeding of said mental disturbances.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> According to anyone who has studied history. The definition of civilized is an advanced state of social and cultural development (read: more enlightened)


What metric are you using? I'm using the very definition of the term "civilization":






And "more enlightened" than _what?_ Again, Mesopotamia was certainly more advanced than the hunter-gatherer arrangements prior to it.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> and if you have to go back thousands of years to point out a time when your ideas could have been considering thus, you're losing the argument.


I didn't have to go back in time at all, but I used Mesopotamia as an example in order to make a point: you're trying to cast a wholly relative expectation in stone when the truth of the matter is that civilized society comes in all kinds of collections of attributes and it's in fact a lower bar in the context of this conversation than you believe it to be.


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## Wright (Jul 16, 2021)

@Hellbound Hellhound exactly how many times have you committed adultery


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## KittyGremlin (Jul 16, 2021)

Don't Tread on Me said:


> I have a large family. Happy marriages are very rare.


Sad!


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## Meth Until Death (Jul 16, 2021)

Infidelity should be illegal and a punishable offence. My mother was a cheating whore and ruined her marriage and my father. 
Absolutely get fucked @Hellbound Hellhound, you sound like a disengenious, slimy cunt who doesn't want to get busted for being a filthy, morally bankrupt adulterer


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## KittyGremlin (Jul 16, 2021)

Meth Until Death said:


> Infidelity should be illegal and a punishable offence. My mother was a cheating whore and ruined her marriage and my father.
> Absolutely get fucked @Hellbound Hellhound, you sound like a disengenious, slimy cunt who doesn't want to get busted for being a filthy, morally bankrupt adulterer


MATI?


----------



## Meth Until Death (Jul 16, 2021)

TendieGremlin said:


> MATI?


Yeah nah, I was telling fibs. I was made by a Koori mixing  Winnie Blues, VB and Vegimite in a 44 galleon drum with a didgeridoo
Lol
Lmao


----------



## Flavius Claudius Julianus (Jul 16, 2021)

My two cents:

Most people, men and women, of any ethnicity or background, marry because it's 'just something you do' eventually. I can find examples of this from fellow coworkers, friends, and acquaintances over the last few years.

You might have some guy you know, John, who has been in a relationship for five years. He's comfortable, and probably not mega satisfied; but he's also too lazy to change shit, and eventually decides to get married - either through the desires of the woman he's with, or through a series of pressures from family, society, etc. He gets married, and soon becomes miserable. 

John gets everything he fucking deserves, as he walked into a major commitment with no more consideration dispensed than wiping his ass. 

As much as a lolcow Stefan Molyneux is, he's right in that the divorce statistics only tell you one thing: people are retarded, and make bad decisions.

If you have two people of similar values, who consider the future, mutual goals, selected one another intelligently based upon past behaviour, and believe the nuclear family to be necessary for the stable raising of children - that statistic falls massively, and any subsequent divorce proceedings will be instigated beyond the usual 'dissatisfaction.'

That said, I'm more in than out where it concerns marriage - certainly to any western woman. The only reason I'd do it is to raise children in a stable environment, not to 'confirm my love' or any other such uwu bullshit.


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## ToroidalBoat (Jul 16, 2021)

I think marriage is what God - or love if you don't believe - intended.

But on this dystopian earth of hell, it may be best to not get married.

Just like it also may not be a good idea to bring kids onto this earth.



			
				1 Corinthians 7:7-8 said:
			
		

> 7 For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that.
> 
> 8 I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I.


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## JosephStalin (Jul 16, 2021)

There are many marriages which are happy and last a lifetime.  When I was in high school in a rural area, eons ago, after high school graduation you'd see a lot of weddings.  These people married straight out of high school and started their lives on the farm.  They'd have kids, etc, but rarely traveled far from home.   The vast majority of these people stayed married until death.  
,
Not all marriages go that way, obviously.   Lots of reasons why.  Every marriage is functional in some ways and dysfunctional in other ways, just like every marriage is happy in some ways and unhappy in others.   Things will come up.  Money can be a real marriage-killer.   The primary breadwinner cannot or will not hold a steady job, placing hardship not just on the couple but on the kids.   Or there are debt issues, for various reasons.  Or money is poorly managed.  All can put strain on the marriage.  People will stray and cheat.

Believe people marry because they have hope for the future, that they will be happier together than apart. Works sometimes, for life.  Works sometimes, for varying lengths of time.    Same reason people often have kids , because they have hope for the future.

Piece of advice - don't have kids until you've been married several years.  Normally, after a few years of marriage the couple is used to each other's quirks, and one or both are reasonably settled in their jobs/careers.    When you bring kids into an environment where things are unstable you do them no good.  Believe every child should be able to grow up without constant fear and worry about what's going on at home.   They should never need to worry if there will be a roof over their heads, food on the table, water/electricity being shut off, etc.   Build a good foundation for the kids to grow.


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## Hellbound Hellhound (Jul 16, 2021)

Zero Day Defense said:


> The simplest answer is that they could have just decided to _not _have a state-recognized marriage in the first place, but chose to submit their marriage to the interests of the state, which usually involves keeping stable and growing family units.
> 
> You appear to fail to understand the consequences and implications of the state issuing marriage licenses, facilitating divorces, and drafting laws around marriage as they recognize it, or the consequences of opting into this system. You certainly fail to understand the consequences inherent to someone giving you money or lessening your debt ostensibly free of charge (there is no such thing).
> 
> If you want to argue that the state shouldn't be involved in the institution at all, then we need to have _that_ conversation, because we are not starting from there-- we are starting from a position where the state is already involved in the marriage and has investment in the institution, and are therefore talking about how it uses leverage we already grant it by opting into their system.


I would have no problem with the state being less involved in defining marriage, although I'm hesitant to suggest that marriage should enjoy no legal recognition, since there are many benefits which come with being married which may not be so easily guaranteed without it. If someone is taken to hospital in a critical condition, for instance, the fact that they're married can guarantee that their spouse gets a place by their bedside, and for many couples, things like that are very important.

The fundamental difference between us, I think, is that I believe the institution of marriage should exist to empower couples, whereas you seem to think it should exist to constrain them. I have no interest in trying to regulate other people's behavior if it is none of my business, and I certainly reject the paternalistic notion that the state should seek to do so.


Zero Day Defense said:


> Read that again-- that's arguably less than 13.5% of marriages that fit the "sufficiently meek" bill you were describing earlier.


I think the figure you're looking for is 12.5% (assuming that 50% or less of couples who divorce due to domestic violence are not reciprocal cases). Either way, that's still an eighth of people who file for divorce, and in a country like the United States, that's a lot of people.


Zero Day Defense said:


> That explanation flatly assumes that there could never be anything particularly wrong with a given society even if it's "sufficiently advanced", or that there's no problem with the providence of said material conditions in and of themselves that would contribute to the breeding of said mental disturbances.


It assumes no such thing. Plenty of societies have problems which are fairly unique to them, irrespective of their wealth, but there is nevertheless clearly a strong correlation between poverty and dysfunction.


Zero Day Defense said:


> What metric are you using? I'm using the very definition of the term "civilization":
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I like the way that you conveniently cropped that screen capture to omit the first definition that comes up:



Shall we zoom in on that?




