2) I laughed when I saw that, talk about the most American possible way to end this post. In the genre of "I'm having kidney surgery so will be slow to reply to emails for the next few hours."
Counter-example: One time I had a virtual first date with a girl, we played Minecraft together. We both had a good time, I came out wanting more, she told me that the Minecraft date had made her realize we weren't compatible for some reason.
So the Minecraft magic is powerful, but it's not quite omnipotent.
Sounds like it's doing important revealing work on compatibility, and I'm sorry to hear that it didn't work out for you with that particular woman, but better to find out early than late?
Did you want to continue to be in a relationship with someone who turned out just not to like you? Because I spent a couple of years in a relationship with someone I just didn’t like. I don’t think she pines for me, considering she dumped me over the phone on her birthday.
My husband, who games, has the exact same attitude as you here. He's pretty happy with me being ignorant about but affirming of his gaming (he thought he might have to quit upon finding a woman to marry). For my part, I have no interest in playing video games, but I sometimes enjoy watching him play some action adventure ones. I have fun also looking up whatever game he's playing and finding forums of people talking about it and reading their opinions off to him as if they were mine. His responses are always hilarious in large part because he also knows that I have no idea what the people in the gaming forum are talking about.
I don't know how this man does all the things he does. Like seriously how can you write this much, have a job and play videogames. I do not understand.
Yes -- you could have made this a lot more clear!! Maybe edit in "mutual friend Aella" or something like that? The eye skims ahead to the the tweet image.
Me also, I guess when you read the first sentence you start looking for the wife and then you see the screenshot and it kinda fills the information hole or something
Congratulations! My wife and I also played online games together while remote dating for a bit, although the cause was my work and her school in different states. It's always nice to know that your relationship can flourish without the easy fixes of physical proximity.
Congratulations :) as one of the aforementioned people who've been reading the blog ever since it was about how impossible it was to have a date, I'm really happy about this.
(Also thank you; I've been depressed about dating lately and this gives me some hope).
I used Hinge and eventually, after its algorithms learned my preferences, seem to have found someone really quite spookily compatible with me. You should try it.
I have tried it (actually got a date for this weekend through it). It's weirdly inconsistent in quality (ranges from giving me twenty suggestions in a row who are overtly wrong to, earlier this week, showing me my ex), but it does give you a nontrivial number of micromarriages.
Many congratulations, Scott - and, as someone married for 47 years, 1) have the difficult conversations 2) acknowledge when you've got it wrong & 3) be prepared to laugh at yourself.
Can you give an idea of what those terms mean for non-knowers? From context I assume it's something like object-level meanings, versus more universal generalized lessons, something like that...?
Good for you! That metaphor of sliding into a black hole with increasing feelings of dread and bitterness, or a newly-born star with increasing feelings of euphoria and amazement, is pretty apt. Been through the first one, and have had hints of the second one - but like you said, it's worth the persistence. Best wishes for the future.
Yes! We need your genes preserved. Maybe 8 kids? (My first child is due this month and I'm trying to get other people to have children to assuage my fear(s))
It's not nearly as bad as the world makes it out to be. You'll feel like you're never going to adjust to the sleep-loss, and then suddenly your body adjusts for you.
Congratulations! I got married last year to the first guy I ever dated - and we met when we were both putting our lunches in the fridge at my internship. He asked good questions about my research and then I started going to him to whiteboard algorithm problems and it snowballed from there.
Somehow it's hard for me to imagine "Scott, one of the brightest intellectuals and bloggers in the world", "Scott, a guy who attends weird naked parties", and "Scott, a man who takes the risk of marriage in 2022 driven by the metaphysical/romantic motivation" to be the same person, but I wish you all the best. :)
Do you not know any happily long term partnered (but unmarried) men? Or are they all really genuinely less happy seeming than the ones who decided to get married?
I ask because I see it as kind of trivially true that for people who prefer long term partnerships, being in one is a net happiness improvement.
But I don't see marriage as playing a significant role in that equation amongst the men in my social circle.
Congratulations! What a funny, interesting and very moving text! And thank you so much for the beautiful picture at the end :-) I wish you the very best and some more!
Congratulations! May you have many years of joy together.
Re: Dating. I tell people who get frustrated that dating is about failure. You go on dates, they don't work out. You fail. You learn from it. And eventually you stop failing and you settle down with the right person, and it's great. (I do envy the people who marry their high school sweethearts and live together forever.)
Re: Micromarriages. Good concept! To meet the right people you have to leave yourself open to opportunities, and seize them when they come up. In August of 2004 I sat down on a plane flight and started talking to a cute girl. In August of 2005 we got married and she moved across country to be with me. Seventeen years and five kids later we're managing quite well.
The last thing: Marriage is about commitment. Literally a do-or-die commitment. The commitment is the important part, because there are always rough spots. But when you're committed to each other then you know that person is always in your corner. You know there's always someone there to back you up, no matter how badly you've screwed up. So be forgiving of each others' flaws and work on building each other up. And then the sum of you is greater than the parts.
“The wise old fairy tales never were so silly as to say that the prince and the princess lived peacefully ever afterwards. The fairy tales said that the prince and princess lived happily ever afterwards; and so they did. They lived happily, although it is very likely that from time to time they threw the furniture at each other.”
Congratulations. So glad to hear there is a Time for Everyone, not only a Time for Everything!
And you are right here as well:
"Darwin spends five billion years optimizing your genes for reproduction, and God laughs and decides that whether or not you mate will depend on which weird parties you go to."
(I met my wife for 30+ years at a party themed “Carnival in Hell”.)
Yes, mazel tov. Tied to the mast doesn't quite work here; the beauty is eminently worthwhile and indeed the odyssey itself, not a dangerous distraction off course. Best wishes. Ben
That theory goes back a hell of a lot further than that -- all the way to the Pythagoreans, and from there to Plato, then to the Roman Neopythagoreans, etc.
In the 20th century, Konrad Zuse proposed a "mathematical universe" with "digital physics" in 1967. There were others, from Cantor to Stephen Wolfram, who proposed or surmised very similar (if not identical) things in the decades before and since.
Tegmark can take no credit for that concept, which is very old and indeed evergreen, and I don't think that he's fully considered the implications of what he has proposed.
Congratulations! Since you discussed the Odyssey, there are two parts of it that I always point out to my students, which I think are very romantic illustrations of marriage. The first is a typically pre-Platonic Greek sentiment--and quite contractual sounding--but rather lovely:
"Nothing is stronger or better than this:
when two people, united in purpose, make a home together.
