dipole said:
You are making the same mistake every other miserable person does - that a "career" is somehow the source of ones happiness and worth.
No, my happiness and sense of self-worth come from my generally positive attitude and fundamental belief that life is worth living. The importance of a career to me is of a more existential nature. At the same time, it's an entirely practical concern, because I'm profoundly lazy and therefore seek to follow the advice that if your job is what you truly care about, then you will never work a day in your life.
Maybe for someone like you who (or at least I assume this is you, based on your post) wants to walk the straight and narrow path that they think they're "supposed to", then a career is super important.
What you're "supposed to do" is graduate, get a job, marry before 30, have 2.4 kids, mortgage a house, work an increasingly soul-grinding job to support a lifestyle imposed on you by society whether you want it or not until you're literally too old to continue, retire, then die.
The way I see it, one way or another, you're going to need to do something to pay the bills, and when you have the financial constraints of having to follow the "marry-kids-mortgage-retire-die" life plan then the job you need to have isn't going to be the one you want to have. You're going to spend at least 8 hours a day, at least 5 days a week on this for at least the next 40 years, so I think you've got every good reason to do everything you can to make sure it's something you care about.
To someone like me, who values above all else the freedom to live their life on their own terms
Exactly, that's my whole point. That's why I'm extremely skeptical of this allegedly all-important social and legal institution called marriage, because it's something that everyone expects and it's considered such a taboo to question or criticize it. That doesn't sound like the freedom to live life on your own terms.
If you say you don't think it's wise to tie yourself down to a single person in your 20s, then you're immature and a "player". If you're concerned about that whole 50% divorce rate, you're called morally suspect for being the sort of person who would get a divorce. If you're a man and you're worried about how marriage and especially divorce law is strongly biased against men, then you're called a misogynist (in fairness, that being an MRA bullet point is actually really irritating). If you say you don't think you can be comfortable not having any personal space, people say your'e psychiatrically damaged and need therapy. If you say that it offends you that marital rape is still effectively legal in almost 2/3 of this country and therefore supporting that institution goes against your conscience, or you're offended by how often both men and women become victims of domestic violence or you're afraid of that happening to you (especially as a man, in which case you'd effectively have no recourse, despite the fact that nearly half of all domestic violence is female-on-male), you're just outright told to ignore that.
And, in general, if you express any sentiment of skepticism towards marriage based on concern over the fact that no one ever questions it, then you're a miserable, passionless, money-grubbing, frigid, lazy, sleazy, emotionless misanthrope. Virgin-shaming, jokes about dying alone, jokes about having emotional problems, etc.
and not sacrifice happiness for "success", then spending my life with someone I love far more important than job opportunity.
If that's true, then what do you need married with her for? Serious question. Success means different things for different people.
I'd rather flip burgers and live my life the way I want to, then sacrifice my freedom of lifestyle and put on a suite and tie. Ideally, I will one day have my cake and eat it too, but I guarantee you that if I don't, I'll at least be living my life in the way that best pleases me, given the resources available. And this means, in part, being with someone who makes me happy and excited to share life with.
That's literally what I've been trying to say. When you stop looking at marriage and children as an inevitably or a requirement and instead as just one of many options, you get a lot more freedom in the life you decide to lead. Having your cake and eating it too requires that you be flexible and willing to make the decision most in line with what you care about, rather than one of a tiny handful of options that are just given to you.
And my point, to wrap that up, is that if you rush into building your life around marriage because you assume it's just a given, then you're going to cut off other possibilities that are worth considering.
