Battles of the sexes?

[Zues126]

Funny article. I almost stopped reading halfway though...I'm very conflicted about this advice. They build a powerful case about being selective. It is just opposite of what I always believed.

I always believed in arranged marriages as being practical. That you can learn to love anyone. That it's not who you marry, it's what you two do together. That any pain from being with the 'wrong person' could be exceeded by the elimination of the pain that comes from always looking around for greener grass. That in this country there are 300 million people, a fixed number. Swapping partners and divorcing each other doesn't change the overall pool, all it does is cause more pain, and in the end if we just paired up, STFU, stayed together, and put more effort into making our relationships as good as they could be, understanding that they probably wouldn't be everything we were always looking for, the loss of 'compatibility' would be more than offset by the reduction of instability.

The grass is greener where you water it. So don't look for the perfect lawn, just learn to garden. Most of that means appreciating what you have and learning to be content.

So with all of those beliefs, I tend to react negatively to articles that make it sound like selectivity is the key to marital happiness. I always thought it was about attitude, and that selectivity put focus on external happiness and just made people miserable.

For me, the biggest trait I'm looking for is a partner without this outlook...in general.

Of course, that was the old Zues. Little by little I'm learning it takes two to make a marriage work, that since other people don't think this way I have to adjust to the world I live in, and that it's ok to find someone that both is committed and ready to find happiness in an imperfect marriage with me forever, AND someone that happens to like Baker's Square Cream-cheese pie...