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ORIGINAL: LafayetteLady

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ORIGINAL: osf

I always thought and observed that our chances of a lifetime commitment were extremely low, there seems to be so much more to go wrong in our relationships than in vanilla ones.

Besides the fact that your view is very pessimistic, probably causing the demise of the relationship anyway since there is an expectation of failure, what would make you think that there is more to go wrong in a D/s relationship?

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ORIGINAL: LafayetteLady

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ORIGINAL: osf

I always thought and observed that our chances of a lifetime commitment were extremely low, there seems to be so much more to go wrong in our relationships than in vanilla ones.

Besides the fact that your view is very pessimistic, probably causing the demise of the relationship anyway since there is an expectation of failure, what would make you think that there is more to go wrong in a D/s relationship?

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ORIGINAL: lucylucy

The 50% divorce rate (which has already been debunked anyway, but forget that for now) does not say anything about whether the person you marry is the ONLY LTR you've ever been in. So that's your first mistake. I could have several LTRs before I get married, and I think that's what most people nowadays do. It's kind of unusual to marry your high school sweetheart these days.

It also doesn't limit the number of failed marriages you can have. If I get married once and that marriage has a 50% failure rate and it does in fact fail, I can marry a second time and that new marriage will also have a 50% failure rate. The odds stay at 50% with every new marriage. I could be Gsa Gsa Gabor and keep marrying and divorcing. Every new marriage has the same 50% failure possibility.

When I got married, I had already had 2 LTRs. I was married for 20 years. I'm now in an LTR. I could get married tomorrow and make a "lifetime commitment," but I would STILL have all those LTRs in my background. I'm pretty sure that pattern is fairly normal. I have many friends in their 30s who married after 2-5 LTRs failed.

Of course it's all moot because the 50% thing doesn't quite work out at 50%, but there is nothing about any failure rate you could slap on marriage that indicates how many LTRs a person could have.

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ORIGINAL: osf

i just read a profile where a woman said she wants a dom with a sense of humor because d/s was not real

so the question is do you find your sense of commitment any less than you would or have in a marriage

does being socially sanctioned make marriage more real?

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ORIGINAL: Elisabella

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ORIGINAL: lucylucy
The 50% divorce rate (which has already been debunked anyway, but forget that for now) does not say anything about whether the person you marry is the ONLY LTR you've ever been in. So that's your first mistake. I could have several LTRs before I get married, and I think that's what most people nowadays do. It's kind of unusual to marry your high school sweetheart these days.

It also doesn't limit the number of failed marriages you can have. If I get married once and that marriage has a 50% failure rate and it does in fact fail, I can marry a second time and that new marriage will also have a 50% failure rate. The odds stay at 50% with every new marriage. I could be Gsa Gsa Gabor and keep marrying and divorcing. Every new marriage has the same 50% failure possibility.

When I got married, I had already had 2 LTRs. I was married for 20 years. I'm now in an LTR. I could get married tomorrow and make a "lifetime commitment," but I would STILL have all those LTRs in my background. I'm pretty sure that pattern is fairly normal. I have many friends in their 30s who married after 2-5 LTRs failed.

Of course it's all moot because the 50% thing doesn't quite work out at 50%, but there is nothing about any failure rate you could slap on marriage that indicates how many LTRs a person could have.

I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying, I'm not saying that you can only have 1 LTR before you're married or trying to combine LTR stats with marriage stats. I'm saying that of all the LTRs that have ever been started, more of them ended than lasted until death. Which gives a LTR a higher than 50% failure rate. Like with your friends, it's not unheard of to have 3-5 LTR's but it is considered a bit strange to have 3-5 marriages.

I'm not saying that any failure rate makes someone incapable of committing, just like someone could have 5 divorces and the 6th marriage ends up lasting, but simply that on average, there are more breakups in the world than there are divorces.

And also, no it's not true that every marriage has a 50% chance to fail. Saying half of all marriages end doesn't mean that any given marriage has a 50% failure rate - arranged marriages, for example, have a much lower divorce rate than other marriages, and quickie weddings in Vegas have a much higher divorce rate. But regardless, not all marriages are the same, and they don't all have a 50% chance at failing.

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Well, 50% of marriages end in divorce. Which means that if the average person has more than 2 relationship partners in their lifetime, the "failure rate" for a LTR is higher than marriage.

