your post this morning sent me into such sadness - i have had two failed marriages and have just recently (January) had ended on me a year long relationship. I have a pattern of self-centeredness and anxiety and have frankly destroyed many past relationships due to that. I am 58 and i fear that it is too late for me to change this pattern, that is too late in life to find meaningful romantic love and while i feel no desire to delete myself because of this- i frankly feel that my life is pretty much ended at this point. i see young lovers holding hands and i see older married couples with wedding rings on sometimes I just cry as a result. had I been 30, 20 or even 10 years younger i would not feel so strongly about this-but my mind is telling me it is too late.
weak though it may be a word of encouragement would be so wonderful right now- from you or your readers-
and to those who have someone, and it is working- please don't fuck it up- you truly don't know what you have until you lose it- and the knowledge is not a pleasant realization but a sucker punch to your soul...
Rob! This is so BRILLIANT. I am in a happy marriage and this article reinforces why. BUT! I am doing to save this piece, email it to myself and when I have a 16 year old daughter (she’s 8 now) impress upon her the importance of choosing a good spouse. As for me, my family life is the arena in which I work and the source of most of my life satisfaction. Thank you for this piece. I will look for more on this topic and try to create a sort of “relationship education workbook” for my daughter as I feel like relationships are ignored in favor of an obsession with professional success. I see women younger than me who have much more professional success than I have achieved but suffer from intense loneliness. Not a fate I want for my daughter. Keep up the excellent work, I love your insightful work.
As someone with an almost forty year marriage and a lot of observations about marriages that have lasted and those that have not, I'd add a few things:
1) Coming from the same background is a big plus
2) If you have siblings with whom you're close, it's really helpful that their future in-law is someone who fits in and that there's mutual affection.
3) If you wait too long, and become too set in your ways, the ability to mold each other becomes harder to achieve.
4) Disagreements are inevitable, even in the marriages and relationships that seem from the outside to be "perfect."
To illustrate that last point, here's a recent post I wrote about a fight in my own "perfect" marriage.
Very big YES on the “heroic striving”. I’ve often told my wife how important it has been to feel loved as I am, yet share dreams for me to become better, to become the best man I can be. Who you want to be is a big part of your authentic person, as well as who you actually are right now.
Being willing to prioritize her happiness, even at the occasional cost of work performance, has also been important for her to feel loved. Our big family of 4 kids pushed both of us as parents to prioritize our family life. 30 years of love and we both still feel lucky to have each other, and we both often verbalize good feelings, and why, plus affirming “I love you.”
We have been married almost 48 years, and much of this resonated. We were not necessarily brilliant at 22, but we got some of these things right. One needs to go in knowing that making the other person happy is more important than getting your own needs met. (There are obvious limits, but that's the principle.)
You also reminded me how miserable I would have been with the two prior girlfriends, who had (ahem) different goals. Both became academics and were unmarried, childless, with (it looks like) few friends they can call on for help after surgery or to get together for more than a restaurant meal. I suppose I would have made them miserable as well. We had foster children, adopted children, and sort-of children acquired along the way. We finsihed with five boys, to which four DIL's and five granddaughters are added. Neither of those women could have endured a single Christmas season of that.
This was a fascinating read as someone who was married for nearly a decade (23-32), and now in a relationship so solid it feels surreal most days.
One thing that's not touched on as much in this piece is that if you have these traits, be it inherently or through years of personal reflection/efforts to grow in all ways, there's the likely chance that you will "just know" when you meet this person and ultimately won't feel like you're having to make a decision because you're decision will be as apparent as breathing air.
That, of course, requires a strong internal compass. I am not saying this to talk myself up, because I had to learn the hard way via a marriage that was not inherently "bad" (no cheating, finances great, often friendly) but that was insecure and unbalanced at its core - open communication was not an option, and defensiveness was omnipresent, even in response to non-critiques. For about 5 of those 10 years together, I was trying to figure out how right the wrong dynamics by reading and holistically improving myself, so by the time I was out of it and I met my current boyfriend, the "choice" felt readily obvious.
So there was the initial gut feeling, or "knowing" and immediate connection on all levels, and throughout our couple of years together, he's only confirmed what I intuited to be true.
But maybe it's just the word choice of "choosing" that makes this article (while I think it's great and loved the takeaways) sound like more of a clinical/analytical decision made through a pros & cons list. TLDR; when you know, you know.
I think luck is a component, but it is supported - like for many things that luck provides - by putting yourself out there so that there are opportunities for luck.
I got lucky, and my wife of 42 years has always said the same.