I don't believe for one moment that you don't know what it means to be considered civilized. If you wish to feign cultural relativism and pretend not to know how to possibly gauge such a thing, then so be it, but nothing I've read from you so far suggests to me that this is your genuine view, and it certainly isn't mine.


Meth Until Death said:


> Infidelity should be illegal and a punishable offence. My mother was a cheating whore and ruined her marriage and my father.
> Absolutely get fucked @Hellbound Hellhound, you sound like a disengenious, slimy cunt who doesn't want to get busted for being a filthy, morally bankrupt adulterer


I have been completely open with all of my partners that I am not interested in monogamy. Perhaps instead of blaming me for your parent's mistakes, you should seek to learn from them and recognize that the key to any moral relationship is honesty.


----------



## Wright (Jul 16, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> not interested in monogamy


this nigga lol


----------



## Bibendum (Jul 16, 2021)

My personal theory is that, much like the rest of American society has degenerated, so has much of the stock of people pursuing relationships. Marriage takes commitment, it takes sacrifice, it takes forgiveness; it can be really difficult at times, but tough shit. Many people now either don't think through what it means to be together for an extended period (which btw is way longer than it ever was in the past, with life expectancies what they are now), they rush into things either because of the honeymoon phase clouding their brains or "because it's what you're supposed to to," they try to fix bad relationships by marrying/having kids, or they have fairytale ideas of romance that don't allow for conflict, transgressions, and forgiveness.

You need to find someone that shares your values, someone who can push you to achieve your goals, someone who willingly shoulders responsibility when you can't, someone with self-awareness and the capacity for reflection, someone who will suffer bad circumstances by your side without scolding or finger-pointing, someone who will forgive your transgressions because they know their commitment is more important than temporary slights.

If you yourself don't truly possess any of these qualities, don't pursue lifetime commitments. If you do (well eventually, you're 19 ffs), it's entirely possible you can find someone similar and make a happy life. And even if your marriage ends, if the parties involved aren't retards, the divorce doesn't have to be acrimonious hell.



Spoiler



PL: No one on either side of my decently large family is divorced. The relationships span 10-65yrs and counting. These aren't perfect people, but they have happy marriages because they committed and meant it. And I'm sure as hell not ruining this increasingly rare tradition.


----------



## draggs (Jul 16, 2021)

TendieGremlin said:


> stop listening to dumb boomers who instead of owning up that they've played a part in their messed up marriage decide that it's best to talk shit about the whole institution even though there are plenty of happily married people.


There's also plenty of couples who bicker constantly but would recoil in horror at the idea of divorce. Bickering is not necessarily a sign that there is no love or connection in the relationship.


----------



## Zero Day Defense (Jul 16, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> I would have no problem with the state being less involved in defining marriage, although I'm hesitant to suggest that marriage should enjoy no legal recognition, since there are many benefits which come with being married which may not be so easily guaranteed without it.


What of it? There's a price to pay for everything, and it's up to you to justify the cost or reject the transaction.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> The fundamental difference between us, I think, is that I believe the institution of marriage should exist to empower couples, whereas you seem to think it should exist to constrain them.


Firstly, you pose a false dichotomy by splitting the reality into two wholes and then setting them up against each other-- the state does _both._ It's why, for example, you've never needed your spouse's cooperation to file a _fault _divorce-- beyond the regular constraints of civil and criminal codes, the institution of marriage burdens those who subject themselves to it with certain expectations (which are really the expectations of those who typically enter the institution in the first place) such as fidelity. In return, it lightens the burden on those couples in particular ways (such as tax breaks) so that haven't merely combined their present and future assets and liabilities and are better able to have fulfilling marriages where they can do things like have children-- something that ideally makes both the state and the couple happy.

Secondly, while you describe the value of your viewpoint ("the state should empower couples"), you make my stance out to be constraint for the sake of constraint, when this entire time, I've been focused on the welfare of _society_ as a whole. Ideally, a married couple should have children (most do), and the state is interested in this outcome-- which is why married couples receive tax breaks and why they receive more privileges when they have more children.

Of course, if the state already involves itself and has that kind of investment, then it's worth assuming that the state _also _has an interest in said children being productive members of society that are-- at bare minimum-- perpetuators of society and further sources of tax revenue, which means that they're interested in their environments not setting them up for failure, which they do when the homes break from divorce. It would be in the best interest of the state, then, to _not_ facilitate such breakdowns any more than needed (such as, for example, when the foundational trust upon which a marriage is built is broken, or when the life of a spouse and/or the lives of their children are at risk)-- anymore, and you promote the necrosis of society, since a community is ultimately a collection of family units.

Well, this would naturally be understood to follow and actions would be made according to it. But, ultimately, we get the government we (a people that are becoming more detached from the concept of give-and-take even as "our betters" do not) deserve. Alas.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> If someone is taken to hospital in a critical condition, for instance, the fact that they're married can guarantee that their spouse gets a place by their bedside, and for many couples, things like that are very important.


Insist on individuals making a short list of trusted individuals. Don't need a marriage license for that.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> I think the figure you're looking for is 12.5% (assuming that 50% or less of couples who divorce due to domestic violence are not reciprocal cases).


Sure.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> Either way, that's still an eighth of people who file for divorce, and in a country like the United States, that's a lot of people.


Exactly. An _eighth._ In a system where protections for battered spouses never stopped existing.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> I like the way that you conveniently cropped that screen capture to omit the first definition that comes up:





Hellbound Hellhound said:


> I don't believe for one moment that you don't know what it means to be considered civilized.


I chose the definition that _didn't_ rely on relativities _and gave concrete criteria._ I find the definition you chose very poor in a serious conversation (which is why I didn't use it or even acknowledge it) because the implication of it is that we _never_ reach civilization for as long as humanity exists and time flows, since

1) we continue to advance by _some _collection of metrics, meaning that-- at best-- the definition of "civilized" changes over time, and
2) with your preferred definition, somebody needs to make the case for what's considered "civilized" or not, which also means that you have to make the case for why it _has_ to be you that gets to define it.

Functionally, you're assuming that I automatically agree with your sense of civilization, even though it doesn't adhere to concrete criteria unmoored from presentism and a mythical/morally loaded notion of two-dimensional linear progress. I find many cultures that are not my own lacking in many regards, and I would even call them "bad" if I felt there was enough wrong with them, but I wouldn't _altogether assert_ that they are not civilizations-- such approach isn't cultural relativism.


----------



## Meth Until Death (Jul 16, 2021)

Meth Until Death said:


> Yeah nah, I was telling fibs. I was made by a Koori mixing  Winnie Blues, VB and Vegimite in a 44 galleon drum with a didgeridoo
> Lol
> Lmao





Hellbound Hellhound said:


> I have been completely open with all of my partners that I am not interested in monogamy. Perhaps instead of blaming me for your parent's mistakes, you should seek to learn from them and recognize that the key to any moral relationship is honesty.


"Not interested in monogamy" 
"Moral relationship"
"Honesty"
Mate you better start sharing whatever you're smokin', cos it must be some pretty good shit. Christ alive.
Also consider this; the cultures and civilizations that have endured and dominate all others are the ones that practice monogamy.


