Is Selfishness the reason why we are marrying later and later these days?

[seeker2122]

Today, women don't really need men. They are capable of supporting themselves as they have their own careers
and many even more prosperous than men. Women, esp. in the biblical times needed a man for several reasons
which I won't get into.

So it seems to me now more than ever, if a man and woman are to meet and get married and raise a family, it's
not out of need for survival and security, but more so now on the relationship/companionship. But the standards
and preferences we all have for our potential life partner also seems to have become more stringent and picky (because
we can afford to be picky now). "He's got to X tall, have X money, own X, career in X, full head of hair, thick eye brows,
well-cultured, driven, confident" the list goes on and on.

What ever happened to just marrying and loving someone because God told you to do so. The woman should be obedient
and the man should be selfless willing to sacrifice his life for her (these two points are actually biblical and the highest calling
for each gender).

Is it safe to assume the obvious answer why we are not marrying anymore these days, and if we are, it's getting later and later
and even fewer people are having kids/families......mostly because we are more selfish than ever before (the greatest idol in
today's world is "me")?

 

[Paidiske]

I'm married, but I never felt God told me to marry, or to marry this particular person. I don't know if that's most people's experience, really.

I think people are mostly getting married later because it takes longer to get "established." Finish education to, find secure employment, be able to afford to support oneself, potentially manage having children. Once people were at that point in their early twenties; today that would be rare.

As for being able to afford to be picky, there's some truth in that; but I don't think it's so much about shallow things like eyebrows or whatever, but more that people are more aware of what makes for a healthy relationship, and less willing to enter into a dysfunctional one. I don't necessarily see that that's a bad thing.

It's hard to tell, from your post, exactly what advice you're seeking. If it's about finding a potential spouse who isn't too selfish, I'd say get involved in groups which are outward looking (like service groups of some kind) and you're more likely to find people of unselfish character there. If it's about appealing to a potential spouse... well, being negative in one's attitude to the other sex is unlikely to help.

 

[Maria Billingsley]

The woman should be obedient

This is not the way to approach marriage. If the relationship is based on equality and respect then each role will naturally fall into place. Blessings.

 

[BobRyan]

Today, women don't really need men. They are capable of supporting themselves as they have their own careers
and many even more prosperous than men. Women, esp. in the biblical times needed a man for several reasons
which I won't get into.

So it seems to me now more than ever, if a man and woman are to meet and get married and raise a family, it's
not out of need for survival and security, but more so now on the relationship/companionship. But the standards
and preferences we all have for our potential life partner also seems to have become more stringent and picky (because
we can afford to be picky now). "He's got to X tall, have X money, own X, career in X, full head of hair, thick eye brows,
well-cultured, driven, confident" the list goes on and on.

ok so you are right about humanity becoming more and more self-absorbed.

Another factor is that entertainment media is pervasive and very "explicit" - massively decreasing the quality and quantity of interaction. This effect goes all the way down to children in neighborhoods because of the fiction element in entertainment being so absorbing, so much so that it is becoming less and less common to see children out playing in yards.

 

[Freth]

As a person who has been single most of my life, I would say yes, selfishness is definitely a factor.

• Selfishness in wanting to be independent and do your own thing without having to be responsible for someone else.
• Selfishness in others that leads them to be dishonest, to cheat, to mistreat you, which then leads to more of the above bullet point.

There are complex societal issues at play here, which also includes selfishness.

• Men not wanting to potentially lose half of everything they own, because of the way the system works.
• Women being empowered and wanting to take on traditional male roles.
• Hookup culture and the mentality of the younger generations, thanks to popular culture and social media.

If I were to try to condense it down... I think it's a sign of the times we live in, and that Jesus is coming soon. There is a phrase that you see often in social media about the state of society today—clown world. People lack the words to describe the craziness that is going on these days, so they call it clown world.

Some people say, "Oh. Well, selfishness has been going on since the fall, it's nothing new." I think the dial has been turned up several notches. It's no wonder men and women don't want to commit to each other and raise children; when society has degraded to the point it has, and people can't seem to be loyal and trustworthy anymore.

I saw this coming before I graduated high school (in the late 80's). I saw how people were treating each other. It's why I didn't want children at an early age, and why I never married. Even then I felt like I didn't want to bring children into a world of such depravity. When I look at how things have changed since the mid-to-late 80's, I can see I was spot on in my assessment, and justified.

 

[bèlla]

We'd have more happily married couples if we had less time in our heads and on the Internet. For every helpful point there's 50 others stoking fears, complexes and distorted thoughts. We have more distractions, ideologies and aspirations. It's hard to settle down when you're imagining the next best thing or chasing unreality.

