What percentage of people have the capacity to stay in and excel in a monogamous relationship?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Reading these threads makes me wonder why there are so many dysfunctional people who can't do well in relationships. My entire extended family just doesn't have these issues although we each acknowledge we have many faults of our own that we work on daily. We work hard, we save our money, we listen to and forgive others, and we try to be decent Christians and human beings that don't take more than we give and don't overpower anyone. We start and continue relationships with the plan to make it through life with its ups and downs. Is it just our society that offers too many temptations or do people have more mental issues than before? What is the source of the dysfunction? I'm seeing it in friends, in the news. Everywhere.

So, I’m responding to you here and the post below where you label monogamy as the “virtuous” life. My marriage sounds a lot like yours except that after about twenty totally monogamous years we mutually decided not to be monogamous anymore, probably because of the usual midlife crisis, marrying young, feeling like we’d missed out on things. But we work on our faults. We save money. We forgive each other. We have been through MANY ups and downs from financial problems to medical problems to death and we have stuck by each other throughout all of that. I don’t think our lives are immoral. We are honest and caring toward each other and anyone else we are involved with (which isn’t always at sexy or sex-based as people think). We intend to stay married for the rest of our lives.

But I think maybe you’re asking why people cheat? Why they give up on marriage...because having an affair will very often cause divorce. It’s lying and a betrayal. Maybe partially because people live a long time and they can’t admit their boredom to one another? Maybe lots of people cheated—it was certainly pretty acceptable for men for a long time—women just looked the other way. Maybe because women have more options now? If they make their own money, they don’t have to stay in unhappy marriages. I think the cheating happens because people are afraid to be honest with each other, or maybe they want that excitement but don’t want to lose the stability.

I also think that under the surface of all of these perfect marriages, you will find many probably aren’t so perfect. That doesn’t mean that those people don’t invest heavily in their relationships. But it can be work. And having dedication to a marriage is probably something I feel is a virtue, but I’m not sure I feel qualified to judge how other people should perceive that.

I think maybe we need to accept that a lifelong marriage is not necessarily the right thing for everyone. People do change. Sometimes the work to save something isn’t worth the saving, or one person tries and the other doesn’t. I don’t think lying is virtuous. But I don’t think monogamy for monogamy’s sake (especially as a Christian value...lots of those biblical prophets had several wives and concubines) is virtuous or not. It’s a choice people make—ideally a consensual one witH partners.

[Anonymous]

^never works. Somebody will eventually want to leave for one of these new sex toys...and then the one that opened it and lost will regret it. Women don’t age as well. Good luck with that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m not looking for affirmation. It’s an anonymous board. I was simply trying to gauge how many people in the US are suffering from trauma to the point where they can’t live a virtuous monogamous life. I guess DCUM isn’t the best place. It was just a reflection after seeing how hard women and men had it in the past trying to start a life here that it seems odd we have people like Elon Musk who have everything and just have affair after affair. It really wasn’t anything related to me. I didn’t ask how much better I was than anyone. If anything I feel I fall short of my more perfect family members. I just wasn’t aware how much trauma others went through till I became an adult. You are right I was naive. But it is a symptom of a greater cutural failing if so many of our children are growing up in broken homes and we can’t seem to rise above the trauma ourselves as a society.

According to your own dogma, pride is a sin.

Please see the bolded statement above and compare it to your OP. Let me quote you: “...we try to be decent Christians and human beings that don't take more than we give and don't overpower anyone. We start and continue relationships with the plan to make it through life with its ups and downs.”

Does that mean that you are a liar as well? Isn’t one of the ten commandments “Thou shalt not bear false witness” forbids - From wikipedia: “1. Speaking falsely in any matter, lying, equivocating, and any way devising and designing to deceive our neighbor. 2. Speaking unjustly against our neighbor, to the prejudice of his reputation

So you are sinning just from what you write here yet you are judging other people who you obviously know nothing about. You’re just another plain old garden variety hypocritical christian. A lot of the emotional damage that creates broken families stems directly from christian dogma so a little
self reflection may enlighten you on your burning questions about the nature of existence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What an obnoxious, self-righteous post. And your family might be fooling you, like Jerry Falwell Jr. fooled the entire Liberty community. You don't know what's happening within someone else's life or marriage.

Yes, I really do. I'm sorry but there has been no infidelity, no lying, no poor money management. There really are people that are nice to each other and have the skills to make a marriage work. And even going through cancer and people in the family dying from war. You are welcome to think as you do, but I'm generally curious how many people actually have the capacity to make it through marriage without major problems that they cause themselves.

You THINK you do. What you're really saying is that you don't *know* of any infidelity, lying or poor money management. Doesn't mean it hasn't happened. Big difference. But keep your judgmental blinders on. You'll feel much better about yourself.

I'm sorry you are not that close to your family. I am and there is legitimate proof that these things haven't happened. Again there really are people that don't have mental issues and trauma to the point of neglecting or harming others. I'm trying to understand how large that population is. I'm sorry for your hurt, I'm sure it was passed down.

NP. You're so clueless. I've been having an affair for 7 years and not a soul knows.