----------



## Hellbound Hellhound (Jul 17, 2021)

Zero Day Defense said:


> What of it? There's a price to pay for everything, and it's up to you to justify the cost or reject the transaction.


Except we're not talking about the inherent cost of something here; we're talking about additional burdens which need not exist. There is absolutely no logistical reason why the state must impose the kinds of legal constraints and stipulations upon the institution of marriage that you clearly want them to; you are simply of the belief that they should.


Zero Day Defense said:


> Firstly, you pose a false dichotomy by splitting the reality into two wholes and then setting them up against each other-- the state does _both._ It's why, for example, you've never needed your spouse's cooperation to file a _fault _divorce-- beyond the regular constraints of civil and criminal codes, the institution of marriage burdens those who subject themselves to it with certain expectations (which are really the expectations of those who typically enter the institution in the first place) such as fidelity. In return, it lightens the burden on those couples in particular ways (such as tax breaks) so that haven't merely combined their present and future assets and liabilities and are better able to have fulfilling marriages where they can do things like have children-- something that ideally makes both the state and the couple happy.
> 
> Secondly, while you describe the value of your viewpoint ("the state should empower couples"), you make my stance out to be constraint for the sake of constraint, when this entire time, I've been focused on the welfare of _society_ as a whole. Ideally, a married couple should have children (most do), and the state is interested in this outcome-- which is why married couples receive tax breaks and why they receive more privileges when they have more children.
> 
> ...


You say that I presented you with a false dichotomy, yet here you present me with a longwinded tautology of what I've basically already said, only without appearing to realize it. I never accused you of arguing in favor of "constraint for the sake of constraint", either; I understand entirely your reasoning for why you think that marriage should come with the legal constraints you serve as an apologist for, and for the reasons I have already given, I reject this reasoning.

The dichotomy here is very real: I believe that the state (and by extension, any laws it creates) should exist to serve the interests of the individual, whereas you clearly believe that the individual should exist to serve the interests of the state. Swapping the word "state" for "society" or "community" doesn't make your argument any less servile or paternalistic; especially when you describe society as essentially a mere tax farm for the government. Call me idealistic, but I think that society should aspire to more than that.


Zero Day Defense said:


> I chose the definition that _didn't_ rely on relativities _and gave concrete criteria._ I find the definition you chose very poor in a serious conversation (which is why I didn't use it or even acknowledge it) because the implication of it is that we _never_ reach civilization for as long as humanity exists and time flows, since
> 
> 1) we continue to advance by _some _collection of metrics, meaning that-- at best-- the definition of "civilized" changes over time, and
> 2) with your preferred definition, somebody needs to make the case for what's considered "civilized" or not, which also means that you have to make the case for why it _has_ to be you that gets to define it.
> ...


You chose a definition which wasn't applicable to what I clearly meant, which makes you a weasel. To recap: I used the word "civilized"; you then presented me with one definition for the word "civilization" (a different, though tangentially related word); I then showed you that the definition I was using still applies, and now you're attempting to evade the argument by pretending that the definition I was using wasn't central to what I was talking about. How tiresome.

I have very little patience for semantic distractions such as this. If you wish to pretend that progress is illusory, then that is up to you, but around the world, people are voting with their feet, and they're not flocking to move to countries which most people would regard as uncivilized.

I also reject the implication that it is somehow simplistic to view progress as having a linear quality, because the historical evidence clearly shows that it does. For example: how many post-industrial societies practice human sacrifice? How many wealthy, highly educated countries with the wherewithal to devote a considerable amount of time and resources to a discipline such as criminology end up coming to the conclusion that the death penalty and mass incarceration are an effective and just response to crime? How many societies become more deeply conservative and parochial as they become more wealthy and educated? The answer is not many.


Meth Until Death said:


> "Not interested in monogamy"
> "Moral relationship"
> "Honesty"
> Mate you better start sharing whatever you're smokin', cos it must be some pretty good shit. Christ alive.
> Also consider this; the cultures and civilizations that have endured and dominate all others are the ones that practice monogamy.


The cultures and civilizations which dominate are also socially liberal, which doesn't really support the argument you're trying to make.


----------



## Zero Day Defense (Jul 17, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> There is absolutely no logistical reason why the state must impose the kinds of legal constraints and stipulations upon the institution of marriage that you clearly want them to; you are simply of the belief that they should.


...for the reasons that I explained.

Either you're playing loose with words (but understand that I'm at bare minimum making a case for why legal constraints should exist (again)), or you're genuinely arguing that I want constraint for its own sake. Except that you're _also_ saying that you _aren't_ saying that I want constraint for its own sake... even if that claim is debatable at best.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> You say that I presented you with a false dichotomy, yet here you present me with a longwinded tautology of what I've basically already said, only without appearing to realize it.


You're failing to make up your mind as to whether I simply have a belief of how things ought to be without any logistical support, or whether I've said "basically what you've said"-- which wouldn't even be possible. Whereas I reject a dichotomy of "empowerment" versus "constraint" and recognize the institution as doing both for certain ends, you explicitly uphold that dichotomy and favor "empowerment" over "constraint" while rejecting the notion that there should be constraints in the first place.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> The dichotomy here is very real: I believe that the state (and by extension, any laws it creates) should exist to serve the interests of the individual, whereas you clearly believe that the individual should exist to serve the interests of the state. Swapping the word "state" for "society" or "community" doesn't make your argument any less servile or paternalistic


One of the bases of my argument is that the state should serve the needs of the people in the first place, ideally being constructed by and for the people rather than being some completely distant authoritarian entity-- it turns out I also assert that society needs to as much as possible not suffer necrosis in the form of broken homes.

This much is made certain when I say stuff like this:



Zero Day Defense said:


> It's why, for example, you've never needed your spouse's cooperation to file a _fault _divorce-- beyond the regular constraints of civil and criminal codes, the institution of marriage burdens those who subject themselves to it with certain expectations *(which are really the expectations of those who typically enter the institution in the first place)*



 so, you're flat out wrong when you suggest that I'm hot-swapping "state" with "community" or "society".



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> especially when you describe society as essentially a mere tax farm for the government.


Ignoring that you _just_ accused me of swapping the word "state" with words such as "community" or "society" as a means of equation in order to cover up the supposed paternalism of my stance, and ignoring that the conversation doesn't demand that I _exhaustively_ list out what the state wants out of the society it cultivates and presides over, I actually did describe state interests beyond tax revenues in the supposed "longwinded tautology" you lambasted. Even more baffling, I made it a point to establish "source of tax revenue" as a _baseline_-- that is, _if nothing else_, the government wants tax revenue, and even if it did not give half a damn about the people, because it _at least_ wants productive people in order to take money from, it has an investment in the creation of stable families.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> To recap: I used the word "civilized"; you then presented me with one definition for the word "civilization" (a different, though tangentially related word)


It's not "tangentially related", _it's directly related. _If I ask Google to define "civilized", I get a definition of "civilized" but I get an associated Wikipedia synopsis for "civilization". I could have provided the definition of "civilized", and I would _still_ be able to make the same point that I was making before. Why? Because your problem is that you already have an idea of what "more advanced" is without the awareness to understand that your case is worthless because you're arguing in relativities that would actually make it so that there's no such thing as "civilized society" in present time. After all, "more advanced" is a purely relative term that, _by itself_, points to a hypothetical and nebulous concept that currently isn't realized-- unless that's your point, and you didn't elaborate well enough on some underlying philosophy of yours_._

Either way, I have to introduce the meaning of "civilization" in order to provide the dry land you didn't bring for this tangent, as you accuse me of being a weasel for pointing out that your argument is malformed in the first place while still suggesting a way you can better make it. And if you have such low tolerance for semantic discussions, don't argue nonsense like the idea that the term "civilized" is only tangentially related to the term "civilization".