The bible tells us to be mindful of the times and seasons. We didn't get here overnight. We've been sliding for awhile and no one wants to see it. There's no way you can have the statistics on divorce, single parenting and smaller families and assume it's a cakewalk. No one should be surprised at this point.

We must accept responsibility for wrong assumptions and missed opportunities. If we can't admit we're ill prepared or never bothered doing so we're leaving things to chance. It's hard. The sooner people come to terms with that. The sooner they acknowledge the changing climate the more they'll be prepared to wait without anger.

You can't live your life based on the world you wish you had. You have to live in light of it. That's the primary problem. No one believed it would happen to them. You can't have all this darkness and be shocked people are marrying less. It's dark. Satan's influence is greater. That has a price.

You don't counter evil through complaint. It only moves through prayer. If things are really bad it's an example where prayer and fasting may be needed for your breakthrough. You're at war. You've always been at war. Even when things seemed good.

Too many Christians have forgotten that and fell asleep on the job. Now things have worsened and we're pulling our hair. Just because we rest on our laurels doesn't mean he follows suit. Sometimes we have to roll up our sleeves and fight for our blessing.

~bella

 

[Freth]

@BobRyan brought up something I purposefully left out of my post, wanting to go a different route. I'll touch on what he said.

In the late 80's, around the time I graduated high school, movies were becoming ultra-violent, and music took a turn for the worse with profanity laced lyrics (so much so they needed a rating system). TV shows and movies started being more depraved, and started pushing ideas into people's minds. I watched society change in the span of two generations, which was jaw dropping to witness. And now we're seeing societal degradation on a scale my young self never could've imagined back in the 80's.

These days entertainment is an indoctrination machine, and is pushing everything depraved, including satanism. Selfishness abounds because it has been amplified to the nth degree by the progress Satan has made in this world, corrupting minds. Imagine what the tribulation will be like. Clown world deluxe.

Sadly, selfishness is going to be here until Jesus returns. It's how you live that makes the difference.

 

[SavedByGrace3]

It is a sign of the overall falling culture.
Even if you do not accept the Biblical "prime directive" that says "be fruitful and multiply" and the God ordained method of doing so i.e. marriage and family, then there is the natural law of "survival of the species" which boils down to procreate and preserve your genetic uniqueness or disappear from the gene pool. Ours would be the first species that I know of that will snuff itself out due to cultural abnormalities and sheer myopic selfishness. We "advanced" (sic) ourselves into oblivion. IMO it is a mass mental aberration that in itself is a departure from nature and reality. We are birds that feel like we are being forced to fly. It is a great inconvenience to have to fly rather than walking. Even then, "walking is for chumps" so said Homer Simpson when he saw people riding in wheelchairs and he felt stupid that he had to use his legs when they got to ride. I really think our culture has been taken over by mass delusion and so we kill babies, change our gender because we do not like the one in which we were born, and we use a smart phone to text the person standing 5 feet away from us. We allow these indulgences because we can afford it and are spoiled to the point that blessings are impositions. Nothing that a good WW3, Depression, or Famine will not cure and bring us back down to reality. Snap out of it people.

 

[bèlla]

As @Freth noted and I mentioned in my response this was already underway in the 80s. Parents bear responsibility for failing to prepare their children for the shifting culture and permitting them to believe nothing has changed.

The church bears culpability too. They were busy pushing purity while things were worsening and ideologies that encouraged non engagement instead of a proactivity. If they admitted the necessity of solidifying connections during college and acknowledged the probability of success in a Christian setting we'd be better off.

~bella

 

[trophy33]

Is it safe to assume the obvious answer why we are not marrying anymore these days, and if we are, it's getting later and later
and even fewer people are having kids/families......mostly because we are more selfish than ever before (the greatest idol in
today's world is "me")?

No, the reasons are unrealistic expectations (most women chasing after few top % of men), too many requirements (most of them not important for marriage) and also not being told the reality of aging (that she will not have it as easy to find somebody in 30 as she had it in 20).

Most women also have wrong ideas about what men value in women, implanted into them by social media and pop culture. For example, even women with hundreds of sexual partners, public explicit content posted on various platforms and several children (with different fathers) are sincerely surprised that good men do not want anything serious with them.

We can also mention "career first, family second" which works for men, but not for women (both psychological and biological reasons), laws supporting divorce rather than marriage, unhealthiness epidemic (majority of people being obese and/or with mental problems), disappearing concept of simply honoring and keeping a promise, people having no working example of a stable family from childhood, because more and more people are from single parent homes etc.