It brings much pain to their enemies, but joy to their friends,
and they themselves know the greatest blessings." 6.182-185
And the second is the extraordinary simile that Homer gives us when Penelope and Odysseus are reunited:
"As welcome as
the land to swimmers, when Poseidon wrecks
their ship at sea and breaks it with great waves
and driving winds; a few escape the sea
and reach the shore, their skin all caked with brine.
Grateful to be alive, they crawl to land.
So glad she was to see her own dear husband,
and her white arms would not let go his neck.” 23.234-241-ish
Penelope is turned into Odysseus: she's the shipwrecked sailor who has made it safely to land. Their marriage makes them both equals and counterparts, each the sailor and the land.
Congratulations Scott! Been following you since the LJ days, under alternating pseudonyms, so feel like I know you in am odd parasocial way. So happy that you are happy
> Is it possible to like someone so much that the positive emotion builds on itself, grows stronger and stronger with every interaction, until it’s one of those blue supergiant stars in the galactic core?
As someone who's been married nearly 21 years, I'd say yes, this is definitely possible. My wife and I get along very, very well. We fight, of course, but mostly we just enjoy each other's company. I definitely find some of her very normal behaviors very adorable, and I'm sure no other person would have the same reaction to these behaviors of hers.
I feel pretty lucky to have found _a_ right person to get married to (neither of believe in soulmates).
I very much agree with Dave. I also don't believe in soulmates, but after 17 years with my wife, I definitely feel very strongly about growing together. It was the thing I felt most was missing in this otherwise very cheery post: growth not like stars but like plants, growth as an organic process. Contracts and precommitment not as mechanisms but as trellises. More inosculating and and pollarding than delimiting and delineating. The more you think of you the couple as one entity and interact with the world as if that were true, the stronger your relationship becomes.
But I do think some trellis work is good early on. When you're getting started especially, meet each other 2/3 of the way, not 1/2 the way. If you commit to only 1/2 the way and either one of you underestimates the distance between your positions even a little, you'll never meet in the middle at all. Also, when you personally make a mistake, it's your mistake, but if she does, it's our mistake. If she has a good idea, make sure she gets the hat tip/citation, but when you do, be less stressed about credit. Gestures of positive credit-sharing like that bring you closer.
Agree with this. Things I found irksome in my husband month 1 of the marriage are adorable to me by now (year 7) because they're part of the parcel of who he is.
Congratulations! I don't know what the kabalistic symbolism for building a house together would be, but the straightforward symbolism is very straightforward.
Okay, seriously, what kind of person announces his marriage and then makes most of the announcement about soul-sucking messes and the exigencies of tying oneself to the mast in order to stay married? Why is it a good idea to explain all of that *in your wedding announcement*? We are all delighted if you're delighted. Congratulations. Let me know if you need a romance coach. Sounds like you need one.
The "I love you" that comes late, after great deliberation, carries more weight than the "I love you" that blows in and out again with every stray gust of wind.
If you're the sort of person who values such weight, such gravity, then there is great romance in somebody marrying you, while carrying great suspicion and reservation about marriage itself.
This is precisely correct. It shows an adult and clear eyed perspective on the state of marriage - 'can be terrible, but hey look, *with you*, it has the potential to be really, really great as well'.
What, you don't think marriage involves ropes and bondage? (insert Groucho Marx eyebrow waggle here).
Look, marriage is great but it's also tough. There are temptations, there are things that wear away at it, there are pitfalls. So you have to tie yourself to the mast and go "No, I have something else to do that is more important to me than getting eaten by sirens" in order to stick it out, but then if you do, you get to slaughter importunate suitors and pet your old dog just before it dies.
Then you and your equally clever and wise wife will test one another with words, then weep in each other's arms, and then go to rest in the famous marriage-bed once more in peace and happiness.
We wrote our own vows and of course showed them to the other beforehand. She was very concerned that mine said things like, "I can't promise I will always love you but I will always try." It didn't sound at all romantic. I told her why I wanted to say it; she agreed to leave it in; and forty years later, I sometimes feel like we're crazy in love.
What kind of person criticizes the writing of someone's marriage announcement on the day it's made? I'd say it's characteristic of how Scott thinks; presumably his spouse is someone who's happy with that way of thinking. It's nobody else's business whether it looks romantic enough. (Though I find Odysseus and the sirens an appealing analogy, and as Scott says better to put the rumination here than in the wedding itself.)
>>Why is it a good idea to explain all of that *in your wedding announcement*? <<
Funny thing: it seemed perfectly natural to me.
Perhaps this is a clue:
>>so far there’s no standardized Rationalist liturgy. <<
Two rationalists decide to marry their fortunes together. Should we be surprised that at least one of them is fascinated by the logic of the process (and confident that his lengthy explication will not offend the other)?
Some people find protracted discussion of the pro and cons of marriage, the mechanics of commitment and the rationality of loving the person you love romantic.
It's good precisely because anyone who has ever been married understands that Scott knows exactly what he's getting into - I've officiated several of my friends' weddings and the urge to "caution" as well as "taking care" is an important part of the marital obligation. Any major endeavor should be entered not only with giddy optimism but also "in fear and trembling" (to steal from Kierkegaard) for it to have the best chance of success.
Almost every wedding I've been to (especially the "mature" ones where the betrothed were both over 30) included comments and metaphors to that effect in the proceedings or vows. Announcing that you want to physically bind yourself to your marriage in order to help you stay in it is good proof that you're dedicated. It's not distasteful or unromantic. Some weddings even include a ritual of tying bride and groom's hands together with phsyical rope! If you're making a committment, why not make it clear that you're doing everything possible to keep yourself to your committment?
You know, I was going to make a joke about airline manufacturing contracts not being the most romantic metaphor, but then you hit me with that "the feeling of love is like the siren's song" analogy and I nearly swooned.
One of my favorite descriptions of marriage came from Ira Glass on This American Life. He was talking with someone who absolutely refused to ever consider getting married, because he was terrified of being stuck or losing freedoms. Ira said that to him, the permanence of marriage was a feature, not a bug. Having someone that you *know* will always be with you is a tremendous comfort. No matter what may come, you won't have to face it alone; you're inescapably bound to this other person.
Of course a year or two later he ended up getting divorced, but I still find his vision to be very comforting.
I've always been fascinated by the shocked and dismayed description of marriage by Philip Larkin (who was constitutionally allergic to the idea of marriage): "He married a woman to stop her getting away / Now she's there all day." I'm fascinated by it because it is so utterly alien to the way I think, or you think, or Ira Glass thinks.