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> I also reject the implication that it is somehow simplistic to view progress as having a linear quality, because the historical evidence clearly shows that it does.


No, the narrative to which your perspective adheres informs you that it does. The trajectory of society is necessarily multidimensional in and of itself because it has numerous qualities that arguably improve or worsen either according to relations of varying clarity or completely independent of each other. The notion that progress is linear is the product of a narrative adopted by someone without enough self-awareness to admit that they're only particularly concerned with or even understand a subset of matters that they monitor for improvement or worsening.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> For example: how many post-industrial societies practice human sacrifice? How many wealthy, highly educated countries with the wherewithal to devote a considerable amount of time and resources to a discipline such as criminology end up coming to the conclusion that the death penalty and mass incarceration are an effective and just response to crime? How many societies become more deeply conservative and parochial as they become more wealthy and educated? *The answer is not many.*


Way to repudiate your point after several exchanges of paragraphs.


Hellbound Hellhound said:


> Civilized societies attempt to identify the social causes of crime, and work to provide people with opportunities that will steer them away from it.


...except when they don't, or when they kind of do but still practice "mass incarceration" and capital punishment.


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## Adolphin (Jul 17, 2021)

Modern society has created social, economic, and moral pressures which can make marriage unsustainable. In the past, arranged marriages or at least something involving the negotiation of the parents, while not glamorous, usually created stable marriages. It should be noted that arranged marriages were more prominent among the elite and the wealthy, but even ordinary couples had to seek the permission of their parents to marry.  Also, the social domination of men made women unlikely to pursue a divorce in case of dissatisfaction (especially since divorce could be socially damning). Generally, people made compromises to sustain their marriages. Marriage was viewed as a social and religious duty and was not something to be broken over lust. Modern society is too chaotic, unpredictable, and fast-moving to allow such relations to prosper. Finally, there is this delusion of eternal romantic love, which leads to people have grossly unrealistic expectations of each other. They think that everything will happen by itself, but they ignore the essence. Like all social relations, marriage is something that requires careful cultivation and care to flourish.


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## Meth Until Death (Jul 17, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> The cultures and civilizations which dominate are also socially liberal, which doesn't really support the argument you're trying to make.


Mankind's history didn't start eighty years ago. Consider two hundred thousand years of evolution, the constants and who are the winners and losers of history. Try to be more succinct and to the point instead of vomiting word spaghetti.
The foundation of society is the family unit and you're a broken degenerate who is too afraid of commitment, lmao


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## Hellbound Hellhound (Jul 18, 2021)

Zero Day Defense said:


> ...for the reasons that I explained.
> 
> Either you're playing loose with words (but understand that I'm at bare minimum making a case for why legal constraints should exist (again)), or you're genuinely arguing that I want constraint for its own sake. Except that you're _also_ saying that you _aren't_ saying that I want constraint for its own sake... even if that claim is debatable at best.


It's pretty clear that you want constraints to be placed upon individuals within a marriage for the purported benefit they would bring to society as a whole, and I have said that I reject this reasoning because I don't believe it is the state's responsibility (or their right) to try to manage people's lives for them. I believe that acts like adultary are personal indiscretions which ought to be sorted out between the individuals involved, whereas you seem to believe that the government (and by extension, the law) should have some investment in the process. In what way is my characterization of your view here inaccurate?


Zero Day Defense said:


> You're failing to make up your mind as to whether I simply have a belief of how things ought to be without any logistical support, or whether I've said "basically what you've said"-- which wouldn't even be possible. Whereas I reject a dichotomy of "empowerment" versus "constraint" and recognize the institution as doing both for certain ends, you explicitly uphold that dichotomy and favor "empowerment" over "constraint" while rejecting the notion that there should be constraints in the first place.


I'm not failing to make up my mind; I've been very clear about where I think we disagree, and you appear to agree with my assessment of our differences right here. The reason you don't see a dichotomy between constraint and empowerment is because you believe that a relationship built on constraint can still be empowering; whereas I reject that notion because I believe that all adult relationships should be voluntary from their foundation. Whether or not two opposing concepts can exist together is irrelevant to the question of whether or not they have to, and the fact remains that empowerment and constraint are undeniably opposing ideas.


Zero Day Defense said:


> One of the bases of my argument is that the state should serve the needs of the people in the first place, ideally being constructed by and for the people rather than being some completely distant authoritarian entity-- it turns out I also assert that society needs to as much as possible not suffer necrosis in the form of broken homes.
> 
> This much is made certain when I say stuff like this:
> 
> ...


If the state is by the people and for the people, and isn't some distant, authoritarian entity, then how is it not an extension of society? Is it really any less authoritarian if the restrictions imposed upon private behavior by community pressure alone are just as stifling to individual freedom in practice as the restrictions imposed by the state? Is there not often a significant relationship between these two kinds of restrictions in most cases?


Zero Day Defense said:


> Ignoring that you _just_ accused me of swapping the word "state" with words such as "community" or "society" as a means of equation in order to cover up the supposed paternalism of my stance, and ignoring that the conversation doesn't demand that I _exhaustively_ list out what the state wants out of the society it cultivates and presides over, I actually did describe state interests beyond tax revenues in the supposed "longwinded tautology" you lambasted. Even more baffling, I made it a point to establish "source of tax revenue" as a _baseline_-- that is, _if nothing else_, the government wants tax revenue, and even if it did not give half a damn about the people, because it _at least_ wants productive people in order to take money from, it has an investment in the creation of stable families.


The paternalism of your stance is evidenced by the way that you framed the issue from the perspective of the state's interests, which no one who believed in the primacy of individual rights would do. The state's interests are irrelevant if the purpose of the state is to serve the people.


Zero Day Defense said:


> It's not "tangentially related", _it's directly related. _If I ask Google to define "civilized", I get a definition of "civilized" but I get an associated Wikipedia synopsis for "civilization". I could have provided the definition of "civilized", and I would _still_ be able to make the same point that I was making before. Why? Because your problem is that you already have an idea of what "more advanced" is without the awareness to understand that your case is worthless because you're arguing in relativities that would actually make it so that there's no such thing as "civilized society" in present time. After all, "more advanced" is a purely relative term that, _by itself_, points to a hypothetical and nebulous concept that currently isn't realized-- unless that's your point, and you didn't elaborate well enough on some underlying philosophy of yours_._
> 
> Either way, I have to introduce the meaning of "civilization" in order to provide the dry land you didn't bring for this tangent, as you accuse me of being a weasel for pointing out that your argument is malformed in the first place while still suggesting a way you can better make it. And if you have such low tolerance for semantic discussions, don't argue nonsense like the idea that the term "civilized" is only tangentially related to the term "civilization".


