"Marriage counselors tell us that couples frequently tie the knot without discussing the core matters that can cement or sunder their marriage: finances, children, religion."
Which is why people should live together before getting married. If it doesn't work out, it's a whole lot easier to undo than a divorce.
Living together is no guarantee that a couple will discuss those things. The solution to the problem of not discussing things isn't to live together, it's to discuss those things.
Instead of living together, travel together. Few things more than travel force you to make decisions together involving money, schedules, priorities and more. It's also easier to extricate yourself during or after a holiday than from a joint living arrangement.
But living together will force you to be with the other in their state that you will share 90% of your life together.
For example if they're happy not to wash the dishes for a whole week, you'll find that out and can argue about it when living together, but when travelling you might stay in a hotel where others do the dishes, or might stay for short enough period of time that you'll never find this out.
Hah! You just typed my comment. OPs is only another facet of being in a relationship and definitely a good one. But for some, traveling often is not a real option, and the majority of the relationship is spent doing mundane things like washing the dishes, or working out, or finding time to create space and learning how to settle into roles together.
I'd also recommend doing some projects together. Are you there type that likes to wing it, and your partner is the type to careful read the all the directions? You want to find out these sort of temperament issues before getting married.
That's one of those ideas that sounds great in theory, but turns out to work out badly in practice.
In fact, people who live together before marriage are more likely to divorce, not less.
Look at it this way: you move in with someone you're in love with, but haven't made a substantial commitment to. However, now you're sharing rent, utilities, etc., and are monogamous in the sense that you're not dating anyone else.
Time passes, and you find you're not compatible... but all those side commitments you've made become really hard to undo... and it looks easier to just stay together.
On the other hand, if you're willing to take the time to ensure the relationship is sound before marriage, you're more likely to stay that way.
> There was still a slightly increased risk of divorce among cohabitors, but Kuperberg says this is explained by other factors. For instance, research shows that people who cohabit are more likely to have less education, more likely to have previously lived with another partner, and less likely to have lived with both parents as a child—all characteristics that put them at a higher risk of divorce to begin with.
Fascinating. I find the middle one pretty interesting: that "more likely to have previously lived with another partner" is correlated with divorce.
Off the top of my head I can think of a number of possible explanations: some people may never consider divorce for moral/religious reasons, some people may be better or worse than others at entering into and maintaining long term relationships, some people have learned from one or more prior experiences and are less tolerant of bad relationships[0], etc.
[0] i'd like to believe it's largely this one, but maybe that's because i've spent too much time reading relationship advice threads
> For instance, research shows that people who cohabit are more likely to have less education, more likely to have previously lived with another partner
But that's not a separate factor. If the whole point of cohabiting is to try things out and provide an easier dissolution if they work, the higher risk of cohabitors having cohabited with someone else before isn't orthogonal to the decision to cohabitate, its central to it.
> In fact, people who live together before marriage are more likely to divorce, not less.
In addition to what others have said, using divorce rate as a metric of relationship success is itself a flawed method of looking at the problem.
As an example, many folks consider divorce to be an immoral act. They would rather sit in an unhappy marriage for decades than get divorced. Thus, it could easily be that those willing to cohabit prior to marriage also tend to be those who do not think divorce is an immoral act, so that the statistical observation you're making here (assuming it's even true) is really just a reflection of the underlying beliefs of two different groups of people regarding the act of divorce.
So, you disagree with the more likely to divorce statement, then? Because your 'Look at it this way' points seem to be in favour of living together before marriage, suggesting it doesn't make divorce more likely.
Do you have more information about that statistic (people who live together before marriage being more likely to divorce). It sounds so counterintuitive, and I'd be really interested to learn more about how they controlled for (eg) arranged marriages, or generally the covariance between stigma of divorce and stigma against living together before marriage.
I think it's probable that they did control for these things... but it seems interesting.
The whole marriage/divorce thing is a artifact of history.
It comes out of a time when keeping the paperwork to figure out inheritance was difficult to put it mildly. So instead one put on a formal event before witnesses.
And because back then the line between government and religion was downright non-existing, the formal event was given a religious meaning.
And so we have the mess we are still dealing with today...
Marriage and religion are both prehistoric. They are cultural universals, present wherever you look.
The ubiquity of marriage across vastly disparate cultures means either that there's a strong force compelling all societies to develop it, or it's so old that we took it out of Africa with us.