Yeah I've never had any ability to understand some folks terror at the idea of marriage. Especially since many of them don't appear to be using any of the freedoms they would lose by entering into a marriage in the first place!
Well, in Philip Larkin's case, the freedom he would have lost by getting married was the freedom to string two (or more!) girlfriends along simultaneously literally for decades, each hoping that he'd marry her. Larkin was a great poet but not a very admirable person.
I'm curious, how does being married work with polyamory? You mentioned you were dating a biosecurity grad student, is that your wife or a different person?
(It's fine if you don't want to discuss this publicly but I was just curious.)
My wife and I are both poly and we have an open relationship. The biosecurity grad student is a different person (although my wife helped put on a biosecurity conference, so I guess I have a type).
I hope this correctly comes off as baffled rather than judgey, but I have trouble understanding exactly what this means. How will your life be different going forward?
(To validate my lack of judginess, I will say that my wife and I lived together monogamously for a decade and a half before we married, and more than one friend allowed as how they had thought we were *already* married. And in some ways it’s hard for me to explain what’s different now, after two decades of marriage. But I’m really happy we did it.)
In any case, like everyone else here, I offer congratulations and shared happiness.
The most common arrangements are 1) emotional monogamy (no getting intimate with other people, no taking them out on dates etc., just having friends, some of whom are with benefits) and 2) full-fledged polyamory (you have primary, secondary, tertiary partners and there are arrangements as to what is permitted with whom).
(Well, the most common type of nonmonogamy is promising monogamy and cheating. But that’s not quite relevant.)
Consider the part of the post about marriage being a contract, a commitment. If you're poly and you're married, you've made that "'til death do us part" commitment to probably just one person, even if you have multiple partners.
The main way our life is different is that we'll be trying for children.
Otherwise, like you say, since we've already tested out living together and spending most of our time / emotional energy with each other, we jumped the gun a bit and there won't be too much difference.
Good for you! Poly is one of the few things that are both very rational and very exciting (if done right). Good luck with your next million micromarriages! :)
Micromarriages, huh. I spent ten years folk-dancing, which is a great way to meet people of the opposite sex, before I met her who would become my wife. If I'd thought of it as micromarriages, I would probably have given up. I was there because I liked the dancing. Dating someone I'd met there, which didn't happen until after I accidentally ran into her somewhere else, was not on my radar, thank goodness.
I, in contrast, was at folk dancing precisely for the micromarriages, having been advised by a colleague's wife that it was a good place to meet girls.
If I'd been there to "meet girls" instead of to dance, several undesirable things would have followed: 1) I would have gotten frustrated as ten years passed without any result; 2) I would have enjoyed the dancing less as my attention focused on the futile process; 3) I would have been less popular as my ulterior motive would have been detected. (I am not a master of subtlety.) Your mileage may vary, but that would have been mine.
ok you're implying there is a relevant difference there, but you don't say what it is. meeting potential partners is one of the main functions of social events. perhaps particularly dancing. it is not ulterior (unless you don't even like dancing, and are just pretending to, and perhaps David's post sounds a bit like that)
I don't much like dancing but I wasn't pretending to like it, I was doing my best to participate. As my wife puts it, from her observation, when they did a simple dance I followed, a little off the beat, and when they did a complicated dance I followed, a little off the beat."
I had done a good deal of unenthusaistic dance in the SCA, dance being one of my first wife's interests. It is also one of my second wife's interests. One of the ways in which she was better suited to the role was that she figured out early on that I wasn't a dancer and made no attempt to get me to participate. Now when the local group does a dance ball, with my wife providing music and our daughter dancing and teaching, I am in the kitchen of the building producing period apple fritters for people.
>Your mileage may vary, but that would have been mine.
I eventually gave up folk dancing, partly because I kept falling in love with persons I hardly knew and who had given me no indication that they were pleased!
I agree that dancing is a great way to "meet girls" - it worked very well for me. I also agree with Kalimac that it's better to have that be a side effect, but it works so well that David's approach also worked for him. Doesn't have to be folk dancing, could be any type of dancing.
Stereotype alert - notice it's all men seeking women.
Suggestion for David Friedma(n) - try deleting your substack account and creating a new one, maybe you can get back your missing letter.
I think relationship and dating advice is an epistemic wasteland. I've interviewed "successful" couples, and they don't even really know how they ended up there. But, there are idea clusters in the space, and one of them is that "living your best life" is an optimal strategy. You're right, the micro-marriage mindset would probably backfire or at best be exhausting, but directionally I think Scott's post is a roundabout re-iteration of, "live your best life, good things will happen." The micro-marriage thing is probably retroactive modeling of how it all panned out.
Eh, there are a lot of folks who's default "best life" involves meeting approximately no new people ever - I like the friends I have and find meeting new people exhausting. Dating needs to be a conscious strategy for people like that, and "micro-marriages" is a useful concept (though I'm not sold on the word).
Yes, I should have clarified that while I've noticed a cluster around the "live your best life" strategy, I myself am questioning whether that's always right for everyone.
To your point, there's also the saying, "love discriminates against the shy," which is a slam-dunk mechanically, no RCT required. Also related: a frequently upvoted response on Ask Metafilter about finding someone is "drink more."
At the end of the day, it's a numbers game, all the way down, I guess.
Well, just interviewing random couples would be as usual as interviewing a dozen of people who were ill and then cured and try to build a whole human biology and medicine theory from that. The field is way too vast for such approach to be useful. Some things - like "if you don't meet any new people then you'd have hard time meeting your future marriage partner" is on the level "if you're going to put your foot in the fire, it's probably gonna hurt" - but moving from such obvious stuff to deeper insights may require something more.
Congratulations! You got married in the same week as a friend from another internet sphere -- good signs all around. Wishing you and your wife joy and wonders.
Also because I am totally that guy and this is totally the only community where nobody will look at me oddly for this:
"All you need to do is go to a thousand parties and you have a 50-50 chance of meeting the right person! Maybe that number would sound more encouraging if it was lower"
(1999/2000)^1000 =~0.606
So at 500 micromarriages per party you'd need to attend 1386 before you passed the 50% point.
At 4500 parties there's still a 10% chance of no marriage.
At 9125 parties there's still more than 1% chance of no marriage.
So assuming a flat 500 micromarriages per party, if you start with 100 people who want to find a partner and they party nightly, 365 nights per year from age 18 through to age 43 there's still going to be like one guy who's just like "I'm so tired of partying, so very tired."
Non-additivity of micromarriages (and micromorts, for that matter) works out with the likely fact that micromarriages for a given instance of an activity is probably an increasing (likely sublinearly, but still) function relative to your cumulative total of micromarriages: you learn more about what seems to work, you learn more about yourself (likely including, to be clear, what prior must-haves aren't so important), and your experiences (or your presentation thereof...) tend to make yourself more appealing.