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ORIGINAL: osf

Just because i have a realistic view doesn't mean I don't try


you have all the nilla stuff to go wrong and plus the kink on top of that, the same stuff you have to juggle to get one started

say she at first says she wants to suck bananas in public and you get all hot over it, so she tries it and finds out she doesn't like sucking bananas in public, quite a let down anlong side you finding out she knows absolutely nothing about stamp collecting

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ORIGINAL: LafayetteLady

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ORIGINAL: osf

Just because i have a realistic view doesn't mean I don't try


you have all the nilla stuff to go wrong and plus the kink on top of that, the same stuff you have to juggle to get one started

say she at first says she wants to suck bananas in public and you get all hot over it, so she tries it and finds out she doesn't like sucking bananas in public, quite a let down anlong side you finding out she knows absolutely nothing about stamp collecting

All relationships have their complexities to work out. All you are doing is promoting the same old tired idea that BDSM relationships require more trust, are more "special" more complex than a vanilla relationship. Your kinky relationship may be a lot less complicated than your neighbor's vanilla one.

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ORIGINAL: Elisabella

I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying, I'm not saying that you can only have 1 LTR before you're married or trying to combine LTR stats with marriage stats. I'm saying that of all the LTRs that have ever been started, more of them ended than lasted until death. Which gives a LTR a higher than 50% failure rate. Like with your friends, it's not unheard of to have 3-5 LTR's but it is considered a bit strange to have 3-5 marriages.

I'm not saying that any failure rate makes someone incapable of committing, just like someone could have 5 divorces and the 6th marriage ends up lasting, but simply that on average, there are more breakups in the world than there are divorces.

And also, no it's not true that every marriage has a 50% chance to fail. Saying half of all marriages end doesn't mean that any given marriage has a 50% failure rate - arranged marriages, for example, have a much lower divorce rate than other marriages, and quickie weddings in Vegas have a much higher divorce rate. But regardless, not all marriages are the same, and they don't all have a 50% chance at failing.

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ORIGINAL: lucylucy

I don't disagree with anything you said above, but your original statement . . .

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Well, 50% of marriages end in divorce. Which means that if the average person has more than 2 relationship partners in their lifetime, the "failure rate" for a LTR is higher than marriage.

is still illogical to me. You're comparing apples (marriages) to oranges (LTRs) and trying to use the failure rate of one to extrapolate the failure rate of the other. I don't think that can work unless you are really careful about defining LTR and whether you're including gays or only heteros, etc.

This is all making my head hurt. Damn the math. Can we just agree that you're more optimistic about marriage than I am?

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ORIGINAL: LafayetteLady

But your logic behind the concept is flawed. First of all, yes, if 50% of marriages fail, then statistically, your marriage lasting until death is a 50/50 shot. Of course, as a newlywed, you don't like that statistic, but that is what the statistic says.

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When you talk about LTR's though, you are grouping all of them together. Do you count the boyfriends you had in high school? They were long term relationships, but not likely ever destined for marriage. What is considered "long term" in the first place? As short as a month, or only after a year? My son is 16 and has been with his girlfriend for 2 years. They qualify under "long term relationsip." But they are still in high school. God willing, the relationship will not last forever (no I don't like her), but at the same time, a high school romance is not typically counted when trying to determine the "survival rate" of LTR's.

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There are people who are into serial marriages. They need that piece of paper. It would be interesting to note that the majority of those who have more than 2 marriages under their belt are married for less than 5 years. For people who had long term marriages (as in ending in divorce or death after 10 years), the women are much less likely to re-marry while the men are much more likely to re-marry.

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The point is that no matter how you try to spin a marriage statistic or create a statistic regarding long term relationships, the numbers will not be valid. Further a long term relationship that continues beyond 5 years has the same chance of continuing or ending as a marriage that has lasted more than 5 years.

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You make a point of saying how arranged marriages have a lower divorce rate. Well, those people didn't even have a choice in who they married, do you think they live in a culture where divorce is acceptable? For the most part, divorce is not an option, so it isn't reasonable to count them, because they increase the statistics against divorce, but divorce isn't available to them.

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Las Vegas weddings have a higher failure rate. What about annullments? Many Vegas divorces will be anulled as well. Further, most people who are getting married in Las Vegas don't reside in Las Vegas, so when they get divorced, the divorce statistic that is culled for them comes from their place of residence, not Las Vegas.