> If it doesn't work out, it's a whole lot easier to undo than a divorce.
Are you sure? It seems to me the paperwork involved is a whole lot easier than the emotions involved. You aren't really saving much head/heart ache by living together first as a trial.
It takes a lot less time, effort, and emotions to simply discuss the things first. Plus you can meet a lot more people in that time, vs living with each one as a trial.
I'd suggest that discussions of finances, children, religion are not really "casual relationship" topics of conversations. If you're talking about having kids you're fairly involved at that point, and a subsequent breakup is going to have some level of pain.
You might say "so is living together" but I know people who started living together just because they are already having sex so might as well combine finances on the rent and groceries and they don't really view it as a huge step.
Are you sure? It seems to me the paperwork involved is a whole lot easier than the emotions involved. You aren't really saving much head/heart ache by living together first as a trial.
Not heart ache, but you'd be saving a lot of headaches by living together before marriage. Finances these days... retirement accounts, who paid what into the house... It can be a huge mess.
Yes, probably by at least one trip to a lawyer and at least one trip to court, regardless of relative difficulty of dealing with the paperwork and the emotions.
Kind of, until you consider common law marriage, which in this country at least(canada) can be just as messy. WHere I live, if you live with someone for 6 months, you're considered common law. I've had friends lose half their apartment over a break up.
Or: work at having those discussions, even if it's difficult at first and less enjoyable than other activities together.
Pray together, go to church together (yes, I realize not everyone prays and/or goes to church). Discover points of contention and find the time and will to discuss them in a manner that's constructive, even (or especially) if it takes several attempts.
Make friends and spend time with married couples in various stages of their married lives: recently married, with infants and young children, mature couples with teenagers or whose kids have flown the nest.
Be open to life, and encourage one another in the lifelong struggle to be less self-centered and more self-giving.
why not both? I know a few couples where one person often has their own place, but is never there. They keep it so they can technically say that they aren't living together with their SO. They're usually from a religious family and afraid of being judged by their relatives for 'living in sin'.
Some persons may have a sense that the faith tradition in which they were raised discourages cohabitation (e.g. considering it to be morally problematic), but: they're not sure why that's the case, they want to be with their SO, they wonder what's the best way to prepare for life together as a married couple (per the comment to which I replied originally).
So, on the one hand, I encourage such persons to learn more about why their religion (and/or the religion of their parents) teaches what it teaches[+]. And on the other, to recognize that there are good ways to prepare for life together that don't involve cohabitation.
> Which is why people should live together before getting married. If it doesn't work out, it's a whole lot easier to undo than a divorce.
In some ways, its harder, since one of the things legal marriage and divorce provides is default and orderly ways of assigning property rights and disentangling those things that have become entangled. Informal cohabitation and shared use of property without clear identification of ownership, gift status, etc., can only seem "easier" to resolve because its so difficult that its often not worth the effort to challenge whoever first effects a division of possession as the relationship collapses.
I'll advocate for: see a marriage counselor regularly! Before getting married if possible, and at least every couple of years after. Many people take more seriously the maintenance of their car than the maintenance of their marriage.
There's nothing magic about what you'll learn, and a lot seems pretty elementary. But go before you have a problem! This is one of the best things my partner and I have done. We know that if we have an issue there's someone we can talk to for help, and because we go regularly there's no stigma with going.
Tongue in cheek, but this a good analogy for transaction costs and signaling theory.
I drive my wife nuts by keeping my order secret, but eight times out of ten we end up sharing everything. Unless she's eating a whole fried fish in which case I just stare politely like Tom Hanks in Splash.
But damn, people, why let FOMO drive so much angst and gamesmanship at a meal? You're hungry and probably not thinking straight. There's no dishonor in two people ordering the same dish. Just pick something and stick to your guns.
Imagine you were ordering for yourself and the restaurant served half portions. Would you really order two copies of the same thing?
Diminishing returns in food enjoyment are real, we also enjoy variety for it's own sake. You get less of both when your order contains duplicates.
And that's when you know what you're getting -- if you share food, both people ordering the same new dish increases the downside risks dramatically for little upside benefit.