This is really heart-warming and I've very happy for you.
I'm slowly realising that if I want to ever end up in a relationship I'm going to have to actually do something rather than just waiting for it to happen, and the micro-marriages framing seems like a useful motivational thing.
Online dating, if you find the right platform, does actually work well. My big piece of advice is that the various different sites and apps have radically different userbases, so you are better served by trying a dozen looking for one where you get lots of good matches rather than stubbornly sticking with one that doesn't work. (It took me 2 wasted years to figure that one out)
I mean, unless you literally do nothing but sit in your room waiting for relationship to happen (which, I know, actually perfectly common in the COVID era), the micro-marriages framing would seem to suggest that you're accumulating them naturally simply by living your life. It may help you conceptualize optimization strategies, and motivate you to keep on living life instead of getting depressed and never leaving your room, but as far as "you have to do something" goes, it seems to imply the exact opposite. There's no particular thing that can be done, you just naturally do thousands little rolls of dice, several a day, each with a minuscule chance of success.
I'm speaking here as someone who neither intended to get married nor accumulated particularly many micro-marriage points throughout my life (I am depressed, not-leaving-my-room-for-weeks depressed at times, however little you think you've got, I'm most likely worse), yet somehow still ended up with a romantic partner. Most people eventually roll well, the crucial part appears to be following up and not rejecting the opportunity when it presents itself.
I interpreted the micromarriages framing as essentially 'go out and meet people'. Obviously if you sit in your room all day you're probably not going to meet anyone, but there are plenty of hobbies people are into that also are unlikely to produce many 'micromarriages' either (for example, taking long hikes alone).
As someone who accumulates essentially zero micromarriages (I work from home and in my spare time mostly hang out with the same group of college friends, all of whom are men), I definitely think that I would have more luck if I proactively went out and started doing things that involved talking to many women my own age.
In the great marriage tradition of unsolicited advice, the best most succinct marriage advice I've seen is "love is a choice, not a feeling". Almost every marriage has "bitch eating crackers" moments - and a key is that the basis of the marriage can't be positive feelings: you have to choose to continue showing love to your spouse even when the positive feelings aren't there.
+1
1) Congratulations!
2) I laughed when I saw that, talk about the most American possible way to end this post. In the genre of "I'm having kidney surgery so will be slow to reply to emails for the next few hours."
Mazel Tov!
"Then COVID hit. We switched our dates to a Minecraft virtual world, where we built a house together." - great
So what I'm getting from this is I need to get Minecraft if I want to get married...
Yupp, seems accurate
Bonus points if two of you share a server on which you build a fake runway.
Counter-example: One time I had a virtual first date with a girl, we played Minecraft together. We both had a good time, I came out wanting more, she told me that the Minecraft date had made her realize we weren't compatible for some reason.
So the Minecraft magic is powerful, but it's not quite omnipotent.
Sounds like it's doing important revealing work on compatibility, and I'm sorry to hear that it didn't work out for you with that particular woman, but better to find out early than late?
Did you want to continue to be in a relationship with someone who turned out just not to like you? Because I spent a couple of years in a relationship with someone I just didn’t like. I don’t think she pines for me, considering she dumped me over the phone on her birthday.
Be thankful the relationship ended there.
Back in the day, I used to say, "The couple that WoWs together, stays together."
Go on ...
Oh wow, but what game, though? (If you're comfortable sharing here)
My husband, who games, has the exact same attitude as you here. He's pretty happy with me being ignorant about but affirming of his gaming (he thought he might have to quit upon finding a woman to marry). For my part, I have no interest in playing video games, but I sometimes enjoy watching him play some action adventure ones. I have fun also looking up whatever game he's playing and finding forums of people talking about it and reading their opinions off to him as if they were mine. His responses are always hilarious in large part because he also knows that I have no idea what the people in the gaming forum are talking about.
My wife met her ex-boyfriend in wow.
That’s because nobody else wants to fuck either of them, though.
Although the “kabbalistic significance” of it seems pretty pretentious.
I mean, he wrote a fictional book about kabbalists, so I suspect that's an inside joke.
It’s a reference to the free novel he published about a world where Kabbalah is literally true.
My second date with my husband was explicitly "let's get drunk and play Minecraft." Best decision I ever made.
All good wishes to you both xx
I don't know how this man does all the things he does. Like seriously how can you write this much, have a job and play videogames. I do not understand.
Congratulations!
Congratulations! So delighted for you. Marriage is great.
Congratulations. Welcome to married life and the on-going chance to continually make a better and better partnership with another human being.
Congrats!
For whatever coincidental (or not coincidental) reason: I had never heard of her. But in the past week or so, she's been all over my Twitter feed.
I didn't marry Aella!
Yes -- you could have made this a lot more clear!! Maybe edit in "mutual friend Aella" or something like that? The eye skims ahead to the the tweet image.
Do you see how marriage suits Scott? Your wish is his command.
For some reason, I too thought you were marrying Aella, haha. Whoops!
Congratulations, may you enjoy the siren song to its fullest. :)
I did too for a second but because I've seen her twitter feed and was pretty sure she was single I did a double-take and re-read it more carefully.
Ah. Oops.
Well, congrats still stands!
I figured that out from the photo. You two look cute together. And super congratulations!
I also thought this at first.
I also thought this at first, even with the edit.
Me also, I guess when you read the first sentence you start looking for the wife and then you see the screenshot and it kinda fills the information hole or something
Congratulations Scott! Really happy for you both
Congratulations! My wife and I also played online games together while remote dating for a bit, although the cause was my work and her school in different states. It's always nice to know that your relationship can flourish without the easy fixes of physical proximity.
Aw, that’s lovely. Congratulations!
Congratulations!
Congratulations and good luck to both of you! :)
Congratulations!
Congrats!!
Congratulations :) as one of the aforementioned people who've been reading the blog ever since it was about how impossible it was to have a date, I'm really happy about this.
(Also thank you; I've been depressed about dating lately and this gives me some hope).
I used Hinge and eventually, after its algorithms learned my preferences, seem to have found someone really quite spookily compatible with me. You should try it.
I have tried it (actually got a date for this weekend through it). It's weirdly inconsistent in quality (ranges from giving me twenty suggestions in a row who are overtly wrong to, earlier this week, showing me my ex), but it does give you a nontrivial number of micromarriages.
OMG! I ran across my ex on Hinge, and immediately locked my profile. (I’m genuinely happy that she’s getting back out there and looking.)
