Why "Good Men are Hard to Find"

[BackInTheGame78]

In marriage you grow together. You share those changes and that process of evolving alongside your spouse. Babies do not come with a user manual. Life happens outside expectations. When you choose a life partner as an idealistic young person you have this idea that you are in it together, ride or die, come hell or high water. It is a decision that requires a degree of faith, belief in something bigger than yourself, a level of maturity.

It is a level of committment you cannot experience except through doing, much like being a parent. It must be lived experience. Without that experience you do not grow in that way. You can wait until your 40s to marry. You still will not grasp what marriage really is until you do it.....but by the time a person is that many years older, the immaturity borne of inexperience still exists, but the idealism of youth is severely eroded and replaced with a jadedness and selfishness that the hope of youth often finds a way to transcend.

I married a never married childless man in his 40s. He has had to undergo the maturation process that a marriage committment requires. He still carried all his expectations from youth (which being married has a way of dashing, but replacing with something much more meaningful and valuable, and earned as you grow together.)......

It is a process of moving from independence to a higher plane of interdependence. And an individual cannot do that alone.

We humans are more resilient in youth, less jaded by life. It is also when the body and mind has more energy to bear the challenges of childrearing...the recovery is faster in youth. So you will not be suddenly wise enough as an individual. You have to learn it by doing, and you have a longer runway to recover from mistakes in youth.....mistakes within the marriage I am talking about....and you have more time to entwine your lives into a meaningful partnership.

You are likely now too jaded to allow yourself the leap of faith marriage requires. So you may rob yourself of something profoundly meaningful that you do not know is possible.....

But deep down that is something all
humans yearn for.

The perspective you’re describing is a beautiful notion, but it’s also an idealized version of marriage, not the reality most people experience. It assumes two people grow in compatible directions and remain equally committed to adapting together. Unfortunately, the data and human behavior suggest that’s the exception rather than the rule.

First, the idea that couples simply “grow together” ignores a fundamental truth about early adulthood: people change dramatically in their 20s. Values, career goals, personalities, lifestyles, and priorities often evolve rapidly during that decade. Two people who were compatible at 21 can easily become very different people by 28. If those changes happen in different directions, the marriage doesn’t automatically strengthen, it often becomes strained or dissolves.

Second, the belief that commitment alone carries a marriage through those changes is romantic but unrealistic. Commitment matters, but compatibility still matters just as much. When core values diverge, about money, lifestyle, children, ambition, or personal growth, no amount of idealism can permanently bridge that for most couples.

Third, the statistical reality doesn’t support the idea that early marriage produces stronger partnerships overall. Large demographic studies consistently show that people who marry very young have significantly higher divorce rates than those who marry later. If the “grow together through faith and commitment” model were broadly reliable, we would expect the opposite pattern.

Another problem with the argument is that it treats maturity as something that only develops inside marriage. In reality, many people develop emotional maturity, empathy, compromise skills, and interdependence through friendships, long-term relationships, work, and life experience. Marriage isn’t the only path to those qualities.

So while the “grow together and build a life through faith” story certainly happens for some couples, it represents a successful outcome, not the typical starting condition. For many people, waiting until their identities, goals, and values are more stable actually increases the likelihood that the partnership will last.

In other words, the ideal is inspiring, but statistically it works out well for a minority of couples, not the majority.

Finally, the idea that older unmarried people are “too jaded” overlooks another possibility: experience can make people more deliberate and self-aware about who they choose as a partner. Waiting doesn’t necessarily mean avoiding commitment, it can mean choosing it more carefully.

 

[BeExcellent]

The perspective you’re describing is a beautiful notion, but it’s also an idealized version of marriage, not the reality most people experience. It assumes two people grow in compatible directions and remain equally committed to adapting together. Unfortunately, the data and human behavior suggest that’s the exception rather than the rule.

First, the idea that couples simply “grow together” ignores a fundamental truth about early adulthood: people change dramatically in their 20s. Values, career goals, personalities, lifestyles, and priorities often evolve rapidly during that decade. Two people who were compatible at 21 can easily become very different people by 28. If those changes happen in different directions, the marriage doesn’t automatically strengthen, it often becomes strained or dissolves.

Second, the belief that commitment alone carries a marriage through those changes is romantic but unrealistic. Commitment matters, but compatibility still matters just as much. When core values diverge, about money, lifestyle, children, ambition, or personal growth, no amount of idealism can permanently bridge that for most couples.

Third, the statistical reality doesn’t support the idea that early marriage produces stronger partnerships overall. Large demographic studies consistently show that people who marry very young have significantly higher divorce rates than those who marry later. If the “grow together through faith and commitment” model were broadly reliable, we would expect the opposite pattern.

Another problem with the argument is that it treats maturity as something that only develops inside marriage. In reality, many people develop emotional maturity, empathy, compromise skills, and interdependence through friendships, long-term relationships, work, and life experience. Marriage isn’t the only path to those qualities.

So while the “grow together and build a life through faith” story certainly happens for some couples, it represents a successful outcome, not the typical starting condition. For many people, waiting until their identities, goals, and values are more stable actually increases the likelihood that the partnership will last.

