• I think a lot of these unpleasant divorces / break-ups are caused by the pain the less-wealthy spouse feels when they switch to a less-wealthy lifestyle.
  • Examples
    • You see men who act aggressively towards their ex-girlfriend / ex-wife.
      • It seems plausible that this behavior may be caused by pain the man is feeling from having lost a major source of pleasure.
        • In the man's case, the pleasure is typically sexual / emotional.
      • The aggression I've heard the most about is physical aggression (eg slashing tires, shooting the ex-wife).
    • You see women who act aggressively towards their ex-boyfriend / ex-husband.
      • In the woman's case, the pleasure they've lost often seems to come from the money the man has.
      • The aggression I've heard the most about is hiring divorce attorneys to try to get as much money as possible.

[Nicolas Sarkozy's] estranged wife, Charlotte, has hired a hard-hitting American divorce lawyer known as "The Pitbull", and is fighting to overrule their prenuptial agreement and claim a larger share of their multi-million dollar estate. The arrangement, made before they were married, was allegedly designed to protect her substantial wealth. Now after more than a decade of his considerable professional success, it appears the tables have turned - and sticking to the French deal would be to her disadvantage.

Source:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... tbull.html

• I think a lot of these unpleasant divorces / break-ups are caused by the pain the less-wealthy spouse feels when they switch to a less-wealthy lifestyle.
  • Examples
    • You see men who act aggressively towards their ex-girlfriend / ex-wife.
      • It seems plausible that this behavior may be caused by pain the man is feeling from having lost a major source of pleasure.
        • In the man's case, the pleasure is typically sexual / emotional.
      • The aggression I've heard the most about is physical aggression (eg slashing tires, shooting the ex-wife).
    • You see women who act aggressively towards their ex-boyfriend / ex-husband.
      • In the woman's case, the pleasure they've lost often seems to come from the money the man has.
      • The aggression I've heard the most about is hiring divorce attorneys to try to get as much money as possible.
• One way to reduce the frequency of these situations, then, would be to make sure that both the man and the woman are always able to live a similar lifestyle alone that they enjoy when they're with their partner.
  • Examples
    • In the man's case, the man should be able to find another girlfriend / wife who will make him feel similarly-happy as his current girlfriend / wife.
    • In the woman's case, she should have some way to live a lifestyle similarly-extravagant as whatever her current boyfriend / husband is letting her enjoy.
  • One way to do this would make sure that both people always have a back-up plan in case things go sour.

• Please note that this is speculative. I'm just brainstorming here.

Problems with the current form of marriage that should be fixed

• People's expectations for marriage are too high.
• Divorces are very common.
• Divorces can be psychologically / financially damaging to both people and to the children.

The way the marriage would work

• The concept of two people having been together for a long time could be separated from the concept of two people raising a child together.
  • Those two things could be celebrated separately. They could have separate terms for them.

Child-rearing marriage

• The essence of this would be the triangle-relationship between the father, mother, and child.
  • The relation between the child and each parent would be described by the terms "child", "father", and "mother".
    • Examples
      • "He is my father."
      • "She is my child."
  • The relation between the parents would be described by the terms "husband" and "wife".
    • Examples:
      • "He is my husband."
      • "She is my wife."
    • Right now this relationship seems to be typically described by the terms "father of my child" and "mother of my child".
• Society may not need to require that people be legally married in order to say they are married.
• Two people could be able to say they are husband and wife when they agree to raise a child together.
  • This is different from just having a child together.
    • If a man impregnates a woman and then leaves her, and doesn't help raise the child, the man and woman would not be considered husband and wife.
  • This also means that neither person needs to be genetically related to the child.
  • This also means that the two parents don't need to live with each other or raise the child at the same time.
• The marriage itself could be sort-of an open relationship. It should allow the two people to relate to each other the same way that two people who are bf/gf do.

• The mother could have primary responsibility for the child for the first ten years (age 0-9).
  • Her parents could be the primary care-takers (so the kids are being raised by the grandparents; this is partially how Obama was raised IIRC).
  • I agree with the idea that young people may tend not to do as good a job of teaching kids good manners etc. as older people.
  • The main things she could focus on doing are:
    • Making sure the child has excellent manners / good character.
      • This doesn't mean the child should be a stiff. It just means they should be very good at putting themselves in the shoes of the people they interact with.
      • There was a guy who wrote a book about early education and he said that after all his research he would focus on making sure the child has good character.
    • The child could get exposed to / develop a love of w/e skills seem to be most important in the job market.
      • Interacting well with others
      • Being comfortable in a variety of environments
      • Reading / Learning
      • Writing
      • Programming
      • Deductive reasoning
• The father could have primary responsibility for the child for the next ten years (age 10-19).
  • The main things he could focus on are:
    • Giving the child the depth of skill necessary in a particular trade to make the child an attractive employee.
      • Examples
        • Having the child serve as an apprentice at a start-up and slowly learn to program.
        • Have the child try out a bunch of different jobs at a company, starting at the bottom.
          • This is what Ted Turner's father did with Ted.
    • Continuing to build character, perhaps focusing more on characteristics that require certain other characteristics to already be in-place.

Companionship marriage

• asdf

Arranged marriage

2015.10.14 - NYT Op-Ed - Fraidy Reiss - America’s Child-Marriage Problem

2014.10.17 - CUNY TV - Interview with Freidy Reiss

2015.03 No Ceilings - The Full Participation Report: Highlights

Child marriage undermines girls’ health, education, and economic opportunities, and increases their risk of experiencing violence. The practice of child marriage is deeply embedded and endemic. While prevalence of this practice is declining, change remains far too slow. In 2010, there were more
than 67 million women aged 20 to 24 years old worldwide who had been married when they were under the age of 18.26 Although legal protections against child marriage have increased since 1995, significant loopholes remain. About one-third of countries allow girls to be married younger than boys with parental permission.27

2012 - United Nations Population Fund - Marrying Too Young

2014 - World Policy Analysis Center - Legal Protections Against Child Marriage Around the World

Divorce

• 2016.11.30 - NYT - How to Hide $400 Million

Is marriage good for people?

• Amazon - Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream - and Why It Matters

2015.10.26 - NYT - The Ambivalent Marriage Takes a Toll on Health

Every marriage has highs and lows from time to time, but some relationships are both good and bad on a regular basis. Call it the ambivalent marriage — not always terrible, but not always great, either.

While many couples can no doubt relate to this not bad, but not good, state of affairs, new research shows that ambivalence in a relationship — the feeling that a partner may be unpredictable with his or her support or negativity — can take a quiet toll on the health of an individual.

The findings, published this month by researchers at Brigham Young University, are part of a growing body of research that attempts to parse the so-called marriage benefit, the well-established notion that married people are, over all, far healthier and live longer than the unmarried. But increasingly, researchers are trying to understand the more nuanced effects of marriage on health. To reap the health benefits of marriage, is it enough to just be married? Or how much does the quality of the marriage, such as the level of support, warmth, negativity or controlling behavior, affect the health of seemingly stable couples?

(...)

James A. Coan, the University of Virginia professor who conducted the hand-holding studies, said couples who find they have an ambivalent relationship should not panic about the study findings, but should feel motivated to work on the relationship and seek counseling before their problems become intractable.

“I think about relationships like the stock market,” he said. “There are bull markets and bear markets in any short period of time, but if you take the long view, the investment almost always pays off.”

Marriage Agreement