Congratulations, and best wishes for the future.
Congratulations!
That is very cool. Good luck!
Many congratulations, Scott - and, as someone married for 47 years, 1) have the difficult conversations 2) acknowledge when you've got it wrong & 3) be prepared to laugh at yourself.
Congratulations! I hope you both enjoy the honeymoon, and don't worry about posting, we'll still be here afterwards :)
Wow! Congrats! I'm really happy for the two of you :)
Congratulations!
Congrats!
Mazel Tov!
But I don't think you're using pshat, remez, and sod right.
That said, your drasha on Odysseus is excellent.
Can you give an idea of what those terms mean for non-knowers? From context I assume it's something like object-level meanings, versus more universal generalized lessons, something like that...?
In the original context of a bible passage:
Pshat: the literal meaning
Remez: Something that is alluded to.
Drash: Something that can be derived, eg. from repetition or word choice
Sod: Some deep esoteric secret underlyingthing (unsurprisingly this is mostly from a kabbalistic context, whereas pshat and drash predate kabbalah)
Unsurprisingly, Wikipedia has an article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardes_%28Jewish_exegesis%29?wprov=sfla1
Thanks, in retrospect I should've figured that out.
Yay, this is lovely and uplifting. Many congratulations.
Congratulations!
Awww! Mazel Tov!
Congratulations Scott!
Good for you! That metaphor of sliding into a black hole with increasing feelings of dread and bitterness, or a newly-born star with increasing feelings of euphoria and amazement, is pretty apt. Been through the first one, and have had hints of the second one - but like you said, it's worth the persistence. Best wishes for the future.
Congrats. Now go make some babies - we need babies.
Came here to say this.
Yes! We need your genes preserved. Maybe 8 kids? (My first child is due this month and I'm trying to get other people to have children to assuage my fear(s))
Congratulations!!!
It's not nearly as bad as the world makes it out to be. You'll feel like you're never going to adjust to the sleep-loss, and then suddenly your body adjusts for you.
Counterpoint: It was much, much, much worse than I thought it would be, and I thought sleep deprivation would be bad.
Depends a lot on your kid.
Congratulations! I got married last year to the first guy I ever dated - and we met when we were both putting our lunches in the fridge at my internship. He asked good questions about my research and then I started going to him to whiteboard algorithm problems and it snowballed from there.
Congratulations!
Somehow it's hard for me to imagine "Scott, one of the brightest intellectuals and bloggers in the world", "Scott, a guy who attends weird naked parties", and "Scott, a man who takes the risk of marriage in 2022 driven by the metaphysical/romantic motivation" to be the same person, but I wish you all the best. :)
Do you not know any happily long term partnered (but unmarried) men? Or are they all really genuinely less happy seeming than the ones who decided to get married?
I ask because I see it as kind of trivially true that for people who prefer long term partnerships, being in one is a net happiness improvement.
But I don't see marriage as playing a significant role in that equation amongst the men in my social circle.
Honestly, that all seems to fit my mental model of Scott pretty well lol
And mine.
Congratulations! May you have many happy years together.
Congratulations! What a funny, interesting and very moving text! And thank you so much for the beautiful picture at the end :-) I wish you the very best and some more!
I never bothered to read through other websites to see his picture so this was the first I saw him. He's no longer an amorphous cipher in my head.
WHAT OMG YAYAYAY
Congrats, you beautiful humans! <3
Congrats, wishing you all the best
Congrats Scott! I'm so happy for you two. Lots of love!
Congratulations! So happy for you both. :)
Congratulations!
Love this. Congratulations and thank you for sharing. My 20 year anniversary is in April. Marriage/Long Term Partnership is a worthwhile journey.
Congratulations!
congratulations!
Congratulations to you both! I wish you a long and happy life together.
Congratulations!
Congratulations! May you have many years of joy together.
Re: Dating. I tell people who get frustrated that dating is about failure. You go on dates, they don't work out. You fail. You learn from it. And eventually you stop failing and you settle down with the right person, and it's great. (I do envy the people who marry their high school sweethearts and live together forever.)
Re: Micromarriages. Good concept! To meet the right people you have to leave yourself open to opportunities, and seize them when they come up. In August of 2004 I sat down on a plane flight and started talking to a cute girl. In August of 2005 we got married and she moved across country to be with me. Seventeen years and five kids later we're managing quite well.
The last thing: Marriage is about commitment. Literally a do-or-die commitment. The commitment is the important part, because there are always rough spots. But when you're committed to each other then you know that person is always in your corner. You know there's always someone there to back you up, no matter how badly you've screwed up. So be forgiving of each others' flaws and work on building each other up. And then the sum of you is greater than the parts.
To quote Chesterton (again):
“The wise old fairy tales never were so silly as to say that the prince and the princess lived peacefully ever afterwards. The fairy tales said that the prince and princess lived happily ever afterwards; and so they did. They lived happily, although it is very likely that from time to time they threw the furniture at each other.”
Congrats!
Congratulations. So glad to hear there is a Time for Everyone, not only a Time for Everything!
And you are right here as well:
"Darwin spends five billion years optimizing your genes for reproduction, and God laughs and decides that whether or not you mate will depend on which weird parties you go to."
(I met my wife for 30+ years at a party themed “Carnival in Hell”.)
Mazal tov! And thank you for this funny, insightful and romantic post, which was immediately shared with my shipmate :)
Congratulations!!! I hope you have a nice honeymoon.
Very happy to hear! May you marriage be fruitfull and filled with joy!
Yes, mazel tov. Tied to the mast doesn't quite work here; the beauty is eminently worthwhile and indeed the odyssey itself, not a dangerous distraction off course. Best wishes. Ben
Congrats!
So that's what you look like!
Nah, it’s probably a stock photo, since he’s an internet person and probably doesn’t have a corporeal form. ;)
I met him and can confirm he's made out of 1s and 0s*.
*Because the entire universe is actually a mathematical object per Max Tegmark.
That theory goes back a hell of a lot further than that -- all the way to the Pythagoreans, and from there to Plato, then to the Roman Neopythagoreans, etc.
In the 20th century, Konrad Zuse proposed a "mathematical universe" with "digital physics" in 1967. There were others, from Cantor to Stephen Wolfram, who proposed or surmised very similar (if not identical) things in the decades before and since.
Tegmark can take no credit for that concept, which is very old and indeed evergreen, and I don't think that he's fully considered the implications of what he has proposed.
Congratulations. This post might be my favorite that you’ve written.
If you construct your online profile well, internet dating probably gives you the most micro marriages possible. Congrats!