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I could take the statistics regarding marriage, divorce, and long term relationships and present to you any result I wanted you to see and give you the statistics to back it up. That is the beauty of statistics.

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When all is said and done, I sincerely hope that your marriage has a long and happy future until death do you part. I also wish the same for lucylucy's relationship. But statistically, lucylucy's relationship has a better chance of survival because the past relationships she has had has taught her what not to do. The statistics for people who wed before they are 30, like you have done, are not good. In fact, they make up the majority of the divorce rate.

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So you see? One isn't better than the other in reality. You wanted marriage and that is great. You found it, that is also great. lucy doesn't want that and it is equally great. Your version of the statistics just don't calculate correctly.

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ORIGINAL: osf

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ORIGINAL: catize

There are many instances where people may be legally bound, yet act only in their own interests rather than committing to the relationship and their partner. IMO, “real” is defined by the fact that both partners choose to focus on what they have together, enhance it, grow together and are happy with the way things are between them. Married....or not......is irrelevant.

if there are assets in common such as a business, property and maybe children then being married would be one more hassel in dissolving the relationship, never said being legally married made the relationship better

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so the question is do you find your sense of commitment any less than you would or have in a marriage

does being socially sanctioned make marriage more real?

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ORIGINAL: Elisabella

No, it's not what the statistic says. The statistic (if misread) would say that half of marriages end in divorce. That doesn't mean that every marriage has a 50% chance at divorcing, which would be ridiculous. You can't say that a devout Catholic couple who believes that divorce will condemn them to eternal damnation has the exact same chance of divorcing as the guy who drunkenly marries a Vegas stripper he's known for 12 hours.

This isn't a chance-based statistic akin to flipping a coin, rather it depends on the people involved and to say that every marriage has the same chance of failure is misreading the statistic.

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ORIGINAL: Elisabella
I'd say that depends on the people...by the time I was 17 (my first 'real' relationship) I was in the state of mind where I didn't want to waste time with anyone I couldn't see myself having a future with. I know other people who say they refuse to get married before a certain age, so their 17 year old relationships likely wouldn't be viewed as potential marriage partners.

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ORIGINAL: Elisabella

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The point is that no matter how you try to spin a marriage statistic or create a statistic regarding long term relationships, the numbers will not be valid. Further a long term relationship that continues beyond 5 years has the same chance of continuing or ending as a marriage that has lasted more than 5 years.

That's interesting, where did you read that?

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ORIGINAL: Elisabella
There are lots of arranged marriages in western countries as well. From what I've read the success of arranged marriages is based on multiple factors, primarily that the marriage is viewed as the creation of a family and not an act of passion. Arranged marriages tend to stress things like building a future together and strengthening the family whereas non-arranged marriages tend to primarily be motivated by love and passion.

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ORIGINAL: Elisabella
Indeed, yet LV still has twice the national average divorce rate...it would probably go even higher if you counted those who married in Vegas and divorced out of state, and the high rate of annulment is depressing as well.

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ORIGINAL: ElisabellaYou could
aspects of the statistics, yes, but the first paragraph was simply a misreading of the statistics.

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ORIGINAL: Elisabella
I'm not sure where you get that idea, the statistics I've found show that brides in my age range when they were married (26) make up 16.4% of divorces whereas grooms in my husband's age range at marriage (34) make up 11.6%.

http://www.divorcepeers.com/stats38.htm

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ORIGINAL: Elisabella
Also while it is true that the majority of divorces are by people who married before they turned 30, it's also true that the majority of marriages are by people under 30. The stats I show above don't say "36% of people who marry between 20-24 will divorce" but rather "of all the people who are divorced, 36% of them got married between the ages of 20-24" which is most likely coupled with a similar statistic that says "of all the people who get married, ~36% did so between the ages of 20-24" which simply means that the divorce rate is proportional to the marriage rate itself.

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ORIGINAL: Elisabella
Actually my version of the statistics does calculate correctly, and you just contradicted your original statement (all marriages have the same chance to end in divorce) with your last statement (those who get married young have a higher chance of divorcing).

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ORIGINAL: Elisabella

But it's fine that Lucy doesn't want marriage, it's not my place to tell anyone to lead a lifestyle they're not comfortable with. The question wasn't "is marriage better" but rather "is marriage more serious" and as I said before, the legal aspect and the fact that, whether or not it works out, at the time of marriage you're making a legal, contractual vow to spend your life with that person means that marriage carries more gravitas, in my opinion.