this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2024
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Imagine the following scenario: you meet someone in college, and when you graduate at 22 you don't want to split up. They say sure, let's live together, but we need to get engaged; if it doesn't work out we can just break it off. After a year you realize your lives are much better together. You decide to get married but not to have kids until you're 30. If it doesn't work out you can divorce, but you sign a prenup and at least no kids would be involved.
If you both have clear and compatible career goals, that scenario saves you a lot of dating drama and gives you valuable support. I wouldn't call someone in that scenario "weird."
Yeah I've noticed at least a lot from my high-school group that dating for about 4 years is a good amount of time, me personally and a lot of close friends seemed to have hit their hardships in a relationship around that 4 year mark. Also moving is a good test about how you do in stress haha
Been married for 10 years now. There's one thing I've found to be the ultimate relationship tester:
Furniture Assembly.
If you can survive assembling a few pieces of IKEA puzzles together it's probably going to last XD
Our way of surviving furniture assembly is for him to Go Away And Let Me Do It, because I can follow directions and he just tries to slap things together without looking xD
I love my husband! Knowing when to just let the other person get on with shit is a pretty good litmus test, I agree, lol.
Maybe it's bad luck, but half the time the instructions are physically impossible to follow on certain steps.
I just don't get this. I've never had any issues putting together furniture or dated anyone who had trouble with it. I can't think of a single ex where furniture assembly was an issue.
I think furniture assembly is more about being able to work together for a common goal and communicate what you need the other person to do and listen to what they need you to do.
For some reason a lot of people struggle to assemble ikea stuff (I honestly don’t know why, I’ve assembled dozens of items and it’s not rocket science). But there’s definitely been moments when I’ve been assembling some shelf and need my wife to assist with a two person step. If the assembly has been frustrating you have a really good test of how well can the two of you communicate through frustration and work together.
So maybe you are great at ikea assembly and don’t have the frustration factor, or you are a wonderful communicator and listener. For a lot of people though it’s that “this is the 12th step, I’m annoyed because I did the 9th step backwards and had to undo some shit, I’ve stripped this fucking screw… I’m gonna slide this piece and you need to guide it past the shelves, past them, you see how it’s hitting the fucking piece of wood, I need it not to do that!!!”
You probably shouldn’t marry everyone you can build a shelf with, but if you can’t effectively communicate when frustrated doing something trivial like building a shelf with someone you should work on that before tying the knot.
^^^^ Exactly what I meant 😅
Better than teaching stick shift?
If anybody still knows what that is!
My wife and I have put many IKEA pieces together over the years, and she got her license at age 24 after I taught her to drive stick. We’ve been together 24 years, this coming Friday.
She leaves me to furniture assembly thankfully.
The ultimate relationship tester is: moving house
Either that or camping setup
What purpose does engagement and marriage serve there? "Must be this financially trapped to continue?"
I think the main point here is people around those ages aren't fully capable of making those kinds of decisions in the first place.
There's a reason why most marriages end in divorce after all.
Get married before you have a clue. Get a clue after being married a couple years. Get a divorce because you realize you had no idea what you were doing.
This is 100% a data-driven fact. It can't apply to everyone, but it's a really great average.
Those who wait until after 25 have a 25% chance of not getting divorced.
The way you phrased it is not quite what the study says.
They're not "25% likely of not divorcing" (which would mean there's a 75% chance of divorce).
They're "25% less likely of divorcing"