Well I’m charmed!
Best wishes to our host and his beloved!
The combination of the title and the photo made me cry. I needed that. Congratulations to both of you, this is amazing!
Mazal Tov!
Congrats! Also, could someone please explain the kabbalistic significance of building a house together with someone in minecraft?
Hmm... I had always read Minecraft as referring to mining, but perhaps it refers to "making something mine" -- or someone!
(also they literally made house together, which is probably what he meant)
Congratulations! Since you discussed the Odyssey, there are two parts of it that I always point out to my students, which I think are very romantic illustrations of marriage. The first is a typically pre-Platonic Greek sentiment--and quite contractual sounding--but rather lovely:
"Nothing is stronger or better than this:
when two people, united in purpose, make a home together.
It brings much pain to their enemies, but joy to their friends,
and they themselves know the greatest blessings." 6.182-185
And the second is the extraordinary simile that Homer gives us when Penelope and Odysseus are reunited:
"As welcome as
the land to swimmers, when Poseidon wrecks
their ship at sea and breaks it with great waves
and driving winds; a few escape the sea
and reach the shore, their skin all caked with brine.
Grateful to be alive, they crawl to land.
So glad she was to see her own dear husband,
and her white arms would not let go his neck.” 23.234-241-ish
Penelope is turned into Odysseus: she's the shipwrecked sailor who has made it safely to land. Their marriage makes them both equals and counterparts, each the sailor and the land.
Anyway, wishing you all happiness!
מזל טוב!
Congratulations!
Congratulations Scott! As a long time reader, I'm delighted to hear you found someone to take a shot at marriage with. :)
Congratulations, and best wishes to you both, Scott!
Congratulations.
Congratulations Scott! Been following you since the LJ days, under alternating pseudonyms, so feel like I know you in am odd parasocial way. So happy that you are happy
Many happy returns :)
First, congrats!
Second ...
> Is it possible to like someone so much that the positive emotion builds on itself, grows stronger and stronger with every interaction, until it’s one of those blue supergiant stars in the galactic core?
As someone who's been married nearly 21 years, I'd say yes, this is definitely possible. My wife and I get along very, very well. We fight, of course, but mostly we just enjoy each other's company. I definitely find some of her very normal behaviors very adorable, and I'm sure no other person would have the same reaction to these behaviors of hers.
I feel pretty lucky to have found _a_ right person to get married to (neither of believe in soulmates).
I very much agree with Dave. I also don't believe in soulmates, but after 17 years with my wife, I definitely feel very strongly about growing together. It was the thing I felt most was missing in this otherwise very cheery post: growth not like stars but like plants, growth as an organic process. Contracts and precommitment not as mechanisms but as trellises. More inosculating and and pollarding than delimiting and delineating. The more you think of you the couple as one entity and interact with the world as if that were true, the stronger your relationship becomes.
But I do think some trellis work is good early on. When you're getting started especially, meet each other 2/3 of the way, not 1/2 the way. If you commit to only 1/2 the way and either one of you underestimates the distance between your positions even a little, you'll never meet in the middle at all. Also, when you personally make a mistake, it's your mistake, but if she does, it's our mistake. If she has a good idea, make sure she gets the hat tip/citation, but when you do, be less stressed about credit. Gestures of positive credit-sharing like that bring you closer.
Agree with this. Things I found irksome in my husband month 1 of the marriage are adorable to me by now (year 7) because they're part of the parcel of who he is.
Congrats!
Hey congratulations!
Congratulations! I don't know what the kabalistic symbolism for building a house together would be, but the straightforward symbolism is very straightforward.
Huge congratulations to you both. That’s wonderful news.
Good luck! Am approaching 30 years, and while it is not always easy, it is definitely worth it.
Congratulations!
Congratulations!
"Prudence while fully exposed to supernatural unearthly beauty."
This was beautiful.
I was very happy to read the announcement. Congratulations to you both!
Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!! So excited for you!
Mozel Tov!
God grant you many years!
Micromairrage indeed. I spent 3 years actively messaging and dating on a dating site before I found my spouse. (About 10 hours a week for 150 weeks)
Wow congrats!
Mazel tov!!!!
Okay, seriously, what kind of person announces his marriage and then makes most of the announcement about soul-sucking messes and the exigencies of tying oneself to the mast in order to stay married? Why is it a good idea to explain all of that *in your wedding announcement*? We are all delighted if you're delighted. Congratulations. Let me know if you need a romance coach. Sounds like you need one.
underrated point.
:)
I don't know about 'good idea', but it's definitely very Scott, speaking as a near decade-long reader of his many blogs.
The "I love you" that comes late, after great deliberation, carries more weight than the "I love you" that blows in and out again with every stray gust of wind.
If you're the sort of person who values such weight, such gravity, then there is great romance in somebody marrying you, while carrying great suspicion and reservation about marriage itself.
This is precisely correct. It shows an adult and clear eyed perspective on the state of marriage - 'can be terrible, but hey look, *with you*, it has the potential to be really, really great as well'.
What, you don't think marriage involves ropes and bondage? (insert Groucho Marx eyebrow waggle here).
Look, marriage is great but it's also tough. There are temptations, there are things that wear away at it, there are pitfalls. So you have to tie yourself to the mast and go "No, I have something else to do that is more important to me than getting eaten by sirens" in order to stick it out, but then if you do, you get to slaughter importunate suitors and pet your old dog just before it dies.
Then you and your equally clever and wise wife will test one another with words, then weep in each other's arms, and then go to rest in the famous marriage-bed once more in peace and happiness.
That note about "watching a girl set set ablaze" really came out of left field.
The heartbreaking thing is he can't pet his dog, to avoid being found out, and the dog then dies thinking he was ignored.
Are you married? I had come under the impression that you weren't.
I am not, but my parents were 😁 I am also acquainted with at least several married people!
I'm not one bit suited for marriage, nor marriage for me, but that is also how I know it's hard work as well as joy, like most human things.
We wrote our own vows and of course showed them to the other beforehand. She was very concerned that mine said things like, "I can't promise I will always love you but I will always try." It didn't sound at all romantic. I told her why I wanted to say it; she agreed to leave it in; and forty years later, I sometimes feel like we're crazy in love.
What kind of person criticizes the writing of someone's marriage announcement on the day it's made? I'd say it's characteristic of how Scott thinks; presumably his spouse is someone who's happy with that way of thinking. It's nobody else's business whether it looks romantic enough. (Though I find Odysseus and the sirens an appealing analogy, and as Scott says better to put the rumination here than in the wedding itself.)
