Kudos for being nasty under your own name.

On the other hand, why anyone would ever find it at all appealing to have sex with someone he or she doesn’t like will forever be a mystery to me.

Probably because you think of potential sex partners as people, rather than as enemies to be bribed or tricked into ‘giving it up’.

It’s been put forward that for the first 6 months to two years of a relationship, the brain is flooded with all the sorts of chemicals that make you feel good. (In certain circles, this is called “New Relationship Energy” or NRE.) You want to be around the other person for the chemical high, and are more likely to dismiss the negative aspects because you’re in a small form addicted to them.

That’s why I’m in favor of bringing back the idea of the long courtship, so that couples can look at what they’ve got with non-drug-induced eyes, and make as reational of decisions as they can about a very important aspect of their lives. Men and women, thankyouverymuch.

I’d say that has a basis in expectations.

Possibly. In some ways, everyone might be better off lowering their expectations in terms of marriage being non-stop romance. Sometimes your wife won’t want to have sex with you, and sometimes your husband won’t bring you flowers any more (and the reverse, if you happen to have the marriage where it’s the wife who wants more sex, or the husband who wants more tenderness).

But what I’m thinking of is the sort of advice that says, hey, women, your time is running out (even if you’re only, say, just recently out of college), don’t be so picky that you let your time slip away. Or don’t be so independent that you aren’t running around as worried about not finding a husband as Mrs. Bennett in Pride and Prejudice was about not marrying off her daughters. On the contrary, do be so picky, up front, about the guy you’re going to marry, so you don’t feel compelled to spend your life trying to change him afterwards. Do pass on your Mr. Collins, and hold out for your Mr. Darcy. It’s better both for you and for your future husband that you be choosy at this point, before you’ve married him. There will be plenty of occasion for both of you to disappoint and forgive each other later, even if you’ve managed to get your Darcy.

To some extent, I favor Ben Franklin’s advice in marriage.

And there are reasons it matters whether any decline in the portion of married people comes more from people not getting married or more from people getting divorced; if fewer people are married because more people are getting divorced, then advising women to lower their expectations before they get married won’t do anyone much good (especially if it’s mostly women who are initiating divorces). Unless, you know, your goal is earlier marriages followed by even more divorces.

Of course, how people should set their expectations, and make their choices, before getting married is somewhat separate from the question of what women (or men) should be doing after they’ve married, when the marriage hits trouble.

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Well, the main reason I see for divorce on the part of women is “he isn’t fulfilling my needs” or “we grew apart”.

I’d say that has a basis in expectations. I guess I’ll leave the details of that to the reader, I don’t want to get banned here with my thoughts on that.

Of course, how people should set their expectations, and make their choices, before getting married is somewhat separate from the question of what women (or men) should be doing after they’ve married, when the marriage hits trouble.

Wow, G. What part of the “mothers going to work” era did you miss? (It’s always been around, it’s just it used to be that if you rich enough [i.e., middle class or above] it was status if you didn’t, and since rich people are what the stories are written about…)

Marriage and commitment seem to become more important to women as they get older, less important to men as they get older.

I would really love to see some stats on that one, because, like Lynn, everything I’ve read is that those things are more important to both genders as they mature.

Hey, I didn’t say nearly everyone stayed married. When you add up the people who haven’t married yet, and the people who are now widowed, that makes up a sizeable percentage of the currently single. Another fraction are divorced. Nearly everyone does get married at some point, and most people who get divorced remarry. Marriage is under challenge, yes, but it’s not so unpopular that most people (men or women) who want to marry are in dire danger of winding up facing a lonely old age with their cats.

The difficulty with marriage, these days, isn’t that people aren’t getting married; it’s that they’re finding it hard to make their marriages last.

Obviously, mileage varies a whole lot for some specific demographic groups.