The fact that a concept can be somewhat relative doesn't make it unsound. Strength is relative, but that doesn't mean that we can't say an Olympic weightlifter is stronger than a couch potato. To pretend otherwise is simply nominalist obscurantism which adds nothing to the discussion. By the same token, knowledge is relative; for example: Stephen Hawking was a lot more knowledgeable about physics than Isaac Newton ever was, but that doesn't in any way diminish Newton's immense contributions to human knowledge, nor how incredibly knowledgeable he was within the context of the time he lived.

I mention knowledge here deliberately, because I would argue that knowledge lays the groundwork for civilization. Neither the agricultural revolution nor the industrial revolution happened by accident; they happened because people gained a level of knowledge about the world which allowed them to significantly alter the way we lived, and I see no reason why this phenomenon of increased knowledge altering human realities doesn't apply just as strongly to social attitudes as it does to technological processes.

There are many cultural practices which were once commonplace (like slavery, mutilation as a punishment for crime, femicide, human sacrifice, etc) which are now almost universally condemned as barbaric, and most thinking people have no problem intuitively understanding that our attitude towards these practices changed as we became more civilized.


Zero Day Defense said:


> No, the narrative to which your perspective adheres informs you that it does. The trajectory of society is necessarily multidimensional in and of itself because it has numerous qualities that arguably improve or worsen either according to relations of varying clarity or completely independent of each other. The notion that progress is linear is the product of a narrative adopted by someone without enough self-awareness to admit that they're only particularly concerned with or even understand a subset of matters that they monitor for improvement or worsening.


The narrative to which I ascribe is informed by empirical evidence, and if your view of history lacks such a narrative, it might be because you haven't noticed certain historical patterns. I have no problem admitting that social evolution isn't entirely linear, but to focus on this fact rather than the observable trends which exist in spite of it is, in my view, to miss the forest for the trees.


Zero Day Defense said:


> ...except when they don't, or when they kind of do but still practice "mass incarceration" and capital punishment.


The fact that certain practices remain in place in countries which are otherwise civilized doesn't automatically make the practices themselves civilized. Social inertia is a thing, and the fact that you chose to include the word "still" in reference to these practices indicates to me that a part of you may intuitively recognize this. A toddler may still be very attached to their pacifier, but the expectation is that they will one day grow out of it. Similarly, countries like the United States may still have a morbid attachment to the barbarity of capital punishment, but that doesn't mean that it can't also evolve beyond it.


Meth Until Death said:


> Mankind's history didn't start eighty years ago.


My point didn't start being true eighty years ago. The Roman Empire was a liberal and open society by the standards of it's time, as was the Abbasid Caliphate during the it's Golden Age, as have the various European powers been since the Enlightenment. The history of human civilization shows us that societies become parochial and conservative when they're in economic, political, and cultural decline.


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## ArnoldPalmer (Jul 19, 2021)

I think there should be infidelity laws, because the alternative is my soon-to-be-ex-wife accidentally falling down a flight.
Or, I could sue her for wasting years of my time.

No promiscuous vagina is gonna fuck around on my dime without some form of retribution.


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## totallyrandomusername (Jul 19, 2021)

Zero Day Defense said:


> ...alimony...


Biggest fucking racket ever conceived of by some kike shyster.


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## LurkTrawl (Jul 19, 2021)

Marriage I think is one of those things that people who are married themselves have a sunk-cost fallacy mindset so try and admonish those who aren't interested in it to justify their decision to do it themselves, those who romanticize it act like it's a shame that nobody else wants to because they're eager for it themselves, people who've seen lives fall apart due to bad marriages are prickly due to fear, and those who aren't interested get shit on because not wanting to shackle yourself at the hip to someone who could fuck you over in a very big way is seen as cowardice.

Though I'll say openly the point of marriage is much like life, it's whatever you make of it. If you don't want to get married for whatever reason, or you do, just make sure that you know exactly what you expect out of it and let your partner (if you're thinking of proposing) know precisely what you expect out of it before proposing (or before telling them why you're not). Me, I don't see the point because in my opinion, it's just the government getting involved in a societal institution they have no business interfering in - or put another way I see it as the law and government sticking their nose in people's lives in a way that they really shouldn't. Separation of church and state is an idea I'm very on-board with, and last I checked you typically get married in some form or another of religious ceremony.


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## Meth Until Death (Jul 20, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> I suffer from a condition where my mouth and ringhole trade places.


Yeah nah, mate you've fuckin lost me.
>Roman Empire is liberal
>Abbasids is liberal
Have another hit of that billy, you've earnt it


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## Linkin Park (Jul 20, 2021)

LurkTrawl said:


> Marriage I think is one of those things that people who are married themselves have a sunk-cost fallacy mindset so try and admonish those who aren't interested in it to justify their decision to do it themselves, those who romanticize it act like it's a shame that nobody else wants to because they're eager for it themselves, people who've seen lives fall apart due to bad marriages are prickly due to fear, and those who aren't interested get shit on because not wanting to shackle yourself at the hip to someone who could fuck you over in a very big way is seen as cowardice.
> 
> Though I'll say openly the point of marriage is much like life, it's whatever you make of it. If you don't want to get married for whatever reason, or you do, just make sure that you know exactly what you expect out of it and let your partner (if you're thinking of proposing) know precisely what you expect out of it before proposing (or before telling them why you're not). Me, I don't see the point because in my opinion, it's just the government getting involved in a societal institution they have no business interfering in - or put another way I see it as the law and government sticking their nose in people's lives in a way that they really shouldn't. Separation of church and state is an idea I'm very on-board with, and last I checked you typically get married in some form or another of religious ceremony.



Some of the people posting on the first few pages are definitely like your first few sentences. Got a laugh out of the "marriage-divorce rates being 50% is misleading" stat somebody used, because it did nothing to argue against the point. It just reinforced it more, especially if you're dealing with a divorcee.

Marriage in modern times is useless, unless you're extremely religious and traditional, along with your spouse, or it aligns deeply with your (& their) personal values. The rest of it is bullshit and people trying to shame you into doing it are hilarious, because those same people will tell you not to marry just anyone. The ones romanticizing marriage speak about it like working a graveyard shift at your local Wal-Mart, and any marriage that hasn't ended in divorce is a "happy" one, which is why they used shaming tactics as part of conversing. It makes them feel superior, while looking massively insecure. You're only 19 now, but you could still hold these values at 30/40/50/etc. You could age out of it, and decide marriage works for you. Nothing wrong with either, but take your time.


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## Zero Day Defense (Jul 20, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> It's pretty clear that you want constraints to be placed upon individuals within a marriage for the purported benefit they would bring to society as a whole, and I have said that I reject this reasoning because I don't believe it is the state's responsibility (or their right) to try to manage people's lives for them.


How much longer will you be able to talk around the fact that the state is _already _involved in the marriage it officiates? If you don't want the state "managing people's lives for them" (which really isn't what this is), then give up every marriage benefit including the family court used for court proceedings and custody agreements.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> The reason you don't see a dichotomy between constraint and empowerment is because you believe that a relationship built on constraint can still be empowering; whereas I reject that notion because I believe that all adult relationships should be voluntary from their foundation.