>>Why is it a good idea to explain all of that *in your wedding announcement*? <<
Funny thing: it seemed perfectly natural to me.
Perhaps this is a clue:
>>so far there’s no standardized Rationalist liturgy. <<
Two rationalists decide to marry their fortunes together. Should we be surprised that at least one of them is fascinated by the logic of the process (and confident that his lengthy explication will not offend the other)?
Some people find protracted discussion of the pro and cons of marriage, the mechanics of commitment and the rationality of loving the person you love romantic.
It's good precisely because anyone who has ever been married understands that Scott knows exactly what he's getting into - I've officiated several of my friends' weddings and the urge to "caution" as well as "taking care" is an important part of the marital obligation. Any major endeavor should be entered not only with giddy optimism but also "in fear and trembling" (to steal from Kierkegaard) for it to have the best chance of success.
Almost every wedding I've been to (especially the "mature" ones where the betrothed were both over 30) included comments and metaphors to that effect in the proceedings or vows. Announcing that you want to physically bind yourself to your marriage in order to help you stay in it is good proof that you're dedicated. It's not distasteful or unromantic. Some weddings even include a ritual of tying bride and groom's hands together with phsyical rope! If you're making a committment, why not make it clear that you're doing everything possible to keep yourself to your committment?
Congratulations to the two of you!
You know, I was going to make a joke about airline manufacturing contracts not being the most romantic metaphor, but then you hit me with that "the feeling of love is like the siren's song" analogy and I nearly swooned.
Mazal Tov, Scott!
So happy for the both of you!
Congratulations!
One of my favorite descriptions of marriage came from Ira Glass on This American Life. He was talking with someone who absolutely refused to ever consider getting married, because he was terrified of being stuck or losing freedoms. Ira said that to him, the permanence of marriage was a feature, not a bug. Having someone that you *know* will always be with you is a tremendous comfort. No matter what may come, you won't have to face it alone; you're inescapably bound to this other person.
Of course a year or two later he ended up getting divorced, but I still find his vision to be very comforting.
I've always been fascinated by the shocked and dismayed description of marriage by Philip Larkin (who was constitutionally allergic to the idea of marriage): "He married a woman to stop her getting away / Now she's there all day." I'm fascinated by it because it is so utterly alien to the way I think, or you think, or Ira Glass thinks.
Yeah I've never had any ability to understand some folks terror at the idea of marriage. Especially since many of them don't appear to be using any of the freedoms they would lose by entering into a marriage in the first place!
Well, in Philip Larkin's case, the freedom he would have lost by getting married was the freedom to string two (or more!) girlfriends along simultaneously literally for decades, each hoping that he'd marry her. Larkin was a great poet but not a very admirable person.
I'm curious, how does being married work with polyamory? You mentioned you were dating a biosecurity grad student, is that your wife or a different person?
(It's fine if you don't want to discuss this publicly but I was just curious.)
My wife and I are both poly and we have an open relationship. The biosecurity grad student is a different person (although my wife helped put on a biosecurity conference, so I guess I have a type).
I hope this correctly comes off as baffled rather than judgey, but I have trouble understanding exactly what this means. How will your life be different going forward?
(To validate my lack of judginess, I will say that my wife and I lived together monogamously for a decade and a half before we married, and more than one friend allowed as how they had thought we were *already* married. And in some ways it’s hard for me to explain what’s different now, after two decades of marriage. But I’m really happy we did it.)
In any case, like everyone else here, I offer congratulations and shared happiness.
The most common arrangements are 1) emotional monogamy (no getting intimate with other people, no taking them out on dates etc., just having friends, some of whom are with benefits) and 2) full-fledged polyamory (you have primary, secondary, tertiary partners and there are arrangements as to what is permitted with whom).
(Well, the most common type of nonmonogamy is promising monogamy and cheating. But that’s not quite relevant.)
Consider the part of the post about marriage being a contract, a commitment. If you're poly and you're married, you've made that "'til death do us part" commitment to probably just one person, even if you have multiple partners.
The main way our life is different is that we'll be trying for children.
Otherwise, like you say, since we've already tested out living together and spending most of our time / emotional energy with each other, we jumped the gun a bit and there won't be too much difference.
> we'll be trying for children
Suddenly apparent why the recent long musings about primary school and climate change not affecting one's decision to have kids...
Ooh, I hope you teach them to blog!
This also might be a good time to update the "biodeterminist's guide to parenting."
Ooh, yes, that thing is going on a decade old now! http://doc.dreev.es/biodet
Or they could try Laszlo Polgar "must be interested in n=1 developmental-psych experiments"
It would be a relief to know that Scott has a rightful heir so I don't have to spend a decade or two reading only the backlog
Good for you! Poly is one of the few things that are both very rational and very exciting (if done right). Good luck with your next million micromarriages! :)
Well, congratulations.
Micromarriages, huh. I spent ten years folk-dancing, which is a great way to meet people of the opposite sex, before I met her who would become my wife. If I'd thought of it as micromarriages, I would probably have given up. I was there because I liked the dancing. Dating someone I'd met there, which didn't happen until after I accidentally ran into her somewhere else, was not on my radar, thank goodness.
I, in contrast, was at folk dancing precisely for the micromarriages, having been advised by a colleague's wife that it was a good place to meet girls.
It was.
If I'd been there to "meet girls" instead of to dance, several undesirable things would have followed: 1) I would have gotten frustrated as ten years passed without any result; 2) I would have enjoyed the dancing less as my attention focused on the futile process; 3) I would have been less popular as my ulterior motive would have been detected. (I am not a master of subtlety.) Your mileage may vary, but that would have been mine.
or maybe interest in people is not "ulterior" and would have led to success sooner
"interest in people" is not the same thing as the desire "to meet girls," and the latter is what David Friedma said he was out for.
ok you're implying there is a relevant difference there, but you don't say what it is. meeting potential partners is one of the main functions of social events. perhaps particularly dancing. it is not ulterior (unless you don't even like dancing, and are just pretending to, and perhaps David's post sounds a bit like that)
I don't much like dancing but I wasn't pretending to like it, I was doing my best to participate. As my wife puts it, from her observation, when they did a simple dance I followed, a little off the beat, and when they did a complicated dance I followed, a little off the beat."
I had done a good deal of unenthusaistic dance in the SCA, dance being one of my first wife's interests. It is also one of my second wife's interests. One of the ways in which she was better suited to the role was that she figured out early on that I wasn't a dancer and made no attempt to get me to participate. Now when the local group does a dance ball, with my wife providing music and our daughter dancing and teaching, I am in the kitchen of the building producing period apple fritters for people.