[Anonymous]

You must be under the age of 45

[Anonymous]

I think a large proportion.

[Anonymous]

There is nothing wrong with living a virtuous life in a non monogamous relationship if you can justify it and make it work. Nor is it any real revelation that marriage isn’t always fun and takes continued work. But this thread was about the percentage of the population that actually wants to be in a monogamous relationship and make it work. I was just trying to gauge if that was a large or small percentage of the population.

[Anonymous]

I think a lot of people are but it's not really encouraged in today's culture. People have a lot of options and it's sometimes hard to fully link yourself to someone when you have option 1, 2, 3... and so on when things get hard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Reading these threads makes me wonder why there are so many dysfunctional people who can't do well in relationships. My entire extended family just doesn't have these issues although we each acknowledge we have many faults of our own that we work on daily. We work hard, we save our money, we listen to and forgive others, and we try to be decent Christians and human beings that don't take more than we give and don't overpower anyone. We start and continue relationships with the plan to make it through life with its ups and downs. Is it just our society that offers too many temptations or do people have more mental issues than before? What is the source of the dysfunction? I'm seeing it in friends, in the news. Everywhere.

I’d say the percentage is 0.0001%.
There’s you and your flawless family OP...
And then there’s everybody else on the planet who’s damaged and dysfunctional and far from decent.

Only you and yours are decent OP.
Welcome to this hell of unhealthy relationships called LIFE.
Be patient do your due diligence and you and yours will get to heaven with plenty of other perfect people like yourself.

[Anonymous]

About half of marriages end in divorce and of the remaining half, about half of those involve infidelity. So maybe 25% of marriages are successfully monogamous. But even those have their struggles.

I wonder if you are young, OP. I used to be naive like you but the longer you live the more you see the reality that lifelong monogamy is rare and very hard to maintain

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What an obnoxious, self-righteous post. And your family might be fooling you, like Jerry Falwell Jr. fooled the entire Liberty community. You don't know what's happening within someone else's life or marriage.

Yes, I really do. I'm sorry but there has been no infidelity, no lying, no poor money management. There really are people that are nice to each other and have the skills to make a marriage work. And even going through cancer and people in the family dying from war. You are welcome to think as you do, but I'm generally curious how many people actually have the capacity to make it through marriage without major problems that they cause themselves.

DH and my family are similar, but without the religion. I think some of it is based on the family of origin where children had the ability to see And learn from a functioning relationship up close. I think most of it is from an innate personality type. In other species that we thought were monogamous, DNA research has figured out that there is about 30% cheating. Scientists believe it is important to species survival. I would guess that the human species has about the same results.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What an obnoxious, self-righteous post. And your family might be fooling you, like Jerry Falwell Jr. fooled the entire Liberty community. You don't know what's happening within someone else's life or marriage.

Yes, I really do. I'm sorry but there has been no infidelity, no lying, no poor money management. There really are people that are nice to each other and have the skills to make a marriage work. And even going through cancer and people in the family dying from war. You are welcome to think as you do, but I'm generally curious how many people actually have the capacity to make it through marriage without major problems that they cause themselves.

Don’t worry. You adult kids will change all that. Wait and see!

[Anonymous]

^. My family is the same. Now do I know 100% nobody cheated. Of course I don’t, but I come from a very transparent stock. People don’t bury things. It’s a loud, loving Irish family. Everyone talks. Everyone is very close, extended family too. No divorces and lots of fun. My parents modeled a great, happy loving 52-year marriage.

I married somebody with a severely dysfunctional family. Their side is riddled with affairs and everyone is divorced. The struggle is real for people that were unfortunate to never have a healthy model of a loving family and loving parents.

My eyes were opened as to how much family of origin can really mess a person up and the cynicism that comes with it.

I do think happy families and long happy marriages are a dying breed but I do think they are the best for raising well-adjusted people that don’t implode at middle age.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^never works. Somebody will eventually want to leave for one of these new sex toys...and then the one that opened it and lost will regret it. Women don’t age as well. Good luck with that.

Says someone who can’t stay married.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What an obnoxious, self-righteous post. And your family might be fooling you, like Jerry Falwell Jr. fooled the entire Liberty community. You don't know what's happening within someone else's life or marriage.

Yes, I really do. I'm sorry but there has been no infidelity, no lying, no poor money management. There really are people that are nice to each other and have the skills to make a marriage work. And even going through cancer and people in the family dying from war. You are welcome to think as you do, but I'm generally curious how many people actually have the capacity to make it through marriage without major problems that they cause themselves.

You THINK you do. What you're really saying is that you don't *know* of any infidelity, lying or poor money management. Doesn't mean it hasn't happened. Big difference. But keep your judgmental blinders on. You'll feel much better about yourself.

I'm sorry you are not that close to your family. I am and there is legitimate proof that these things haven't happened. Again there really are people that don't have mental issues and trauma to the point of neglecting or harming others. I'm trying to understand how large that population is. I'm sorry for your hurt, I'm sure it was passed down.

NP. You're so clueless. I've been having an affair for 7 years and not a soul knows.

That’s f@cking ridiculous. Who are you Camilla Parker Bowles? Just get a divorce FFS