Would you argue that a parent-child relationship can't empower the child, if only in the long term, because the parent imposes various restrictions on the child in service of said empowerment? For the record, I'm aware you're talking about _adult _relationships, but the concepts are still universal.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> Whether or not two opposing concepts can exist together is irrelevant to the question of whether or not they have to, and the fact remains that empowerment and constraint are undeniably opposing ideas.


If they can exist together, then they're not undeniably opposing ideas.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> If the state is by the people and for the people, and isn't some distant, authoritarian entity, then how is it not an extension of society? Is it really any less authoritarian if the restrictions imposed upon private behavior by community pressure alone are just as stifling to individual freedom in practice as the restrictions imposed by the state?


By definition, yes. Authoritarianism demands a strong central power, whereas you describe pressure enacted by the collective will of a community not concentrated in a distinct political authority.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> The paternalism of your stance is evidenced by the way that you framed the issue from the perspective of the state's interests, which no one who believed in the primacy of individual rights would do.


The reason I talk about state interests is because _the institution of which we speak is in the domain of the state. _If you truly believed in the primacy of individual rights, you would acknowledge circumstances where they cannot be tantamount by design.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> The fact that a concept can be somewhat relative doesn't make it unsound.


My point is that _your_ application of that concept for the sake of your argument is patently unsound.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> Strength is relative, but that doesn't mean that we can't say an Olympic weightlifter is stronger than a couch potato. [...] By the same token, knowledge is relative; for example: Stephen Hawking was a lot more knowledgeable about physics than Isaac Newton ever was, but that doesn't in any way diminish Newton's immense contributions to human knowledge, nor how incredibly knowledgeable he was within the context of the time he lived.


This wasn't the argument you were making. This is the first time you've actually used the concept of "more civilized" to contrast two distinct civilizations. Prior to, you employed the term without describing a second data point-- rhetoric that smacks of entrenched presentism.

What you're arguing now is closer to the point I was making before:



Zero Day Defense said:


> I find many cultures that are not my own lacking in many regards, and I would even call them "bad" if I felt there was enough wrong with them, but I wouldn't _altogether assert_ that they are not civilizations-- such approach isn't cultural relativism.





Hellbound Hellhound said:


> The narrative to which I ascribe is informed by empirical evidence, and if your view of history lacks such a narrative, it might be because you haven't noticed certain historical patterns. I have no problem admitting that social evolution isn't entirely linear, but to focus on this fact rather than the observable trends which exist in spite of it is, in my view, to miss the forest for the trees.


This is an extremely vague statement. My point is that you can't make a blanket statement about a positively progressing society because society improves and worsens on several axes. "Certain historical patterns"? "Observable trends"? What does that have to do with anything?



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> The Roman Empire was a liberal and open society by the standards of it's time, as was the Abbasid Caliphate during the it's Golden Age, as have the various European powers been since the Enlightenment. The history of human civilization shows us that societies become parochial and conservative when they're in economic, political, and cultural decline.


Clearly it matters more what their actual values and practices are and how conducive they are to maintaining a society, then whether their ideals are more conservative or more liberal than some other arbitrary selection of ideas.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> The fact that certain practices remain in place in countries which are otherwise civilized doesn't automatically make the practices themselves civilized.


Up until this point, we've been talking about _societies _being civilized, not certain practices.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> My point didn't start being true eighty years ago. The Roman Empire was a liberal and open society* by the standards of it's time,* as was the Abbasid Caliphate during the it's Golden Age, as have the various European powers been since the Enlightenment. The history of human civilization shows us that societies become parochial and conservative when they're in economic, political, and cultural decline.


Emphasis mine. Clearly, the exact nature of the values these civilizations uphold matters more than whether you could classify them as "liberal" or "conservative" relative to something else, because it's in that exact nature that the efficacy of those values can be understood.


----------



## Hellbound Hellhound (Jul 21, 2021)

Zero Day Defense said:


> How much longer will you be able to talk around the fact that the state is _already _involved in the marriage it officiates? If you don't want the state "managing people's lives for them" (which really isn't what this is), then give up every marriage benefit including the family court used for court proceedings and custody agreements.


This is a dumb argument. The state's involvement in something doesn't automatically grant it special rights over anyone else involved in the proceedings. If someone is charged with a crime, for instance, the state is required to provide them with a fair trial, and that right is provided for any citizen in a free society; it is not a right which belongs to the state.


Zero Day Defense said:


> Would you argue that a parent-child relationship can't empower the child, if only in the long term, because the parent imposes various restrictions on the child in service of said empowerment? For the record, I'm aware you're talking about _adult _relationships, but the concepts are still universal.


If the principle of self-ownership is understood to apply primarily to adults, then it can't be a universal concept. There are plenty of very understandable reasons why children do not have complete custody of themselves until they reach the age of majority, but the point of reaching adulthood is that it is now up to you decide your own destiny.

The idea that we must forever remain children, and that the state should serve as a sort of father figure is a foolish notion, because political leaders are no more adults than the rest of us. In light of this fact, it is evident therefore that they must not have any right to tell us how we must live our lives.


Zero Day Defense said:


> If they can exist together, then they're not undeniably opposing ideas.


Two opposing things can exist side by side. A manipulative partner can be loving one moment and then abusive the next. The real question is whether or not a relationship built on such a contradiction could ever be optimal, and my argument is that it is not.


Zero Day Defense said:


> By definition, yes. Authoritarianism demands a strong central power, whereas you describe pressure enacted by the collective will of a community not concentrated in a distinct political authority.


The definition of authoritarianism is the enforcement or advocacy of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom. Whether this authority comes in the form of the state, or whether it presents itself through familial or communal relationships is largely unimportant, since the outcome is pretty much the same. Afghanistan didn't have a functional government for years, yet it was still very much an authoritarian society.


Zero Day Defense said:


> This wasn't the argument you were making. This is the first time you've actually used the concept of "more civilized" to contrast two distinct civilizations. Prior to, you employed the term without describing a second data point-- rhetoric that smacks of entrenched presentism.


In what way has my argument changed? If my point was that the definition of a civilized society is one which has reached an advanced stage of social and cultural development, then it necessarily follows that societies which generally fall short of this must be less civilized.


Zero Day Defense said:


> This is an extremely vague statement. My point is that you can't make a blanket statement about a positively progressing society because society improves and worsens on several axes. "Certain historical patterns"? "Observable trends"? What does that have to do with anything?


A generalization is not a blanket statement. I have already said to you immediately prior to this that social evolution is not entirely linear, but that clearly doesn't negate the obvious reality that it does develop in the same general direction as knowledge and education increase.

I'd like to return for a moment to a brief paragraph which you decided not to quote:


Hellbound Hellhound said:


> There are many cultural practices which were once commonplace (like slavery, mutilation as a punishment for crime, femicide, human sacrifice, etc) which are now almost universally condemned as barbaric, and most thinking people have no problem intuitively understanding that our attitude towards these practices changed as we became more civilized.