 

[BobRyan]

@BobRyan brought up something I purposefully left out of my post, wanting to go a different route. I'll touch on what he said.

In the late 80's, around the time I graduated high school, movies were becoming ultra-violent, and music took a turn for the worse with profanity laced lyrics (so much so they needed a rating system). TV shows and movies started being more depraved, and started pushing ideas into people's minds. I watched society change in the span of two generations, which was jaw dropping to witness. And now we're seeing societal degradation on a scale my young self never could've imagined back in the 80's.

These days entertainment is an indoctrination machine, and is pushing everything depraved, including satanism. Selfishness abounds because it has been amplified to the nth degree by the progress Satan has made in this world, corrupting minds. Imagine what the tribulation will be like. Clown world deluxe.

Sadly, selfishness is going to be here until Jesus returns. It's how you live that makes the difference.

And now (as is marriage has not already endured a ton of assaults) - we have AI issues coming up on the horizon

 

[seeker2122]

I'm married, but I never felt God told me to marry, or to marry this particular person. I don't know if that's most people's experience, really.

I think people are mostly getting married later because it takes longer to get "established." Finish education to, find secure employment, be able to afford to support oneself, potentially manage having children. Once people were at that point in their early twenties; today that would be rare.

But at what point in human history did people ever get "established" to marry? It was worse in the past! We have it way easier and better now.
So that would seem to indicate selfishness even more.

 

[Paidiske]

But at what point in human history did people ever get "established" to marry? It was worse in the past! We have it way easier and better now.
So that would seem to indicate selfishness even more.

I don't know that I agree. People always expected to be ready to take their place in adult society before marrying. It's just that the goalposts of what that looks like, have shifted dramatically.

 

[seeker2122]

This is not the way to approach marriage. If the relationship is based on equality and respect then each role will naturally fall into place. Blessings.

This is not me saying it. The Bible says this. You better read: Eph. 5:22-24 (Obedience)
and for men it is dying to self, and dying for her (Eph.5:25 - give your life for her) just as Christ did for his bride (the church).

It's biblical, but I definitely can see where saying a woman should be obedient as her highest virtue can make you feel uncomfortable
considering the amount of gender issues out there.

Bible teaches us that we as the "bride" for the "bride groom" (Jesus) is to have the virtue of obedience. So the most proper aspect of a chrisitan's life is obedience to God.

 

[seeker2122]

I don't know that I agree. People always expected to be ready to take their place in adult society before marrying. It's just that the goalposts of what that looks like, have shifted dramatically.

I think that is where we differ. I don't believe it has at all.
Life is still life. It's always been hard. People are just more self-centered and unwilling to sacrifice everything for marriage and family. I think we'd rather seek our own career advancement, personal development, acquisition of wealth/power/leverage. If you look at the poorer people immigrating to western nations, they are working hard and still marrying young and raising 3 - 7 children in the west. If they can do it then what is our/your excuse? This is my opinion.

 

[seeker2122]

As a person who has been single most of my life, I would say yes, selfishness is definitely a factor.

• Selfishness in wanting to be independent and do your own thing without having to be responsible for someone else.
• Selfishness in others that leads them to be dishonest, to cheat, to mistreat you, which then leads to more of the above bullet point.

There are complex societal issues at play here, which also includes selfishness.

• Men not wanting to potentially lose half of everything they own, because of the way the system works.
• Women being empowered and wanting to take on traditional male roles.
• Hookup culture and the mentality of the younger generations, thanks to popular culture and social media.

If I were to try to condense it down... I think it's a sign of the times we live in, and that Jesus is coming soon. There is a phrase that you see often in social media about the state of society today—clown world. People lack the words to describe the craziness that is going on these days, so they call it clown world.

Some people say, "Oh. Well, selfishness has been going on since the fall, it's nothing new." I think the dial has been turned up several notches. It's no wonder men and women don't want to commit to each other and raise children; when society has degraded to the point it has, and people can't seem to be loyal and trustworthy anymore.

I saw this coming before I graduated high school (in the late 80's). I saw how people were treating each other. It's why I didn't want children at an early age, and why I never married. Even then I felt like I didn't want to bring children into a world of such depravity. When I look at how things have changed since the mid-to-late 80's, I can see I was spot on in my assessment, and justified.

Wow 100% spot on like you stole the words from my mouth. This has been my same observation. It concerns me greatly and I don't know what to do other than to pray and ask God for His help.

 

[seeker2122]

@BobRyan brought up something I purposefully left out of my post, wanting to go a different route. I'll touch on what he said.