Sure. If you crave variety as a standalone good, by all means mix it up. I would probably still ask for two orders of yuca frita as my sides. Hell, I did that last week. :)
There's an interesting experiment mentioned in Predictably Irrational that suggests you should simply order your first choice and not worry about other people at the table. There's an odd tendency to favor variety in a restaurant setting, which means the people who order last opt for their second or third choices. That is by definition suboptimial.
It's only suboptimal if "ordering last" is a thing. The article notes a better strategy of reaching consensus before ordering, and then ordering all the items together. That way by placing an order first you don't implicitly force someone who is ordering later (and sharing with you) to mitigate risks by picking a second favorite.
I'm a picky eater and generally see one thing on the menu I really want. Nothing bothers me more than when someone demands the table does family style and I get 1/5th of what I wanted and 4/5ths of crap.
Is this becoming the Inception of explanations? I had to look up Baader_Meinhof Phenomenon.
"The illusion in which a word, a name, or other thing that has recently come to one's attention suddenly seems to appear with improbable frequency shortly afterwards (not to be confused with the recency illusion or selection bias). Colloquially, this illusion is known as the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon."
Nice article. My wife and I have a strategy. We usually eat at really nice restaurants, but not the super expensive ones. We each order a main dish that the other person also likes because we usually share 1/4 or 1/2 with the other person. To save money so we can eat out more often, we tend to not get appetizers. We don't drink alcohol which also saves a lot of money. Not getting variety by sharing our main dish seems stupid, and we are quick and tidy when we move food between plates. We tend to mostly just go to 4 or 5 local restaurants so it is nice to be known by the waiters and owner.
When I am with friends, no wife present, I like to order pretty much random things from the menu and not get stuck in a rut.
Our best food strategy though is to cook at home because we both really enjoy cooking. We eat out frequently, but it is almost always with friends or family.
Sorry. I know we don't want even harmless jokes, but it is harmless and is one of very many on HN (I'm surprised this one got a moderator response, but whatever.) I'll try to control my urge next time.
you may well prefer “the first bite of sole meuniere” to “the 20th bite of ribeye,”
seems to be a common theme in McArdle's articles on food, but for me it never seems to be true. If I have the same thing day after day I'll get bored of it, but I'm not sure that I've ever gotten bored of something while I was eating it.
Another useful economic choice, at least in the USA right now, is to only eat half your order and save the rest for the next day's lunch or dinner.
I'd guess that the cost of food has not risen as much as the cost of labor, and so in the last twenty years or so (again, in the USA) restaurants have been giving out larger and larger meals, perhaps in hopes that you'll see them as a better deal and eat there.
My wife and I fall in the "weird diet" and "allergies" bins (which more determines the restaurant), but we share bites occasionally.
>portion sizes in the US are huge and usually enough for two meals
I see this claim made a lot. Certainly, some restaurants serve large portions--especially bulked up with cheap ingredients like potatoes. But I travel quite a bit, including internationally, and I don't really come out of restaurants in other countries commonly thinking "oh the portions are tiny here."
It is true that some cuisines are built around the idea of having a number of courses and/or mains so, in that case, one dish is going to be smaller. But, at least at most of the places where I eat, I don't find US restaurants to universally serve abnormally large portions.
> The problem is that people tend to just eat it all because, well, it's there
And if you were raised with parents who always made you eat everything on your plate, it's also physiologically embedded that you should eat everything.
Not if it's putting you over your daily caloric limit. The damage being overweight does to you (and society from healthcare burden) in the long term is much worse than just throwing the food away.
My experience of 25+ years (YMMV): I really don't care much what I eat at any given meal so I just order what I think my wife really wants. If she orders that, I order the next most likely dish.
21 years for me and this drives me crazy because 99% of the time I don't want whatever thing she actually ordered. I want the thing I ordered that she wants.
I'm not sure tapas are becoming more common in the US but one does see a fair number of them in large cities these days. I really do like the small plates and, especially when I'm travelling, my eating schedule is often messed up enough that I want something lighter.
My only objection to tapas is that they often seem like an excuse to charge 1/2 as much for 1/4-1/3 as much food. That's probably not completely fair as there's probably less "filler" than a typical main has. In any case though I find tapas meals tend to be on the pricey side.
> My only objection to tapas is that they often seem like an excuse to charge 1/2 as much for 1/4-1/3 as much food.
It absolutely is. Also keep in mind that profit margins in restaurants are razor-thin, and prices really should be higher (and they are getting higher in reality).
