"Imagine you have a room of 100 men. If you choose mediocrity — the trifecta of average income, looks and height — you’ll have, statistically, only 13 suitors out of 100 to choose from. Increase your criteria to an attractive man at least 6-feet tall who makes $87,000, and you’re left with only one.
Add another trait — funny, kind, even a political affiliation — and it becomes statistically impossible to find him out of 100 men.
Our fairy-tale view of romance — 88 percent of adults believe in soul mates — has contributed to the fact that although 90 percent of people will marry in their lifetimes, only three in 10 will find enduring love, Tashiro says.
If you’re playing the odds, it’s best to invest in a nice mate instead of a hot or filthy rich one.
Even more so, nice guys tend to stay nice. Looks and money do not come with a lifelong guarantee, while personality traits (i.e. those Big Five) tend to stay constant over a lifetime, according to longitudinal studies.
I think the article is generous. 3 in 10 marriages finding enduring love? I would guess under 1 in 10 is more like it. People get too into the routine, that they don’t know what they’re missing.
Guys like to have pretty wives almost as much as wives love showing off to friends the rock on the finger… make sure you get the prenup.
Or find yourself betting 1/2 your stuff on sub-10% chance of enduring love.
Why is everyone marrying 18 year old HS drop out waitresses (no offense to them)? You live in NYC. If your worry about how much moola you’ll lose in a divorce is keeping you from getting married, go marry somebody who has substantial assets and/or prospects. If you just don’t want to get married, that’s fine, but using the whole divorce thing as an excuse is silly.
I’ve witnessed a few divorces. Most are negotiated out of court. In all honesty, the main concern wealthy people should have is that somebody is marrying them for their money and has no real skill or assets. If you marry somebody that cannot support themselves, then that is when you get screwed…both because they are desperate in a divorce scenario and because they are more likely to see you as a cash cow in the first place.
Go talk to a lawyer if you’re worried about it. That’s what I did. Don’t just believe everything Askmen.com tells you.
The zero net asset assumption for spouses is increasingly untrue. If you are an investment banker making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, you are likely to marry a college graduate from an upper middle class family, who likely has substantial earnings potential in addition to an inheritance that you will share when their family dies. Although one spouse often drops out of the work force, this is usually to support family; the working spouse basically “hires” the non working spouse to stay home and watch the house and kids.
Marriage most likely still has negative NPV, but this is because of the costs of house and family, and not just because the spouse mooches from you.
No doubt that divorce is costly. However, the likelihood of divorce for many people is much lower than 50%. Divorce rates vary a lot by socioeconomic status or other factors. If you make a lot of money, your family generally becomes more stable and your spouse has less incentive to leave you. Thus, affluent people to a certain degree are less likely to experience divorce in the first place.
Even that 50% number people throw around is often mis-interpreted. It’s might be something like 50 new divorces for every 100 new marriages, which is comparing two very different pools of people (those who are married and divorce with those who aren’t married and become married).
If you actually estimate the probability of divorce, conditional on socioeconomic factors (as you mention), length of marriage, and number of marriages each partner has been through, then you’d get a much better estimate. Likelihood of divorce in years 1-3 of marriage is way different than year 25.
i agree as well, i don’t think marrying for money means anything. just because your partner is rich, doesn’t necessarily mean he is going to spend it on you. And even if he does now, it doesn’t mean he will in the future… to live in that kind of fear, i’d rather get a job and live a decent life with a respectable income.
Divorce might be less likely for the group you are describing, but I wouldn’t bet that unfaithfulness is less likely. You marry a college graduate, but fool around with the college dropout.