In the late 80's, around the time I graduated high school, movies were becoming ultra-violent, and music took a turn for the worse with profanity laced lyrics (so much so they needed a rating system). TV shows and movies started being more depraved, and started pushing ideas into people's minds. I watched society change in the span of two generations, which was jaw dropping to witness. And now we're seeing societal degradation on a scale my young self never could've imagined back in the 80's.

These days entertainment is an indoctrination machine, and is pushing everything depraved, including satanism. Selfishness abounds because it has been amplified to the nth degree by the progress Satan has made in this world, corrupting minds. Imagine what the tribulation will be like. Clown world deluxe.

Sadly, selfishness is going to be here until Jesus returns. It's how you live that makes the difference.

100% agree. It is the same reason why God made the 1st commandment, thou shall not have/make any idols before me, for a reason!
God knew from the beginning the greatest problem facing humanity within the realm of sinful nature is idolatry. We worship ourselves.
When you see all around you people just worshiping themselves because of how beautiful they look, what they own, what they bought, where they traveled, how happy they look, and becoming a self-model for the world to adore you with praises....this is idolatry. Now imagine a man trying to fall in love with you and marry you so that you can bear children with him.....she loves herself more than that man so of course she would have no openness to marrying and raising a godly family. I saw this happening too over the decades and social media/internet just fast-tracked it to a whole another level!

 

[Maria Billingsley]

This is not me saying it. The Bible says this. You better read: Eph. 5:22-24 (Obedience)
and for men it is dying to self, and dying for her (Eph.5:25 - give your life for her) just as Christ did for his bride (the church).

It's biblical, but I definitely can see where saying a woman should be obedient as her highest virtue can make you feel uncomfortable
considering the amount of gender issues out there.

Bible teaches us that we as the "bride" for the "bride groom" (Jesus) is to have the virtue of obedience. So the most proper aspect of a chrisitan's life is obedience to God.

Nah ,not uncomfortable. Maybe you need to know the difference between submission and obedience. Additionally, you failed to include verse 21 which says "Submit to one another". Be blessed.

Ephesians 5:21
"Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ."

Difference Between Submission and Obedience | Compare the Difference Between Similar Terms

Submission vs Obedience Difference between Submission and Obedience is important to know as we live in a society where obedience and submission to power

www.differencebetween.com

 

[seeker2122]

It is a sign of the overall falling culture.
Even if you do not accept the Biblical "prime directive" that says "be fruitful and multiply" and the God ordained method of doing so i.e. marriage and family, then there is the natural law of "survival of the species" which boils down to procreate and preserve your genetic uniqueness or disappear from the gene pool. Ours would be the first species that I know of that will snuff itself out due to cultural abnormalities and sheer myopic selfishness. We "advanced" (sic) ourselves into oblivion. IMO it is a mass mental aberration that in itself is a departure from nature and reality. We are birds that feel like we are being forced to fly. It is a great inconvenience to have to fly rather than walking. Even then, "walking is for chumps" so said Homer Simpson when he saw people riding in wheelchairs and he felt stupid that he had to use his legs when they got to ride. I really think our culture has been taken over by mass delusion and so we kill babies, change our gender because we do not like the one in which we were born, and we use a smart phone to text the person standing 5 feet away from us. We allow these indulgences because we can afford it and are spoiled to the point that blessings are impositions. Nothing that a good WW3, Depression, or Famine will not cure and bring us back down to reality. Snap out of it people.View attachment 329798

Holy Preaching Batman! I completely agree. As awful the thought is, I totally agree with your second last sentence. I don't really want one to happen to me personally but I do feel like the rest of the world needs it badly (the ones who have lost sight of the real meaning of living).

 

[seeker2122]

No, the reasons are unrealistic expectations (most women chasing after few top % of men), too many requirements (most of them not important for marriage) and also not being told the reality of aging (that she will not have it as easy to find somebody in 30 as she had it in 20).

Most women also have wrong ideas about what men value in women, implanted into them by social media and pop culture. For example, even women with hundreds of sexual partners, public explicit content posted on various platforms and several children (with different fathers) are sincerely surprised that good men do not want anything serious with them.

We can also mention "career first, family second" which works for men, but not for women (both psychological and biological reasons), laws supporting divorce rather than marriage, unhealthiness epidemic (majority of people being obese and/or with mental problems), disappearing concept of simply honoring and keeping a promise, people having no working example of a stable family from childhood, because more and more people are from single parent homes etc.

I would like to suggest that chasing "unrealistic expectations" IS selfishness / self-centered living. Also career first / family second is also self-centeredness. I agree with what you said, but I do believe all of that is rooted in self-centeredness/selfishness.