I would be interested to know if you disagreed with this. Do you think it is a mere coincidence that the practices listed above died out as human knowledge increased, and would you have any problem condemning any of these practices as uncivilized?


Zero Day Defense said:


> Emphasis mine. Clearly, the exact nature of the values these civilizations uphold matters more than whether you could classify them as "liberal" or "conservative" relative to something else, because it's in that exact nature that the efficacy of those values can be understood.


Of course values matter; a society's values are ultimately what defines it. The question this begs is: what kind of values does a civilized society generally adhere to?


----------



## Zero Day Defense (Jul 21, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> This is a dumb argument. The state's involvement in something doesn't automatically grant it special rights over anyone else involved in the proceedings. If someone is charged with a crime, for instance, the state is required to provide them with a fair trial, and that right is provided for any citizen in a free society; it is not a right which belongs to the state.


The argument is not that the state "automatically" has "special rights" over anyone else in a contract, it's that the other parties of said contract agreed to the state's terms and said agreement enumerates the rights of all parties, as has grounds of implication for others-- again, for both parties.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> The idea that we must forever remain children, and that the state should serve as a sort of father figure is a foolish notion


And also what nobody here was arguing, even by implication.

The parent-child analogy served to make the case that empowerment and constraint can coexist at all, but it appears that I was thinking of a more generic notion of "empowerment" and you were talking about something I'd better recognize as "liberty"-- recognizing that one is never free, liberty calls for the individual to be a master of themselves so that they don't have to be subjugated by forces unknown to them.

This still takes me back to my proposal to argue the abolition the institution of state marriage. By its nature, it was created to constrain, and still serves that purpose. That much is evidenced by the requirement of "fault" for divorce until recently, and is also evidenced by "faults" still being able to play a role in judgments for asset splitting, alimony and custody.


Hellbound Hellhound said:


> Two opposing things can exist side by side. A manipulative partner can be loving one moment and then abusive the next.


No, they cannot. A _manipulative _person that _abuses _their partner can never be said to "love" them. It's not even a matter of them being abusive "overall"-- the "love" does not exist in the first place. What you identify as "love" is only a cheap imitation thereof, another facet of their manipulation and abuse.

That aside, this isn't even a proper analogy to what I described about constraint and empowerment, because my contention is that the two can work complementarily towards some sort of ends-- this isn't merely a side-by-side existence.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> The definition of authoritarianism is the enforcement or advocacy of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom. Whether this authority comes in the form of the state, or whether it presents itself through familial or communal relationships is largely unimportant,


No, that's pretty important. Through etymology, and by the reality of the concept being chiefly political, authoritarianism requires a distinct figure-- it can be an individual or a party, but it has to be an explicit subsection of the population. You can't say "the community is the authority", because then you're suggesting that the authority is diffused into the community-- which, strangely, seems to better describe _democracy_. Let's look at the example you gave:



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> Afghanistan didn't have a functional government for years, yet it was still very much an authoritarian society.


Granted, my knowledge of Afghani politics and history is poor. Nevertheless, an authoritarian society is characterized by its submission to an authoritarian state _by definition_. So either the government wasn't entirely non-functional, there were regional authorities in command of various communities and all of this put together meant that Afghani society was _generally_ authoritarian, or you need to reassess your understanding of authoritarianism.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> If my point was that the definition of a civilized society is one which has reached an advanced stage of social and cultural development, then it necessarily follows that societies which generally fall short of this must be less civilized.


Except that that's not what you said-- at least, in effect:


Hellbound Hellhound said:


> According to anyone who has studied history. The definition of civilized is an advanced state of social and cultural development (read: *more** enlightened*)


Furthermore, you insisted on a particular definition that relied on relativity:


Hellbound Hellhound said:


> I like the way that you conveniently cropped that screen capture to omit the first definition that comes up:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Up until the point I pointed out, you've insisted on arguing with relativities without actually establishing a comparative object or seeking something that could be much more objective. I took issue with this, which is why I've been arguing to use specific criteria that aren't nearly as reliant on comparison for their meaning to be understood (i.e. "an uncivilized society will lack these features"). Only recently have you done this or come close to it.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> A generalization is not a blanket statement. I have already said to you immediately prior to this that social evolution is not entirely linear, but that clearly doesn't negate the obvious reality that it does develop in the same general direction as knowledge and education increase.
> 
> I'd like to return for a moment to a brief paragraph which you decided not to quote:
> I would be interested to know if you disagreed with this. Do you think it is a mere coincidence that the practices listed above died out as human knowledge increased, and would you have any problem condemning any of these practices as uncivilized?


Honestly, I forgot to address this, but that was partly because I was at a loss for how to do so.

Slavery _hasn't_ disappeared. Even discounting what could be viewed as "effective" slavery (anything from being paid peanuts in exchange for not getting ratted out to ICE to "wagie, wagie, get back in your cagie"), or whatever slave labor happens in prisons as permitted by law, we're very reliant on products produced by slave labor... _overseas, _where we can't see it happening. All we know is that, say, a carpet we use, or the fabric from which it was made, may be made in Pakistan, but we aren't readily thinking about the fact that they likely had a literal child work their fingers bloody to make the fabric, or that the local mafia associated with that industry quite literally assassinated a 12 year old for speaking out against the industry's practices. Slavery is bad, glad we can agree... but we're still its beneficiaries in many inescapable ways. It might actually be worse now, because we benefit from it in a way where we also can't readily confront it.

Femicide? Murder was always frowned upon.

Human sacrifice? I can't speak definitively to its commonality (it seems to have been a coincidental widespread phenomenon, but I can't say for certain which societies concurrently practiced it or whether it was generally accepted or merely a thing that happened to the revulsion of the greater population). That said, you're arguing that this changed "as we became more civilized" without talking about the specific mechanisms (e.g. supercession by other religions which condemn the practice) by which they fell into obscurity and even contempt.

In short, you're providing a really simplistic narrative that isn't even mostly correct in its premises. As for your latter question:



Zero Day Defense said:


> Up until this point, we've been talking about _societies _being civilized, not certain practices.





Hellbound Hellhound said:


> Of course values matter; a society's values are ultimately what defines it. The question this begs is: what kind of values does a civilized society generally adhere to?


Take a survey of the _numerous and diverse _civilizations throughout the ages and find out.


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## JektheDumbass (Jul 21, 2021)

Stephanie Bustcakes said:


> Because the nuclear family is essential for society to function.


So there was no society prior to 1950 US?


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## Finder (Jul 21, 2021)

Marriage is a pretty shitty deal for men in most countries, but have any of you ever seen an old man who either refused to or couldn't get married? You don't want to be that guy.


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## emptyblu (Jul 21, 2021)

I would like to have kids in the future, however I don’t want marriage to be apart of that equation.
after doing my own research, listening to the opinions of others, and most importantly observing my own parents marriage, I’ve come to the conclusion that marriage carries way to many risks that outnumber the positives at least from my perspective.
I don’t like the idea of being tied to the hip of someone who might potentially fuck me over or put emotional stress on me and the children, no matter how much I love my partner I’m not going to allow them to drag me down. And I don’t think shaming tactics will work either.