My parents divorced when I was young and their conflicts gave me a window into understanding relationship dynamics. I also decided I would not marry early if at all. My mother was pregnant with me at nineteen and married at twenty. They were both just kids themselves thrown immediately into the stress of parenting. Their lack of wisdom for how to navigate all the stress of marriage and parenting broke them. I was determined to be better.
But then one night a year after I graduated high school, I was in the back seat of my friend's bright yellow 1969 Shelby Mustang (a friend from a well-off farmer family), cruising the main drag of the college town just down the freeway (back when cruising was a thing). We stopped at the Jack-In-The-Box parking lot to chat with a group of girls we knew from college, and there was this skinny, pretty girl with braces that I could not stop looking at. She was talking to a girl I knew from college... Sue, a friend of another girl that I had dated and was trying to break up with kindly. Apparently that was not going too well as Sue told my future wife, when she said she wanted to meet the "hot guy in the back seat", "forget him, he is a jerk".
Well according to my wife, and I think this is a weird common thing, Sue's comment only caused her more interest. I guess being a bit of jerk made me more hot. Go figure. We talked for a bit, and then I saw her and another friend driving together another cruising night a few weeks later and she spotted me. All four of us piled into my car and we just drove around and talked.
Later she explained that her and her friend had been going out every night to find me as I had not given her my phone number during our first encounter... and she had told her friend that she was going to marry me and have my children. I learned this years later.
After dating for a couple of months I remember a point where I thought "dammit, this is the girl I am supposed to share the rest of my life with."
She was 17 and I was 19. She graduated high school and moved into my apartment. Her parents were/are good Christian people that said they don't approve of the situation, but they love and support us and know that there is nothing they can do to change the mind of their head-strong daughter.
She wanted to get married right away and start a family. I had a principle that I knew the time was right when I started day dreaming about that next step... but that I wanted to take incremental steps in building out our relationship so we would be wise and successful.
It took two years for me to propose. And despite all my plans to delay marriage because of the divorce of my young parents, we married at exactly their ages: 20 and 22.
But due to my insistence, we waited to have children. I finished my degree, got my career in good shape. We bought our first house. I was 30 when our first son was born, and 32 when we had the second. I had suggested we have four, but the second pregnancy was difficult and she did not want to go through another. We thought about adoption, but then decided that our family of four was perfect.
One hilarious thing... Sue and her husband have remained good friends since we met in College. They live in another part of the country, but when we see each other, Sue always says "hi there jerk!" and we hug.
Here is a recommendation to add to Rob's suggestions for males to do better finding a mate. Females take inventory. It is a long laundry list. The longer the lists of checks, the more likely you will get attention. I didn't know this back then, but later it was explained. It is probably connected to our evolutionary biology for females choosing a mate that provides them the highest return.
Rob mentions "keep up on personal grooming and hygiene; improve your health and fitness; buy clothes that are stylish and fit well; get a good haircut. As a man, you can also level up your attractiveness by earning a promotion at work, switching to a higher paying position, or seeking a cool side job (bartenders, musicians." Playing video games and watching porn all day while gaining weight.. well don't expect that to help your list. It is fascinating to me how many young men don't get this.
One attribute that really does suck though... apparently there is a very strong female bias against short males. I am 6'3" and wonder if I would have had the same attention if 5' 6"? In terns of evolutionary biology, today, I am not sure why this matters.
It seems to me that a modern American education valorizes all the red flags and never even mentions the green ones. And frankly, it seems to be working.
I don’t know where one would even look for a decent woman, and it’s not like I’m hiding in a basement.
I am sharing this article with my son, and two daughters. My husband and I have been married for 35 years. I was full of red flags going into our relationship, however my husband was and has been such a good, kind, patient guy. He really brings out the best in me and I can't help but love him and try to make his life the best that I can.
Thank you so much for writing this. One of my major New Year's Resolutions is to find a stable career and finding a romantic partner. I have managed to solve the former and now I'm pirsuing the latter. This is incredibly helpful advice. The blogger Tim Urban also made a two-part blog on finding a life partner over a decade ago and a lot of the advice holds up.
