QUOTATIONS

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.

A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.

All marriages are happy. It's the living together afterward that causes all the trouble.

Let the wife make the husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave.

Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open. George Bernard Shaw

Spouse: someone who'll stand by you through all the trouble you wouldn't have had if you'd stayed single.

Marriage means commitment. Of course, so does insanity.

I never knew what real happiness was until I got married. And by then it was too late.

The most dangerous food is wedding cake.

Marriage is not a word - it is a sentence.

What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility.

By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher. ~Socrates

Women hope men will change after marriage but they don't; men hope women won't change but they do.

It was Mrs. Campbell, for instance, who, on a celebrated occasion, threw her companion into a flurry by describing her recent marriage as "the deep, deep peace of the double-bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise-longue."

God created sex. Priests created marriage. ~Voltaire

"Marriage: A friendship recognized by the police."

"Husbands are like fires - they go out when they're left unattended."

A rich 70 year old had just married a beautiful 20 yo. "You crafty old bugger," said a mate. "How did you get her to marry you?" "Easy," said the guy "I told her I was 90."

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ANECDOTES

Women actually benefit from polygamy - they have the option of a share in a better-resourced male. But in monogamy, they're stuck with marrying a poorer man. Only exceptions are extremely desirable women - under monogamy they can monopolise the best men. For men, monogamy gives far more chances of finding a mate.

China has problem with farmers getting pushed off land by developers, so one village passed a law giving people a house in town in exchange for their house in country. But if you were divorced, you got a house each, so 90% of couples divorced within weeks of the law passing. When they realized situation they'd created they changed the rules, but meantime many of the divorced had decided they quite liked getting free of old partner, and took up with someone new.

Godwits have the ultimate marriage - mate for life, raise their chicks in Iceland, male hangs around longer to look after juveniles, then the spend summer apart - females all fly off to Spain and North Africa; males go to England and France, then return to breeding grounds within days of each other.

Ideal marriage had side by side houses where they could visit each other.

If you're unhappily married, you might as well be single: At least if your goal in life is to have it all end via a fatal stroke. Single men have an elevated risk of dying from stroke compared to married men. But, if you separate out the men who report their marriage as "not so successful," then they have the same risk elevation as their single counterparts. Looking on the bright side, only 3.6 percent of the men viewed their marriage as that much of a downer.

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ARTICLES

Except for the age of the newly single men on the dating market - 80 is the new 55 - it is astonishing to see how nothing has changed in the social dynamics of divorce. The ease with which the Viagra set can find themselves a younger wife, compared to women of the same age (or even 20 years younger), remains the same since the William Howard Taft era. Plus, high-gloss girlfriends who close the marriage deal often now discover that, thanks to the little blue pill, there is no safe plateau even for third wives. Marrying Billionaires

The disclosure that the actor Hugh Grant went in 15 months from childless playboy to largely absent father of three set off a national conversation about men and commitment, tinged with shock that any man, let alone a public figure, could have made two women pregnant at the same time. Different Types of Relationships

One in four people in Britain is unhappy with their relationship, according to a new study by relationship charity OnePlusOne. Whether you think that is a surprisingly high number - or even perhaps surprisingly low - the good news is that the charity believes it has the answer to improving your partnership. The key is to focus on RQ, or Relationship Quality. Successful relationships may weather as much hardship and stress as those that fail, but they survive and flourish because of attitude, behaviours and skills that are, in theory, available to us all. Relationship Quality

Numbers matter - if there are more single women than single men, the women have to change their dating strategies if they want to catch a man. The Marriage Supermarket

Two year marriage tickets, Indian dowries, Chinese rules .... More Articles on Marriage

BOOKS

When relationship begins, there's a collusion to maximise similarities. Then later, when reality breaches the romantic view, there's real competition for who has the truth.We sign up to share our life with someone else, and sooner or later we realize we are also living with another's reality. But we don't want that - we want them to second our own. The failure to do so is a betrayal of a tacit contract to affirm our view of the world. The other person's job is to understand and share our worldview, and if they don't, it's both maddening and threatening.

When strangers disagree with us we can ignore or dismiss them without any great consequences. But when our loved ones disagree with us, we don't have that easy out.We have to deal with conflicting theories and the possibility that we may be mistaken. Better option is to accept partner's reality alongside our own. You like apples but you accept that yr partner like oranges. Being Wrong

Loss aversion is why we don't bale out of losing bets on the stock market. But it also screws up marriages, because we don't want to lose a fight. Refuse to apologize because don't want to lose face. Refuse to appreciate good stuff in front of you because all you can think about is how much fun life used to be. Spousonomics

Gottman said people are in one of two states: they are either in positive sentiment override, which is when you see things in best possible light "Oh she's just irritable bc she's had a tough day"; or in negative sentiment override, when they draw lasting conclusions about the other. Even when spouse does something positive, it's seen as a selfish person doing something good for manipulative purposes. Once couples start on that course, ninety four per cent continue going down: they can't correct it. Blink

Man marries a younger woman he'll live longer (13% longer according to one analysis). But if he marries an older woman they are a lot happier. An older woman requires less pampering and is more likely to have similar interests. Cheap Psychological Tricks For Lovers

It appears that the cohort of new brides and bridegrooms that met, and married, after online dating became available are actually less likely to divorce than those who met before, not more likely as current commentators are suggesting. The problem with this theory is that it forgets that the search for love is happening in a market and that market theory predicts that the opening up of new, online, markets should allow higher-quality marriages that are more likely to stand the test of time.