In other words, the ideal is inspiring, but statistically it works out well for a minority of couples, not the majority.

Finally, the idea that older unmarried people are “too jaded” overlooks another possibility: experience can make people more deliberate and self-aware about who they choose as a partner. Waiting doesn’t necessarily mean avoiding commitment, it can mean choosing it more carefully.

What I am saying is that marriage is something you cannot know about unless & until you have done it. It requires sublimation of the self to prioritize the marriage, and this is a type of maturity that simply cannot be gained as an individual.

Nowhere did I say an individual cannot be mature or wise, but marriage requires a different type of maturity and is experience based.

Read what Russell Brand has to say on the subject. Read what Matthew McCouneghey has to say on the subject.

 

[BackInTheGame78]

What I am saying is that marriage is something you cannot know about unless & until you have done it. It requires sublimation of the self to prioritize the marriage, and this is a type of maturity that simply cannot be gained as an individual.

Nowhere did I say an individual cannot be mature or wise, but marriage requires a different type of maturity and is experience based.

Read what Russell Brand has to say on the subject. Read what Matthew McCouneghey has to say on the subject.

How many people are willing to do this for the rest of their life? That's the problem. It's not a natural thing for humans to do.

Which brings me back to my other thread on why Marriage is broken in the modern world.

Because we are trying to mix two things that just don't mix well together, similar to oil and water.

Marriage is a business deal. That's it. Period. It's what it always has been and what it was designed for. Not love. That's why they had affair partners and concubines, etc and it was accepted and acknowledge that was going to happen on both sides to fill that void. Did some people fall in love with that person and not have Affair partners? Sure. But that was the exception, not the norm. So effectively what we call 'cheating' has been a part of marriage from the get go and it was essentially part and parcel of it.

Today, we try and assign "Love" as why we get married. Except the rules still make it a business decision, as financially and legally that's what it is.

Those don't mix. Never have, never will. We need to stop playing an expensive game of charades and rewrite the laws to reflect the changes we have come to attribute to the meaning of marriage. Not surprisingly we have "changed the rules" on cheating to fit what modern marriage should be by our definition and how it should be about love, but we have done nothing to change the antiquated part of it that no longer fits.

Failure to do this will simply result in more of the same.

So while yes, people have to compromise and do things for the good of the marriage many times, what usually ends up happening is one person is forced to change more than the other and forced to give while the other keeps taking and it fuels resentment and anger over many years, smoldering silently until it explodes into a 5 alarm fire one day.

 

[BeExcellent]

Marriage is a partnership, in a literal sense. Certainly. My father (a high caliber attorney) used to always talk about this. He would say that your choice of spouse is the single most important choice you make in life.....and that, like a business partnership, you need to think about exit strategies and get those codified in writing while everyone is being nice and friendly and getting along. Now. He also was deeply religious and thought marriage ought to be rooted in a faith based value system. And he never did a pre-nump, which I always found odd.

Marriage and the business partnership aspect can co-exist beautifully if both people understand the depth of commitment they have made. The Catholic Church (for example) will NOT marry a couple in the church unless both are Catholic, and the couple must undergo pre-marital counseling that asks many tough questions couples may not have discussed openly. Things like money, children, extended family relationships, communication skills, family of origin issues, etc. My son and daughter-in-law found these discussions immensely helpful in preparing them for marriage.

All the couples in my family except for my parents were married for life. And even post divorce my parents were amicable after a while, and even spent most holidays together as part of attending a holiday gathering at my home, or the home of a sibling. My father took his financial responsibilities seriously and felt it his job to provide for us kids even though he could have dropped the child support payments each time one of us launched off to college (which he paid for). He wanted to treat us fairly, despite complaints from my stepmother.

Humans may not be suited to life long commitment by nature. All the religious doctrines address this in one way or another.

This is why, if you are a marriage/family minded man, the single most important thing to develop in yourself as well as screen for in your woman is......

Character.

Character is required to curb the banality of human nature. I could get quite philosophical about this, but that is probably beyond the scope of this thread.

But good character is what makes good marriages.

 

[BaronOfHair]

@BackInTheGame78 "I have to say that I think that many people who get married too young do themselves a disservice. Not always, and it's highly dependent on the individuals, but the data and evidence shows that getting married younger leads to higher divorce ratss, typically within the first 10 years. I also think there is a very clear reason for it.

In your early 20s and really through your mod to late 20s, you are still "finding your way" as an adult and are in a phase of rapid personal development and growth socially, emotionally, and professionally"




Add to that: The vast majority of men in the modern, Post-Industrial West aren't going to be financially solid enough to bankroll a wife and 2.5 kids while in their 20s. WOMEN may be okay with marrying, popping out offspring, and becoming housewives early into their 2nd decade of life, rationale being: "I could hear my biological clock not simply ticking, but screaming at Pavorroti-esque decibels, by time 25 rolled around... So I did what I had to do"

That ain't the way most men(though certainly not all)with ambition move through the world though