Different levels of time preference in marriage

[AMarriedMan]

It is often said that opposites can balance each other out and being married to one's opposite can help one consider the opposite point of view. To an extent, that is true as long as the differences aren't too great. Jordan Peterson stresses the importance of having someone in one's life to "contend with" to help one not become blinded by a one-sided way of thinking. I disagree with that. The less need there is to contend with one's spouse, the better. Rarely is one's spouse the only one with whom one has a close relationship with. Children, parents, siblings, business partners and many others form one's social network having important roles in it. Spouses and business partners one can choose and I would say trying to pick them so as to minimize causes of conflict with them is crucial to long-term happiness and success.

I think time preference or the degree of future orientation one has is a huge factor. If one spouse is a long-term thinker and planner and the other is one to take life as it comes and not think or plan in the long term, there will be conflicts. The long-term thinker will feel frustrated at the lack of progress in working towards long-term goals and the more spontaneous person will feel controlled by the long-term thinker.

Choosing one's spouse blindly based on emotion is a terrible way to go about it. There exist dating sites but almost none of them that I know of take any of the stuff that really matters into consideration. I would say limiting one's dating pool to people who are suitable based on rational considerations and then going by emotion is the best possible way to find a spouse.

What do you think? 

[d0nnivain]

I think that works for you so you should do that.  

[mark clemson]

4 hours ago, AMarriedMan said:

The long-term thinker will feel frustrated at the lack of progress in working towards long-term goals and the more spontaneous person will feel controlled by the long-term thinker.

Choosing one's spouse blindly based on emotion is a terrible way to go about it. ... I would say limiting one's dating pool to people who are suitable based on rational considerations and then going by emotion is the best possible way to find a spouse.

What do you think? 

Hmm. People are on a spectrum I think rather than two "buckets". However, I'd say the approach you suggest appeals specifically to the LT thinker who is looking for a LT relationship. Presumably there are those who aren't but simply wish to date (e.g. they know that long term they plan to move to some other country, so they are only looking ST for the time being).

The very spontaneous type of person probably simply "doesn't do things that way."

Certainly plenty of spontaneous relationships fail but then again the vast majority of relationships fail.

I think this approach COULD work sometimes. But I think there is such a thing as finding a person who "checks all the boxes on paper" but with whom there simply isn't any chemistry. So that would be a potential trap for this approach. Particularly if one became overly invested in the approach and tried to "make it work" with the wrong person (for whom there really was very little "chemistry"). A ticket to a very dry and humdrum existence potentially if one wasn't willing to change course.

Sometimes the "emotional chemistry" approach works, as well. After all both people are moving targets (people change over time) and it's possible for them to "settle in" together over time, especially if both are flexible. Ultimately any LTR needs flexibility and ability/willingness to compromise in some areas, due to the "moving target" aspect of life.

[AMarriedMan]

On 7/8/2021 at 7:48 PM, mark clemson said:

Hmm. People are on a spectrum I think rather than two "buckets". However, I'd say the approach you suggest appeals specifically to the LT thinker who is looking for a LT relationship. Presumably there are those who aren't but simply wish to date (e.g. they know that long term they plan to move to some other country, so they are only looking ST for the time being).

The very spontaneous type of person probably simply "doesn't do things that way."

Certainly plenty of spontaneous relationships fail but then again the vast majority of relationships fail.

I think this approach COULD work sometimes. But I think there is such a thing as finding a person who "checks all the boxes on paper" but with whom there simply isn't any chemistry. So that would be a potential trap for this approach. Particularly if one became overly invested in the approach and tried to "make it work" with the wrong person (for whom there really was very little "chemistry"). A ticket to a very dry and humdrum existence potentially if one wasn't willing to change course.

Sometimes the "emotional chemistry" approach works, as well. After all both people are moving targets (people change over time) and it's possible for them to "settle in" together over time, especially if both are flexible. Ultimately any LTR needs flexibility and ability/willingness to compromise in some areas, due to the "moving target" aspect of life.

Obviously people are on a spectrum.

I know having the right personality and emotional chemistry are two separate things. However, the "emotional chemistry" approach and the "ticks all the boxes" approach are not opposites. The killer idea is to LAYER them by PRESELECTING only those people who tick all the boxes and ONLY THEN going for the emotional chemistry. You can't have emotional chemistry without meeting in person. And when meeting in person you can easily have emotional chemistry with people who are wrong in some important way. But using the method described in the above, you make sure that if you have mutual emotional chemistry with someone, that person will also have to the qualities that really matter in the long term but that may not have much in the way of emotional weight in the mate selection process.

Edited July 9, 2021 by AMarriedMan

[mark clemson]

Yes, I think that would improve the odds of this approach working (as well as making the person you get out of it more appealing even if the resulting relationship doesn't pan out LT).

I think certain dating sites, e.g. Match have already been attempting to do essentially this with their extended questionnaire and algorithm. Then it gives you supposedly your best matches within a reasonable distance and so you're only dating people you're likely to mesh with well LT. Not sure if they've diluted their approach as I don't keep up on what these sites do, but that was I think their whole original premise.

There are also those who attempt to game the system with these initial questionnaires, so that would be something to look out for.

Edited July 9, 2021 by mark clemson

[mark clemson]

xxxxx - deleted errant post

Edited July 9, 2021 by mark clemson

[Lotsgoingon]

Sure, some level of complementarity is great. The people in a couple have different strengths and weaknesses. But that's only half the issue. The other part of the issue is how each person thinks about their own habits and preferences and how they accept/don't accept the other's preferences. Another issue is flexibility.