That’s such a great description of hope for a relationship. When I think of all the weddings I’ve officiated at over the years (and I’ve admittedly lost track of a few of those couples), none have ended in divorce. And they were highly invested in each other without exception.
your post this morning sent me into such sadness - i have had two failed marriages and have just recently (January) had ended on me a year long relationship. I have a pattern of self-centeredness and anxiety and have frankly destroyed many past relationships due to that. I am 58 and i fear that it is too late for me to change this pattern, that is too late in life to find meaningful romantic love and while i feel no desire to delete myself because of this- i frankly feel that my life is pretty much ended at this point. i see young lovers holding hands and i see older married couples with wedding rings on sometimes I just cry as a result. had I been 30, 20 or even 10 years younger i would not feel so strongly about this-but my mind is telling me it is too late.
weak though it may be a word of encouragement would be so wonderful right now- from you or your readers-
and to those who have someone, and it is working- please don't fuck it up- you truly don't know what you have until you lose it- and the knowledge is not a pleasant realization but a sucker punch to your soul...
may you al be well.
Your life partner is THE most important choice you make.
Rob! This is so BRILLIANT. I am in a happy marriage and this article reinforces why. BUT! I am doing to save this piece, email it to myself and when I have a 16 year old daughter (she’s 8 now) impress upon her the importance of choosing a good spouse. As for me, my family life is the arena in which I work and the source of most of my life satisfaction. Thank you for this piece. I will look for more on this topic and try to create a sort of “relationship education workbook” for my daughter as I feel like relationships are ignored in favor of an obsession with professional success. I see women younger than me who have much more professional success than I have achieved but suffer from intense loneliness. Not a fate I want for my daughter. Keep up the excellent work, I love your insightful work.
As someone with an almost forty year marriage and a lot of observations about marriages that have lasted and those that have not, I'd add a few things:
1) Coming from the same background is a big plus
2) If you have siblings with whom you're close, it's really helpful that their future in-law is someone who fits in and that there's mutual affection.
3) If you wait too long, and become too set in your ways, the ability to mold each other becomes harder to achieve.
4) Disagreements are inevitable, even in the marriages and relationships that seem from the outside to be "perfect."
To illustrate that last point, here's a recent post I wrote about a fight in my own "perfect" marriage.
https://robertsdavidn.substack.com/p/a-fight-reveals-the-fault-lines-in
Very big YES on the “heroic striving”. I’ve often told my wife how important it has been to feel loved as I am, yet share dreams for me to become better, to become the best man I can be. Who you want to be is a big part of your authentic person, as well as who you actually are right now.
Being willing to prioritize her happiness, even at the occasional cost of work performance, has also been important for her to feel loved. Our big family of 4 kids pushed both of us as parents to prioritize our family life. 30 years of love and we both still feel lucky to have each other, and we both often verbalize good feelings, and why, plus affirming “I love you.”
We have been married almost 48 years, and much of this resonated. We were not necessarily brilliant at 22, but we got some of these things right. One needs to go in knowing that making the other person happy is more important than getting your own needs met. (There are obvious limits, but that's the principle.)
You also reminded me how miserable I would have been with the two prior girlfriends, who had (ahem) different goals. Both became academics and were unmarried, childless, with (it looks like) few friends they can call on for help after surgery or to get together for more than a restaurant meal. I suppose I would have made them miserable as well. We had foster children, adopted children, and sort-of children acquired along the way. We finsihed with five boys, to which four DIL's and five granddaughters are added. Neither of those women could have endured a single Christmas season of that.
This was a fascinating read as someone who was married for nearly a decade (23-32), and now in a relationship so solid it feels surreal most days.
One thing that's not touched on as much in this piece is that if you have these traits, be it inherently or through years of personal reflection/efforts to grow in all ways, there's the likely chance that you will "just know" when you meet this person and ultimately won't feel like you're having to make a decision because you're decision will be as apparent as breathing air.
That, of course, requires a strong internal compass. I am not saying this to talk myself up, because I had to learn the hard way via a marriage that was not inherently "bad" (no cheating, finances great, often friendly) but that was insecure and unbalanced at its core - open communication was not an option, and defensiveness was omnipresent, even in response to non-critiques. For about 5 of those 10 years together, I was trying to figure out how right the wrong dynamics by reading and holistically improving myself, so by the time I was out of it and I met my current boyfriend, the "choice" felt readily obvious.
So there was the initial gut feeling, or "knowing" and immediate connection on all levels, and throughout our couple of years together, he's only confirmed what I intuited to be true.
But maybe it's just the word choice of "choosing" that makes this article (while I think it's great and loved the takeaways) sound like more of a clinical/analytical decision made through a pros & cons list. TLDR; when you know, you know.
I think luck is a component, but it is supported - like for many things that luck provides - by putting yourself out there so that there are opportunities for luck.
I got lucky, and my wife of 42 years has always said the same.