Of course having kids is also a risk but that’s a risk I’m willing to take, I know that will piss a lot of people off knowing I don’t want a second parent involved and that’s fair enough but that’s a burden I’m willing to carry I guess. But then again I’m still 19 and I’m being angsty now so who knows what will transpire in the future.


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## Bunny Tracks (Jul 21, 2021)

Fuck, there is no point if it means putting up with whiny autists like you guys for the rest of my life.


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## Zero Day Defense (Jul 22, 2021)

Bunny Tracks said:


> Fuck, there is no point if it means putting up with whiny autists like you guys for the rest of my life.


It's gotta suck that your entire dating/marriage pool consists of KF regulars, but that sounds like something you did to yourself.

On the bright side, you're a stone's throw away from completing your love quest.


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## Hellbound Hellhound (Jul 24, 2021)

Zero Day Defense said:


> The argument is not that the state "automatically" has "special rights" over anyone else in a contract, it's that the other parties of said contract agreed to the state's terms and said agreement enumerates the rights of all parties, as has grounds of implication for others-- again, for both parties.


If we were arguing specifically about prenuptial agreements, this argument might make more sense, but marriage by itself is clearly not analogous to a normal kind of contract with concrete terms and conditions. since the institution is constantly being legally redefined. In reality, it's more of a legal designation than a contract, and the precedent has already been set that it's terms can be revised when it is believed that there is a benefit in doing so.


Zero Day Defense said:


> This still takes me back to my proposal to argue the abolition the institution of state marriage. By its nature, it was created to constrain, and still serves that purpose. That much is evidenced by the requirement of "fault" for divorce until recently, and is also evidenced by "faults" still being able to play a role in judgments for asset splitting, alimony and custody.


I don't see why it is impossible to have the good without the bad. People can enjoy the legal protection marriage affords them without the more restrictive aspects still being in place, and many countries are moving in this direction.


Zero Day Defense said:


> No, that's pretty important. Through etymology, and by the reality of the concept being chiefly political, authoritarianism requires a distinct figure-- it can be an individual or a party, but it has to be an explicit subsection of the population. You can't say "the community is the authority", because then you're suggesting that the authority is diffused into the community-- which, strangely, seems to better describe _democracy_. Let's look at the example you gave:
> 
> Granted, my knowledge of Afghani politics and history is poor. Nevertheless, an authoritarian society is characterized by its submission to an authoritarian state _by definition_. So either the government wasn't entirely non-functional, there were regional authorities in command of various communities and all of this put together meant that Afghani society was _generally_ authoritarian, or you need to reassess your understanding of authoritarianism.


The definition you linked to agrees with my definition of authoritarianism, wherein it admits that authority can constitute a "person, party, or class". A community is not generally a disorganized group of people; it comes with social norms and a hierarchy which enforces them, and in tribal societies like Afghanistan, this might mean a warlord, a village elder, or even simply an individual's biological father.

The point is that wherever this authority comes from, it can be just as burdensome to a person as the central authority of the state. In Afghanistan's case, arguably more so, since the central government has generally, on America's advice, pushed for a more open society.


Zero Day Defense said:


> Up until the point I pointed out, you've insisted on arguing with relativities without actually establishing a comparative object or seeking something that could be much more objective. I took issue with this, which is why I've been arguing to use specific criteria that aren't nearly as reliant on comparison for their meaning to be understood (i.e. "an uncivilized society will lack these features"). Only recently have you done this or come close to it.


I'm still not sure what you're asking for. I could write paragraph after paragraph about how societies generally evolve as they become more wealthy and educated, and I could provide you with numerous metrics which show you how this positively impacts the lives of the people who live in these societies, but you don't seem to want that.

You might say that I am arguing in relatives, but the point I would make is that I am not resigning myself to them. There is no easy way to neatly delineate a civilized society from an uncivilized one, but that doesn't stop the distinction from being intuitive to most people. By the same token, there is no clear point where red becomes orange or orange becomes yellow, but that doesn't stop us from describing New York taxis as yellow and London phone boxes as red.

As far as most thinking people are concerned, a statement along the lines of: "civilized societies don't practice human sacrifice" is a truism which hardly needs debating.


Zero Day Defense said:


> Slavery _hasn't_ disappeared. Even discounting what could be viewed as "effective" slavery (anything from being paid peanuts in exchange for not getting ratted out to ICE to "wagie, wagie, get back in your cagie"), or whatever slave labor happens in prisons as permitted by law, we're very reliant on products produced by slave labor... _overseas, _where we can't see it happening. All we know is that, say, a carpet we use, or the fabric from which it was made, may be made in Pakistan, but we aren't readily thinking about the fact that they likely had a literal child work their fingers bloody to make the fabric, or that the local mafia associated with that industry quite literally assassinated a 12 year old for speaking out against the industry's practices. Slavery is bad, glad we can agree... but we're still its beneficiaries in many inescapable ways. It might actually be worse now, because we benefit from it in a way where we also can't readily confront it.
> 
> Femicide? Murder was always frowned upon.
> 
> ...


Slavery hasn't disappeared worldwide, but the point is that it has largely disappeared in the more civilized parts of the world, and there is still very much an argument for abolishing it further. If we can agree that slavery is bad, and must be eradicated, then surely we are envisioning what a more civilized society might look like?


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## Fareal (Jul 24, 2021)

The actual difference between marriage failure rates Long Ago and now is the cult of individual gratification.

Here‘s the truth: you are not going to spend forty, fifty, sixty years in an intimate relationship with someone and both of you be happy all the time. Life has its ebbs and flows. Bringing up kids is tiring and stressful at points and not very sexy. It is also expensive. There will be times when one or both of you feel burnt out from family or work and act kinda like an asshole for a while. There will be times where collectively you are uncertain about work prospects, or money. Money issues are stressful as fuck. When you move home, you will do it together. You now share any issues and drama in your families of origin.

The idea that you would weather the entire spectrum of stressful life events intimately tied to another human and at no point be pissed off with one another is foolish. What makes a successful marriage is the commitment to weather the storms together. Yes, your spouse is being a dick right now. In six months, you might be the one being the dick and you don’t want to be bailed on when it’s you having the hard times.

It is commitment and not some nebulous idea of happiness that makes marriages last. You cannot expect another human to be your personal dopamine dispenser and your life to be like the end of a Disney movie. Yes, you will be unhappy at times. You knuckle down and see it through. You do not walk off ten, fifteen years in wailing that you don‘t feel fulfilled or authentic or whatever the fashionable word is for abandoning your responsibilities.

Doing that teaches your children that you only keep your promises as long as it suits you. This irrepairably damages the security of their attachment to you: they learn you are a person who cuts and runs in hard times.


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## 25 Omni-gel (Aug 2, 2021)

To get out of the barracks.


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## Large (Aug 3, 2021)

Nothing exists; even if something exists, nothing can be known about it; and even if something can be known about it, knowledge about it can't be communicated to others.


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## Bad Gateway (Aug 3, 2021)

I can't remember if I already shat in this toilet or not.


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## The Great Chandler (Aug 3, 2021)

The first problem is believing the marriage is going to shit anyways. That's a self-prophecy right there!

The second problem is actually doing something about it like showing commitment. Love isn't about saying "I love you", it's about doing WHY "I love you"


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