But I agree with you: there is a very dumb version of this thinking that taken to extremes really makes no effing sense. A long-term unemployed person getting with the opposite of a very successfully employed person. Not. A Ph.d. in quantum physics pairing up with someone illiterate. Not.

Highly organized person pairing up with an extremely unorganized person. Can be done, is done all the time, but requires work and tolerance and flexibility on the part of both partners.

The truth is even if you aim for similarity (which I think is fine) two people are always going to have differences. So you don't need to make any effort to find someone who is different. Try to pick the most similar person you can and you'll still end up with someone with all kinds of huge differences. 

 

Edited July 13, 2021 by Lotsgoingon

[AMarriedMan]

On 7/13/2021 at 9:27 PM, Lotsgoingon said:

The truth is even if you aim for similarity (which I think is fine) two people are always going to have differences. So you don't need to make any effort to find someone who is different. Try to pick the most similar person you can and you'll still end up with someone with all kinds of huge differences. 

 

You're absolutely right, which is why I think it's a good idea to identify your deal breakers and try to avoid starting a relationship with someone who has such qualities.

 

[Lotsgoingon]

25 minutes ago, AMarriedMan said:

You're absolutely right, which is why I think it's a good idea to identify your deal breakers and try to avoid starting a relationship with someone who has such qualities.

 

The challenge is to be brutally honest about those deal breakers. So easy to overlook them in the early intoxication of a relationship. 

[AMarriedMan]

On 7/22/2021 at 9:34 PM, Lotsgoingon said:

The challenge is to be brutally honest about those deal breakers. So easy to overlook them in the early intoxication of a relationship. 

This is PRECISELY why people are STUPID to start relationships the natural way by saying hi to an attractive perfect stranger and taking it from there. 

My ENTIRE POINT was that one should PRESELECT one's pool of potential relationship partners by finding them through a dating app of some sort where they go through a bunch of serious personality tests designed to uncover personality traits, life goals or other important stuff like that. If you do that, you will have WEEDED OUT the people, some of whose personality traits or other qualities are DEAL BREAKERS to you. It will be impossible to even end up in "the early intoxication of a relationship" with anyone who is not suitable for you unless you or them have lied about something.

[basil67]

I've been with my partner for nearly 30 thirty years and I've often said that we fit together like pieces of a jigsaw, each of us balancing out the other.   I'm impulsive but he's slow to get around to stuff, so the balance is we get things done with thought and in a timely manner.   I worry about things which may not happen, but he's Mr Cool so he is a calming influence.   I'm an introvert and he's an extrovert, so the balance is that I get out and see people but he doesn't kill himself with partying.   He's a professional but I left school at 16, but this has meant that I wasn't sad to walk away from a career for raising our family and longer term, being a carer to our disabled child. 

That said, we also have a lot of similarity.  We share the same political views, we share a love of interesting foods, we parent in the same way, we are aligned in what retirement should look like, we like the house kept to a similar degree of tidy.

To summarise, I think that taking the idea of opposites to extremes will result in failure.  But pretty much anything taken to extremes will have a poor outcome (hubby and I are also aligned in our views on moderation being the key to life).    So 'opposites' are good'.  But OPPOSITES not so much.    And frankly, if someone was my absolute OPPOSITE, I probably wouldn't get past the third date, so pre screening would not be required.  

 

[AMarriedMan]

On 7/24/2021 at 9:47 AM, basil67 said:

I've been with my partner for nearly 30 thirty years and I've often said that we fit together like pieces of a jigsaw, each of us balancing out the other.   I'm impulsive but he's slow to get around to stuff, so the balance is we get things done with thought and in a timely manner.   I worry about things which may not happen, but he's Mr Cool so he is a calming influence.   I'm an introvert and he's an extrovert, so the balance is that I get out and see people but he doesn't kill himself with partying.   He's a professional but I left school at 16, but this has meant that I wasn't sad to walk away from a career for raising our family and longer term, being a carer to our disabled child. 

That said, we also have a lot of similarity.  We share the same political views, we share a love of interesting foods, we parent in the same way, we are aligned in what retirement should look like, we like the house kept to a similar degree of tidy.

To summarise, I think that taking the idea of opposites to extremes will result in failure.  But pretty much anything taken to extremes will have a poor outcome (hubby and I are also aligned in our views on moderation being the key to life).    So 'opposites' are good'.  But OPPOSITES not so much.    And frankly, if someone was my absolute OPPOSITE, I probably wouldn't get past the third date, so pre screening would not be required.  

 

There are qualities that may not manifest in the first months or years of a relationship. It is common for people not to discuss their life goals and values during courtship enough or even to have clarified these things to themselves. I think it would be very useful for people to take these things more seriously. This website is a testament to that. A lot of people discuss problems that may have been avoided by getting to know their prospective partners better before forging close emotional ties with them.

[basil67]

I can't imagine not discussing goals and values!  Heck, I knew that hubby wanted children within 2 dates

[Daisydooks]

20 hours ago, basil67 said:

I can't imagine not discussing goals and values!  Heck, I knew that hubby wanted children within 2 dates

I didnt even meet my H face to face before I knew he wanted children. And I wouldnt have even gone on a first date if he didnt. Lol. What the heck would the point be???? Marriage and children had to be 2 big boxes we checked off before I even cared for a date. Maybe that's weird nowadays? Haha But for me it wasnt even worth meeting him if he didnt want the same things long term that I did.