My parents divorced when I was young and their conflicts gave me a window into understanding relationship dynamics. I also decided I would not marry early if at all. My mother was pregnant with me at nineteen and married at twenty. They were both just kids themselves thrown immediately into the stress of parenting. Their lack of wisdom for how to navigate all the stress of marriage and parenting broke them. I was determined to be better.
But then one night a year after I graduated high school, I was in the back seat of my friend's bright yellow 1969 Shelby Mustang (a friend from a well-off farmer family), cruising the main drag of the college town just down the freeway (back when cruising was a thing). We stopped at the Jack-In-The-Box parking lot to chat with a group of girls we knew from college, and there was this skinny, pretty girl with braces that I could not stop looking at. She was talking to a girl I knew from college... Sue, a friend of another girl that I had dated and was trying to break up with kindly. Apparently that was not going too well as Sue told my future wife, when she said she wanted to meet the "hot guy in the back seat", "forget him, he is a jerk".
Well according to my wife, and I think this is a weird common thing, Sue's comment only caused her more interest. I guess being a bit of jerk made me more hot. Go figure. We talked for a bit, and then I saw her and another friend driving together another cruising night a few weeks later and she spotted me. All four of us piled into my car and we just drove around and talked.
Later she explained that her and her friend had been going out every night to find me as I had not given her my phone number during our first encounter... and she had told her friend that she was going to marry me and have my children. I learned this years later.
After dating for a couple of months I remember a point where I thought "dammit, this is the girl I am supposed to share the rest of my life with."
She was 17 and I was 19. She graduated high school and moved into my apartment. Her parents were/are good Christian people that said they don't approve of the situation, but they love and support us and know that there is nothing they can do to change the mind of their head-strong daughter.
She wanted to get married right away and start a family. I had a principle that I knew the time was right when I started day dreaming about that next step... but that I wanted to take incremental steps in building out our relationship so we would be wise and successful.
It took two years for me to propose. And despite all my plans to delay marriage because of the divorce of my young parents, we married at exactly their ages: 20 and 22.
But due to my insistence, we waited to have children. I finished my degree, got my career in good shape. We bought our first house. I was 30 when our first son was born, and 32 when we had the second. I had suggested we have four, but the second pregnancy was difficult and she did not want to go through another. We thought about adoption, but then decided that our family of four was perfect.
One hilarious thing... Sue and her husband have remained good friends since we met in College. They live in another part of the country, but when we see each other, Sue always says "hi there jerk!" and we hug.
Here is a recommendation to add to Rob's suggestions for males to do better finding a mate. Females take inventory. It is a long laundry list. The longer the lists of checks, the more likely you will get attention. I didn't know this back then, but later it was explained. It is probably connected to our evolutionary biology for females choosing a mate that provides them the highest return.
Rob mentions "keep up on personal grooming and hygiene; improve your health and fitness; buy clothes that are stylish and fit well; get a good haircut. As a man, you can also level up your attractiveness by earning a promotion at work, switching to a higher paying position, or seeking a cool side job (bartenders, musicians." Playing video games and watching porn all day while gaining weight.. well don't expect that to help your list. It is fascinating to me how many young men don't get this.
One attribute that really does suck though... apparently there is a very strong female bias against short males. I am 6'3" and wonder if I would have had the same attention if 5' 6"? In terns of evolutionary biology, today, I am not sure why this matters.
It seems to me that a modern American education valorizes all the red flags and never even mentions the green ones. And frankly, it seems to be working.
I don’t know where one would even look for a decent woman, and it’s not like I’m hiding in a basement.
I am sharing this article with my son, and two daughters. My husband and I have been married for 35 years. I was full of red flags going into our relationship, however my husband was and has been such a good, kind, patient guy. He really brings out the best in me and I can't help but love him and try to make his life the best that I can.
Regarding personal finance, a saver should never marry a spender and vice versa.
Thank you so much for writing this. One of my major New Year's Resolutions is to find a stable career and finding a romantic partner. I have managed to solve the former and now I'm pirsuing the latter. This is incredibly helpful advice. The blogger Tim Urban also made a two-part blog on finding a life partner over a decade ago and a lot of the advice holds up.
https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/02/pick-life-partner.html
https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/02/pick-life-partner-part-2.html
This could not have come at a better time for me.
“co-architects of a shared future”
That’s such a great description of hope for a relationship. When I think of all the weddings I’ve officiated at over the years (and I’ve admittedly lost track of a few of those couples), none have ended in divorce. And they were highly invested in each other without exception.
Nicely done. You have many talents.
"it is about finding a partner who understands, encourages, and participates in your life journey." Oh yes. Interdependence.