I've been marriage for five and a half years now. Near the end of this year, it will be eight years since I started dating my wife. Even now, there are things that we learn about each other or didn't know, or missed, or forgot. The thing is that we make a serious effort to work through our problems. We don't think of divorce as an option. We do have some clear lines that would cause such a thing. I can say there have been some very difficult and stressful situations. I think what it is that both of us want to stay together. When you don't want to be with someone, you will do things, consciously or not, to destroy the relationship. You will make mountains out of molehills and/or doing things to constantly eat away at the other person. This is why I'm so hesitant about "punishing" your significant other. Basically, you want to curb hurtful behavior, not hurt back. In America, we fear being alone and we hurt those who hurt us. Many people rush into relationships completely emotionally and allow their significant other to continually hurt them physically or mentally, but keep going back. Maybe it's because they fear being alone, maybe they fear what people will think if they get divorced, maybe they are afraid that don't deserve better, etc. On top of this, many people assume divorce is there if things get bad. I can tell you, leaving a relationship you are constantly being hurt in and the other person won't change their actions is a very good thing. It's much easier before you get married to do that. Being able to tolerate someone for years doesn't mean you should get married. You need mutual love and commitment to work things out without trying to punish the other person and escalate the problems to a strange rivalry and hurt fest with clear actions of malice and lack of care for one another (which is where many people end up prior to divorce). The funny thing is that, getting to know someone, spending time with them, really paying attention will help mitigate this up front, but living with them in close quarters statistically makes it worse. Spending time around your friends and your SO's friends will tell you a lot more. Feel free to research it, but living with someone prior to marriage generally increases your chances of divorce greatly. People tend to be different after marriage. They feel they no longer need to put up a front or be their best for their SO. We've all heard the jokes about sex stopping after marriage, everyone gaining weight, etc. Marriage is often where the effort stops for people. It actually has to be where it starts. People don't get this. They get greedy. They become indifferent. They punish each other. Etc. etc. This is more of why we have such a high divorce rate. I will always remember what we were told when we were getting ready to get married. Marriage is not 50/50. It's 90/10. Sometimes you'll be the one doing 90% of the work. Sometimes you'll be the one get all the attention and fruit of the labor. If you expect it to always be 50/50, you are heading for divorce. If you are always the 90 or always the 10. You're heading for divorce. Marriage is a lot of work, but knowing, truly knowing that someone is there for you when you get home no matter how bad your day was or how badly you screwed up or how bad life is makes it a great thing.
I agree completely. I didn't go too far into my opinnions on this matter as I didn't want to take my tangent in another direction oppisite the initial problem. One study I have looked at, as far as the living together before marriage, I've read that living together before marriage is generally a bad idea, unless both parties come from divorced families. Children coming from a divorce situation are more likely to also experience divorce. It was a study done in a psychology magazine I read a while back. I'm not sure how accurate this study may be, but I do think it may be necessary for some to experience that. Needless to say, Marriage is not something to take lightly, nor is any relationship really. If you take things for granted, your more likely to lose the things that are important to you.
Yeah, I think "punish" might be too strong a word. Revenge or "getting back at" would be more appropriate terms. In this situation I think using the one thing you two had together that she threw away might be a good place to start. Would you think that sleeping with other women, giving the one thing that was most precious to her to a bunch of girls you don't care anything about, appropriate? Do you think it would even affect her anymore since she cheated first?
Revenge and punish are almost the same thing here. You're trying to punish or hurt someone because they hurt you instead of because they did something wrong. If anything revenge is a stronger word as you are more interested in hurting them than changing their behavior through punishment. Revenge is a slippery slope, and most attempts to punish a SO really become revenge. They hurt you, so you hurt them. In the process you become something worse (like a cheater yourself). Then other person continues the behavior or does another very hurtful thing, and it's a game of hurting each other suddenly. I think the punishments I mentioned before would all work for revenge, but man it's a nasty, slippery slope.
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