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Indeed, I'd be in favor of rejecting such a person from polite society entirely.
Right. But I feel it is fair to ask the question:
If you were not coerced into the marriage, it wasn't an arranged marriage, you had other options around you, and you had adequate time to 'vet' the person...
Why'd you commit to a long term relationship with them?
Note that I'm perfectly prepared to accept explanations such as:
A) He/she had some mental health break or injury that completely shifted his/her behavior from the norm.
B) He/she was utterly sociopathic and hid all his/her flaws from me until it was too late.
I'm less inclined to accept:
C) I folded due to social pressure.
As a real excuse, if you live in a Western Country.
But I think most of these situations are well-explained by basic human irrationality. "I never thought he'd hit me," or "I believed she would mature/change/grow with time." The classic "well they're fine 99% of the time and I just tolerate the horrific 1%" (especially if 1% is more like 10%)
Honestly, for the vast majority of history, pairings between humans, marital or not, were just based on convenience rather than anything like compatibility. We're in a rare and perhaps unstable period where we're able to choose mates from a large pool, and I'd argue our basic instincts are not up to the task.
I would never imply that fault is always perfectly 50-50 (no point in even attempting the calculation, imho) but so much of it can be attributed to "why am I putting up with [minor inconvenience] when I could just find something better?" And then simply never addressing or fixing the inconveniences as they pile up over time, so blame is very hard to ascribe.
Note that in cisHajnal cultures the novel thing is the "large pool". Arranged marriages were an exclusively aristocratic thing, with working and middle class young adults choosing their own partners .
The other thing that has changed, in my view for the worse, is the institution of the boyfriend/girlfriend. Pre sexual revolution, even people choosing a spouse for themselves knew they were choosing a spouse, and acted accordingly. Now people start by choosing someone to have a semi-casual fun-orientated relationship with, and only evaluating them as a spouse if that works out. If you know you want a spouse in the end, this is stupid. But "no matter how much you like your boy/girlfriend, if you wouldn't marry them you should dump them yesterday" is profoundly countercultural advice.
Seems like these two things would be intrinsically related.
If your pool of potential spouses were like a couple dozen large at most, you'd be expecting to get married on the 'first try' and thus you'd focus on picking a spouse from that pool at the start.
If you've got 100+ 'potential' mates, a more casual approach makes some sense as a way to 'test drive' the available options before committing to a purchase, since your odds of getting 'the one' on the first try are small.
What IS definitely different and problematic is the fact that relationships seem to advance at a glacial pace. People are BF/GF for a year, then they move in, then MAYBE they get engaged after another year, and the engagement lasts a year.
A lot of time spent in that interstitial space where technically either side can leave for another partner scott-free.
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I think the most common one is D) I am attracted to people who are a bad match.
With men this usually doesn't result in marriage (e.g., they pine for stacies), but sometimes it does (she has a temper, but the makeup sex is great). With women it's a relatively more common "taming the beast" trope, where she's attracted to dark triad traits.
I’d want to see stats before drawing those conclusions, because for every dynamic there’s a just-so story.
“I can fix him” vs. “must protect.”
Both are arguably a form of attraction to bad matches, but one is way more male-coded than the other.
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