On the plus side, tapas restaurants are usually 'gastronomic' restaurants, so more effort is put into every dish than a typical meat + 3 veg main course.
It happened to us a few times. We are asians. Interestingly, one time we got the disgusted look from an Asian waiter in an Italian restaurant.
Also we started to bring our children to good restaurants of different cuisines when they could sit through dinners. (Of course, no restaurants that explicitly say "no children".) We shared all the dishes. Well, it is more that we encourage our children to try our orders. They have developed very good tastes on foods and the appreciation on different cuisines. They both started ordering "adult" dishes at 9 years old. No more chicken tenders, mac and cheese, etc. It is really one of the best family time that we sit together and all enjoy trying local cuisines when travel aboard.
Fun article. For my wife and me, she is picky about dishes and I am picky about cuisines, so usually I pick the restaurant and then she picks two dishes and we share. We can veto restaurants and dishes respectively, but vetoes are relatively rare. And all of this is informal, of course.
The article is pretty correct, and I like the comparison to trade and countries. But I can't help but think that this is something that happens naturally to a couple. I don't know many married couples that are stuck in Stage 1, and I don't think it's a huge revolution to get to sharing two entrees freely.
How fitting that the author calls the 4th option Communism. In Chinese culture, food is shared. Maybe not when you go out on a date - but if you are dining out as an entire family, giant plates of food are ordered through consensus of the table, placed on a lazy susan and everyone gets what they desire.
The lazy susan is more south-east Chinese; you can find it everywhere but it's less common outside of the Fujian-Cantonese zone. It's also more common at big banquets in private rooms rather than normal restaurants, where perhaps one or two tables may feature it but others would have different fixtures or designs (smaller, square, rectangle, hotpot or grill-style with a hole in the middle, etc.).
It's a good way to dine. In western dining culture you'd call that 'family style' service, or tapas style (colloquial usage, not the original meaning of tapas).
My wife and I always preferred this style of ordering because we can get a large variety of items, as well as have whatever portion we desire (some things I prefer so eat most of, and vice-versa).
Heck, even when I go out with coworkers or friends, we usually dine like this. Good way to be social and sample variety.
I find it amusing that each dining strategy is associated with an economic one, implying that they have similar advantages and inconvenients, except for communism. Was suggesting that communism is a viable economic strategy a bit too much for Bloomberg, even tongue-in-cheek ?
Not presented as an option: ordering only one main/entrée to share. Hopefully just because it was a humorous article, but with portion sizes in the US, there's no need to each order an entrée.
Wife and I dine out as autarkies and have had no trouble with it so far. The author seems to imply that the only reasonable thing there is is sharing everything. I strongly disagree with that.
No comment on this "blog post" or whatever this is. But related fun fact: If you/your company has a Bloomberg terminal, there's a relatively obscure proprietary Bloomberg restaurant guide with reviews and ratings.
You're being downvoted because you clearly didn't read the article, despite your claim that you did. It's a funny post about how people order and share, not about bill-splitting.
I find it amazing how some people can make uninformed claims about something, and when their "knowledge" is called into question, instead of backing down, they choose to double-down and insist that they are in fact informed. All the while, plainly verifiable evidence is staring everyone in the face that they don't know what they're talking about.
Adversarial? I don't believe you read the article. The article talked at length about why having an adversarial approach to dinner was a poor choice, and concluded with the idea that couples should practice 'full communism' at dinner, i.e., full cooperation when choosing the food and sharing it freely when it arrives.
It turns out that the steaks that my flatmates eat in a well balanced diet are much smaller than most pictures I can find online.
I'll be honest, if my meal was so large that a 20th bite of something that was a third of the plate was coming up I would be much more inclined to share my plate than I am now.
It depends on the restaurant. At a steakhouse, for example, you'll commonly see quite large portions. There was a 24 oz prime rib on the menu at the steakhouse I visited last week.
My favorite: "Beef House" on the Illinois-Indiana border, Hwy 74. Its this enormous rambling place, parking lot like a basketball arena. Menu is the size of a newspaper page, with ribeyes of different sizes splashed across the center of the page. From 8 to 20 oz. Tables have captain's chairs with wheels, presumably so they can roll you out to your car after the meal.
Which is why people should live together before getting married. If it doesn't work out, it's a whole lot easier to undo than a divorce.