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I know what you mean, and it is a thorny problem when it is a unforeseeable circumstance. People change and get strange. Marriage and children do change husband and wife.
But, I am also now thinking of a friend's cousin who matched with a guy on tinder, found out on the first date that he was fresh out of a 7 year prison sentence for armed robbery .... and will be celebrating her 2 year anniversary with him, I believe, in February.
Mate selection is important. "Follow your heart" has to be one of the most catastrophic psyops of all time, for men and women but, again, especially, for women. If you can envision that idea that the man you are marrying will use his provision of resources as a way to trap you in a non-consensual relationship, perhaps you shouldn't marry that guy. If your friends and family voice hesitation in their approval of a mate, you should probably listen to them. That actually makes me think of another psyop - the young woman (usually an aristocrat) who doesn't want to marry the man she is "supposed" to (usually a very eligible and stable male aristocrat) and, instead, follows her hear (see above) to marry the black sheep / sad boi / romantic poet that she really loves. They always end up happily ever after, and, suspiciously, he's often some sort of hidden prince who is absolutely loaded.
I've never seen this happen in real life, and, far more frequently, I've seen mothers desperately tell their daughters, "hey don't marry this deadbeat!" But, following the heart, they sometimes do and the consequences are disastrously predictable.
I'll de-genderize all of this. The problem is in the assumed pure autonomy of the individual to know what is best for themselves in all circumstances. "Live your best life" and all of that. But that's a recipe for consistent cycle of FAFO learning. I ask my friends and business partners for advice constantly and they do the same with me. There's not necessarily a hierarchy or approval mechanism to it, but its a fantastic way to interrogate different opinions from people who care about you and who have different mental models of how things work. As a society, however, we've carved out this weird exception for literally the most consequential decision you will ever make. Marriage.
I don't think I disagree with any of this. For many women who end up in that kind financially trapped situation, could they have made better choices earlier? Likely so. The cases where there are no red flags in advance are quite rare I think. Heck, the reason my parents never married is because my father's gambling problems were a deal breaker for my mother! But I think the question about what to do when one ends up in that situation is still important. Whatever process we have for mate selection is not going to be perfect at avoiding these kinds of problems.
Correct. Perfect is impossible and also the enemy of the good.
The solution is eliminating no-fault divorce and actually requiring some sort of proof beyond a threshold for divorce. "I don't think he cares about my problems" doesn't cut it. "He routinely screams at me and berates me, the cops have been involved a few times" checks out. That precise rubric doesn't matter so much as having one and sticking to it.
Still, there will be edge-of-edge cases. This is precisely where I don't want to over-engineer a policy. That is because policy surgically targeted at hyper edge cases usually has a bunch of unintended consequences for the median case.
I guess I don't see how eliminating no fault divorce and making it harder to divorce in general helps this. Bad enough that a woman is in an abusive situation. Now she has to create a paper trail. Hire a lawyer. Convince a judge. And if she can't do that she's compelled to remain. Why is that better? Why would shifting to this arrangement make women more inclined to marry? Less likely to be concerned about their ability to support themselves?
Makes pre-marriage discernment of true compatibility more important. Both parties have to be thorough and sober in thinking about the future together.
It wouldn't. But it would boost the initial social value of getting married and seriously boost the social value of staying married to a good man. Downstream, cadding and slutting would be socially de-valued. People admire people who can do hard things. If marriage is (somewhat) harder, it becomes more admired.
Again, because of the social esteem of having a stable marriage, men with the ability (and _stability) to support a wife and children would be valued higher relative to face tattoo bad boys who are "fun" but can't hold a job.
I think framing it solely as "shouldn't women in bad situations be able to get out of them?" is a kind of false choice. Because, upstream of this, you could reframe it as "we shouldn't let women get into bad situations so easily." Which is exactly what I am saying. I'll admit this actually runs against my usual stance of "let people do things." But, the society level costs of shitty marriage culture is self-evident. THE number one predictor of poor life outcomes for kids is a single parent household.
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