Some advice for people crazy enough to get married (from a divorce lawyer)

Sorry if this isn't explicitly an "exmormon" topic, but I think it might be relevant and interesting to discuss with this group.

I'm not a marriage or relationship expert, but I am probably an expert on divorces as I've been a divorce attorney on hundreds of cases, representing a wide variety of people (Exmormon, mormon, men, women, old, young, etc). In this process, I get a lot of raw thoughts from people. Sure, it's always exaggerated during a divorce, but I think it is useful. So with that, here is some unsolicited advice for your consideration.

1 - Don't get married. Just kidding. Well, not totally. I've been on cases with the "perfect couple" and cases where both sides were legitimately wonderful. Most of my cases involve people who were at one time madly in love. Many of my cases involved people who married young and had kids fast. Many of my cases involved people who lived together for a long time before marriage. I know this isn't romantic, but I think you should plan on your marriage ending. I think both of you should have the freedom to end things if that is what needs to happen. Just as a personal aside, one of the best things for my relationship with my (now exmormon) wife, is that we honestly assessed whether we wanted to be together anymore, and we decided we do. Will your chance of divorce increase if you both allow yourselves the freedom to walk away? Yes. But so will your chance of a good relationship. I think.

2 - Sex and happiness in a marriage may or may not be connected. If I'm being honest, after you have kids, you'd probably be better off if neither of you needed to have sex. Like ever. Sure, there are always exceptions. I have a friend who has four kids and still gets it on with his wife "more than 4 times a week." And he claims that is their secret to a happy relationship. Maybe it is. I have represented clients who are still doing it regularly right up until (and sometimes after) a divorce. I have clients who haven't had sex in a decade. But the key issue here is that the problem is resentment. Some people will tell you to find someone who shares a similar libido to you, but that is simply absurd. Even if you match-up now, who knows if you will in 2, 5, 10, or 20 years. But the key is to develop the ability to be extremely open and clear in your communication about sex from early on, in a way to avoid resentment. Anger and sadness, if properly communicated, are much less damaging to relationships than resentment and blame.

3 - Gender roles are really important. Now, before your ass tenses up, I'm not saying gender roles are good for society or people, or that certain gender roles are even necessary. What I'm saying is that they are an important factor. If you design your marriage early on based on a set of gender roles, then changes later on can lead to frustration and resentment. If you are thinking about marrying someone (or staying married to them) have a brutal discussion about how fluid you need things to be in that category. I have had so many divorces where two 50+ year olds where a wife viewed herself as a slave her entire life and a husband viewed his wife as an anchor. Now, you might say "Hey, we can just not have well defined roles, and if we are independently happy, then we won't run into those problems." Maybe so, but humans are designed to specialize. We fall into routines and we develop our lives based on those routines, and when the routines change, our life is not set up right to deal with the change.

4 - If you are an ass hole, be an ass hole now. I don't think everyone should be an ass hole. That's not what I'm saying. But if you happen to be an asshole, on the inside, then just be one and let your partner see that. Find someone who can deal with your nature. Can you successfully repress or hold in your ass-hole nature? Maybe. But too often, the "real" you will come out after years of you holding it back, and it will completely blind side your spouse. I was taking the deposition of my client's wife, and as I was going through some very harsh statements she made, I asked her what changed in her relationship that caused her to speak like this. Her answer was "I always thought that, I just never said it before." I don't think it is crucial for young couples to "learn how to fight." I think that is cliche and not helpful. I think it is, however, important for couples to learn how to be honest, and learn how to accept honesty without feeling as though the relationship is in jeopardy.

5 - Children are shitty, and so is teamwork. Imagine you decide to build a business with someone. You invest your heart, soul, and money into the business. Your are proud of the business and you love it, but it constantly causes you stress. It keeps you up at night, you are always worried that you aren't doing what you need to do to care for it. Deep down, it's worth it. You are committed to it. It is part of who you are. Now imagine that you are forced to manage the business with someone you don't really like being around. You don't agree on the best business practices. You don't agree on the definitions of success. You both feel as though the other person isn't carrying their load. For years, you've handled the books and the details and he has handled the marketing and customer service, but the entire time you think that he has been kind of shitty at it. But you stick with it anyway, because trying to divide up the business might just destroy it, and you. Maybe that's a little too "on the nose", but in case you haven't figured it out, I'm talking about kids.

Kids are a terrible reason to stay married. Don't get me wrong, if you have kids, you should probably stay married for them. But it's terrible for your marriage. Why? Because kids often make you unhappy and miserable. Long term, I'm pro kid. All of my clients say "I love my kids, and I wouldn't change anything." But being a team parent with someone you hate is absolutely awful, as far as I can tell.

Also, you may love watching TV, eating, having sex, hiking, playing, and socializing with your partner. But that sure as shit does not mean you will enjoy parenting with them. Basically, you need to be OK with doing all of the parenting AND be Ok with the other person doing it all, and everything in between. Children destroy (not necessarily end) more marriages than porn, adultery, money problems, "growing apart" combined. So if you decide to get married, and you decide to have kids, you either need to be hella flexible, or you need to have a reasonable and agreed upon exit strategy.

In my opinion, divorced couples who are nice to each other are 100 times better at parenting than married couples who are mean to each other.

Well, that's it. If you've read this far, that's kind of surprising. Feel free to share things from your brain.