Before internet dating became available, many singles faced thin markets that encouraged them to settle for imperfect matches, and those imperfect matches frequently ended in divorce. Dollars and Sex

As young adults, most of us start out by feeling an intuitive respect for the idea of a love-based marriage. Yet as we get older, we will usually begin to wonder whether the whole thing might not be just a fantasy dreamt up by a group of adolescent-minded authors and poets a few hundred years ago. Such a re-evaluation may be prompted by an awareness of how chaotic and misleading our feelings can be. There are times when we feel sufficiently angry with our spouse that we would be happy to see him or her knocked down by a car; but ten minutes later, we may be reminded that we would die rather than go on alone. How To Think More About Sex

Historically, marriage usually began as a property arrangement, its middle part was mostly about raising children, and ended up with love. Today it is the other way round. Begins with love, moves on to children, and often ends in disputes about property. If Walls Could Talk

Type A women respond badly to men trying to control us. The perfect match for a Type A woman is a Type B man who is easy going, says 'whatever' a lot and smiles when we are being insane. Strangely enough, a lot of Alpha people are insecure and have tragic self-esteem, but this is usually well-hidden in their bluster. When I see high-achieving, hard-working women with what appear to be useless, passive husbands, I now consider that they have made a good choice bc no other kind of guy cd live with them. Peta Mathias

Japan leading way with robots which will potentially replace humans. Foresee need nurses for growing number of elderly.. US more dependent on cheap immigrant labor. So US see robots as tools, Japan as beings. Cultural objections to people having sex with robots. But porn on way to being more acceptable. Seen as alternative for lonely or psychos. Love and Sex With Robots

From the nineteenth century marriage changed from a sturdy social institution, a duty and an obligation, to a twentieth century bond based on great expectations of love and intimacy. But in the twenty-first century its changing again, and we're not sure where it's going.

No longer need marriage to get sex, children or a social life.

Women have finally figured out that they can't have it all - can't have the career, the travel, the friendships, the time alone, and a family as well. Marriage Confidential

"Like a lot of men I've always put sex high on the list of domestic prerequisites, somewhere between food and basic cable, so I was surprised when trajectory of our sex life spiralled from nightly to weekly to "what's wrong with you". Woman's joke that ideal man will make love to you until midnight then turn into box of chocs - my wife wd skip the sex and go straight for the chocs. Each side yelling at each other "What's the Big Deal?" He meaning why can't we just have sex?, She meaning, why can't you stop bothering me? But without my resilient desire, what wd our marriage be? A book club? The Bastard On The Couch

"(The perfect man) existed in my imagination as a shadowy but flawless alter ego, a male version of myself who would read my mind, meet all my needs and have none of his own." The Bitch In The House

A quote I'd read from William Wharton. What is love, his daughter had asked on the eve of her wedding. 'It is passion, admiration and respect,' he told her. 'If you have two, you have enough. If you have three, you don't have to die to go to heaven.' The Beach House

Ready for some cliches about marriage? Here they come. Because they're true.

Marry someone with similar tastes and preferences. Which tastes and preferences? The ones that will affect life almost every day. It is OK if you like ballet and your spouse doesn't. Reasonable people can accommodate each other on such differences. But if you dislike each other's friends or don't get each other's sense of humour or have different ethical impulses, break it off and find someone else. The Curmudgeon's Guide to Getting Ahead

90% Americans think polygamy is morally wrong - more than those against human cloning, abortion or the death penalty. Yet it has been popular, and taken for granted, for most of human history. Polygamy gives women more options: they can marry above their station. "Which woman wdn't rather be John Kennedy's third wife than Bozo the Clown's first?" The Price of Everything

Most of the women who complain that they are not getting what they want from their husbands should stop and look at how disrespectful and disdainful they are of them. Regularly asks female callers if they expect to stay married, considering her hostile, dismissive and undermining attitudes and actions toward husband. Amazingly insensitive to husband's needs but hypersensitive to any action or reaction from the man. The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands

Husband's memories of marriage events are far more predictive of whether couple will stay together than wife's. Whether he talks fondly of her and what attracted him to her as opposed to his disappointments. Can change that simply by thinking more about the good times.

Men get flooded by criticism, women by contempt. Why Marriages Succeed Or Fail

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SONGS

Songs - the poetry of modern life

Well all my friends are getting married
Yes they're all growin' old
They're staying home on weekends
They're all doin' what they're told

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