Medieval cooking is one of my interests.
>Your mileage may vary, but that would have been mine.
I eventually gave up folk dancing, partly because I kept falling in love with persons I hardly knew and who had given me no indication that they were pleased!
I agree that dancing is a great way to "meet girls" - it worked very well for me. I also agree with Kalimac that it's better to have that be a side effect, but it works so well that David's approach also worked for him. Doesn't have to be folk dancing, could be any type of dancing.
Stereotype alert - notice it's all men seeking women.
Suggestion for David Friedma(n) - try deleting your substack account and creating a new one, maybe you can get back your missing letter.
It was easier than that. Scott was distracted by his bride, so I snuck in and stole it back.
folk-dancing, huh? Wilde should have tried it at least once...
I think relationship and dating advice is an epistemic wasteland. I've interviewed "successful" couples, and they don't even really know how they ended up there. But, there are idea clusters in the space, and one of them is that "living your best life" is an optimal strategy. You're right, the micro-marriage mindset would probably backfire or at best be exhausting, but directionally I think Scott's post is a roundabout re-iteration of, "live your best life, good things will happen." The micro-marriage thing is probably retroactive modeling of how it all panned out.
Eh, there are a lot of folks who's default "best life" involves meeting approximately no new people ever - I like the friends I have and find meeting new people exhausting. Dating needs to be a conscious strategy for people like that, and "micro-marriages" is a useful concept (though I'm not sold on the word).
Yes, I should have clarified that while I've noticed a cluster around the "live your best life" strategy, I myself am questioning whether that's always right for everyone.
To your point, there's also the saying, "love discriminates against the shy," which is a slam-dunk mechanically, no RCT required. Also related: a frequently upvoted response on Ask Metafilter about finding someone is "drink more."
At the end of the day, it's a numbers game, all the way down, I guess.
Well, just interviewing random couples would be as usual as interviewing a dozen of people who were ill and then cured and try to build a whole human biology and medicine theory from that. The field is way too vast for such approach to be useful. Some things - like "if you don't meet any new people then you'd have hard time meeting your future marriage partner" is on the level "if you're going to put your foot in the fire, it's probably gonna hurt" - but moving from such obvious stuff to deeper insights may require something more.
Congratulations!
Congratulations! You got married in the same week as a friend from another internet sphere -- good signs all around. Wishing you and your wife joy and wonders.
Congratulations!!
Congratulations!
Also because I am totally that guy and this is totally the only community where nobody will look at me oddly for this:
"All you need to do is go to a thousand parties and you have a 50-50 chance of meeting the right person! Maybe that number would sound more encouraging if it was lower"
(1999/2000)^1000 =~0.606
So at 500 micromarriages per party you'd need to attend 1386 before you passed the 50% point.
At 4500 parties there's still a 10% chance of no marriage.
At 9125 parties there's still more than 1% chance of no marriage.
So assuming a flat 500 micromarriages per party, if you start with 100 people who want to find a partner and they party nightly, 365 nights per year from age 18 through to age 43 there's still going to be like one guy who's just like "I'm so tired of partying, so very tired."
https://i.redd.it/dvgc4l7nc7841.jpg
I was going to do this calculation to check, but you not only beat me to it, you did the natural follow-up calculation too. Nice!
"Also because I am totally that guy and this is totally the only community where nobody will look at me oddly for this"
Unfortunately, this is also totally the sort of community that will look at you oddly just for suggesting none of them will.
(looks at you oddly)
But then, in that sense, perhaps you (and I) really are at home after all.
Non-additivity of micromarriages (and micromorts, for that matter) works out with the likely fact that micromarriages for a given instance of an activity is probably an increasing (likely sublinearly, but still) function relative to your cumulative total of micromarriages: you learn more about what seems to work, you learn more about yourself (likely including, to be clear, what prior must-haves aren't so important), and your experiences (or your presentation thereof...) tend to make yourself more appealing.
Yep: With each coin flip, you have a 1/2 chance of a head, but flipping it twice doesn't ensure that a head will turn up.
Still... hearty congratulations to you and your bride, Scott. May you have many happy decades ahead together!
Thanks, you really made me laugh, out loud!
This is really heart-warming and I've very happy for you.
I'm slowly realising that if I want to ever end up in a relationship I'm going to have to actually do something rather than just waiting for it to happen, and the micro-marriages framing seems like a useful motivational thing.
Conversely, it also serves as advice not to scuba dive.
Great reminder.
I think it's worth it, at least the first few times if you're young without pre existing conditions.
Online dating, if you find the right platform, does actually work well. My big piece of advice is that the various different sites and apps have radically different userbases, so you are better served by trying a dozen looking for one where you get lots of good matches rather than stubbornly sticking with one that doesn't work. (It took me 2 wasted years to figure that one out)
Which one worked for you?
I mean, unless you literally do nothing but sit in your room waiting for relationship to happen (which, I know, actually perfectly common in the COVID era), the micro-marriages framing would seem to suggest that you're accumulating them naturally simply by living your life. It may help you conceptualize optimization strategies, and motivate you to keep on living life instead of getting depressed and never leaving your room, but as far as "you have to do something" goes, it seems to imply the exact opposite. There's no particular thing that can be done, you just naturally do thousands little rolls of dice, several a day, each with a minuscule chance of success.
I'm speaking here as someone who neither intended to get married nor accumulated particularly many micro-marriage points throughout my life (I am depressed, not-leaving-my-room-for-weeks depressed at times, however little you think you've got, I'm most likely worse), yet somehow still ended up with a romantic partner. Most people eventually roll well, the crucial part appears to be following up and not rejecting the opportunity when it presents itself.
I interpreted the micromarriages framing as essentially 'go out and meet people'. Obviously if you sit in your room all day you're probably not going to meet anyone, but there are plenty of hobbies people are into that also are unlikely to produce many 'micromarriages' either (for example, taking long hikes alone).
As someone who accumulates essentially zero micromarriages (I work from home and in my spare time mostly hang out with the same group of college friends, all of whom are men), I definitely think that I would have more luck if I proactively went out and started doing things that involved talking to many women my own age.
Congratulations!
Congratulations are in order. Also thanks, I took this post as a much needed reminder that it's not too late for me.
Congratulations!
In the great marriage tradition of unsolicited advice, the best most succinct marriage advice I've seen is "love is a choice, not a feeling". Almost every marriage has "bitch eating crackers" moments - and a key is that the basis of the marriage can't be positive feelings: you have to choose to continue showing love to your spouse even when the positive feelings aren't there.
Oh I like this! <3