is there something wrong with modern day romantic relationships? (1 Viewer)

ameraal

ameraal

la loi de murphy
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sorry to go carrie bradshaw levels of low brow on you, moopy, but in the last couple of months i've seen a number of my closest friends in relationships break up and/or tell me they're utterly miserable in their relationships.

i was recently thinking how i can't muster up one couple i know in a relationship i would like to be in. maybe that just says something about me, or maybe i flock around people with poor attachment styles but it truly looks like most coupled either mildly despise or plain can't stand one another or are utterly confused if they're with the right person.

i keep struggling with giving advice (they all seem to be after it) but i always seem to err towards them giving it a bit more effort with their current partner (considering some even have small kids). and i don't know if i'm wrong.

is this a generational thing (they're mostly between 35 and 40)? have we been brainwashed into romanticising relationships and loading them with unfair expectations? or is it consumerism that's got us always gagging for something new? is it social media and dating apps? have people just become selfish and plain dumb (three of them tried to convince me earlier that a day is now shorter than it was in 2012)? or have they gotten smarter and started to refuse to settle?

or is everything fine and dandy with your/people's relationship(s) around you?

eventually all the pieces fall into place. until then, laugh at the confusion, live for the moment, and know that everything happens for a reason.

(i googled that last bit)
 
Oh I agree 100%. The past few weeks I have been spending a lot of time with a friend as she came home from work early to find her children in bed home alone. She text her husband to say she was just finishing work, and would be home in 5 minutes. She walked out the back door to see if she could see where he had been and saw him leaving a single females house who lives 3 doors down from her house. He has been having an affair with this woman for the past 18 months. She sold her house in another town and started privately renting the house 3 doors down from my friend around 6 months ago so when my friend was working they could have secret rendezvous. They contacted each other through a dating app.

Makes me sick to my stomach.
 
I’ve got a lot of mates who are in varying stages of ending marriage. I think the only thing it says is that people are more comfortable separating these days, compared to 2 or 3 generations back when it was taboo.

I do think a lot of people succumb to the ideal they leave school, study, get a job and settle down. They then hit mid 30s and think ‘what the fuck’ and it all goes tits up
 
On a personal level I have been married twice. My first husband (father of my children)was fantastic at first, but after we had our son he got incredibly cold. I suspected him of cheating, but he made me out to be silly and mind games ensued. I eventually caught him when I was almost broken and got an inner strength from the fact that I wasn’t going crazy. We divorced, and I got a nice settlement and we now only speak if it’s anything to do with the kids.

My second marriage was totally different. He was younger than me, and made me feel attractive again. Unfortunately, he did not have any aspirations in life and after we got married he stopped working and wanted to become a house husband and bleed off of me. I told him how I was feeling, and he said that he could never live up to be the person I wanted him to be. I fell out of love with him, and looking back I am not even sure how much I loved him, and he was probably a rebound. He is gorgeous and the sex was amazing but it just wasn’t enough. So here I am, 45 and in the throws of a new relationship, but I think I have lost faith in marriage.
 
Sorry I went off on a tangent there with my life story. I agree with Ron in that I think it is a lot more acceptable now to get out if things are not working out. I would always say you have to work at a relationship as of course you are going to get on each other’s nerves from time to time, but it really isn’t always easy.
 
Relationships have become disposable as fuck, especially in the western world, so people are always looking for 'someone better'. It's all one big game of musical chairs.

I wouldn't say there's anything "wrong" with romantic relationships though, but I do feel like the POLITICS of relationships make everything so complex. There's so much screening and SIFTING you have to do. So much pretension you have to defog. And even then you could've still just been wasting your time.
 
Is it really that relationships have become "disposable as fuck", or that attitudes toward infidelity and romance and good behaviour have changed? I don't imagine for instance that people cheated less 50 years ago, but there was a prevailing attitude that women should probably accept their husbands' infidelities because eventually they'll get bored and come back and breaking up the family home by leaving would make her the bad guy. Over the last few decades feminism and changing norms have told us it's less OK for men (or women) to cheat, and now everyone is empowered to leave when their partner does the dirty, to borrow some tabloid lingo. You could see the pursuit of a more idealistic relationship as more romantic if anything, not more disposable.

I also think that the last generation and mine in particular are probably as focused on success elsewhere and making money as on their relationships, so maybe they put less work in. Maybe we're also more entitled and expect something perfect because we think our friends on Instagram have that. But I don't think a refusal to settle for any old shit is inherently a bad thing.
 
but seriously, debating over what time to take the trash out, whether to watch the Chase or not , how to do the washing up etc..just to get laid - that's gotta be for saddoes...
 
well, if they are long term and people live together, then yes, this sort of sad shite goes on!
 
So instead of being a 'saddo', what do you do? Perpetual isolation or do you live a Peter Stringfellow life?

I'm not 100% convinced you're not Peter Stringfellow, now that I think about it.
 
I split up with my partner of 15 years when we hit the second half of our 30s. A lot of people I know have also split in that 35-45 bracket. I think it’s obviously an age thing and panic thing, is this what I want? Get out while young enough to start again.

I think modern relationships and single people in this dating app era are summed up perfectly by a lyric in Jewel’s ‘Intuition’:

“You look at me
but you're not quite sure
Am I it or could you get more?”
 
So I was with my ex for 7 years and I genuinely thought we'd be together forever. When that ended I made a promise to myself that I'd never consider getting married, nor buy a house with anyone ever again. And even though its 3 and a half years later, and I've moved on, I still firmly believe that.

I see so many of my friends jumping in to buying houses together or getting married and it's alarming. While I totally support them and am of course happy for them, at the back of my head I always have this niggle that what happened to me might happen to them.
 
To answer the question, yes, I think there is something wrong with modern day society and monogamy.
 
SDF said:
So I was with my ex for 7 years and I genuinely thought we'd be together forever. When that ended I made a promise to myself that I'd never consider getting married, nor buy a house with anyone ever again. And even though its 3 and a half years later, and I've moved on, I still firmly believe that.

I see so many of my friends jumping in to buying houses together or getting married and it's alarming. While I totally support them and am of course happy for them, at the back of my head I always have this niggle that what happened to me might happen to them.
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Yes 3 and a half years later I’ve bought my own place and still can’t imagine ever wanting to share my life or space with anyone to that level again. I’m also in a bit of an awkward space in that I don’t want a boyfriend but NSA is not my thing either. Though of course I do have to indulge in the latter occasionally.
 
Neo-Fawkes said:
but seriously, debating over what time to take the trash out, whether to watch the Chase or not , how to do the washing up etc..just to get laid - that's gotta be for saddoes...
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Or you could live on your own, take your own trash out, wash your own pots, watch what you want on telly and eventually die in your own filth and be eaten by your nineteen pet cats and only get found when a neighbour calls the police about the stench emanating from your bedsit. That's sad.

If you think that being in a relationship is all about the dross you've written above "just to get laid" then you have no idea what a relationship is and will probably never have a decent one and I pity you for that.
 
Floppet said:
Or you could live on your own, take your own trash out, wash your own pots, watch what you want on telly and eventually die in your own filth and be eaten by your nineteen pet cats and only get found when a neighbour calls the police about the stench emanating from your bedsit. That's sad.
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and now I feel seen...
 
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