From: utzoo!decvax!microsof!uw-beave!uw-june!kirkg
Newsgroups: net.singles
Title: questions about marriage
Article-I.D.: uw-june.152
Posted: Thu Nov  4 12:58:27 1982
Received: Tue Nov  9 08:41:46 1982


   I have an issue that I have been thinking about for a while, without
coming to any obvious conclusions.  This may not be perfectly suited to 
net.singles, but barring net.ethics, this is the closest.  I'll try to
explain this without sounding snobbish and completely cold, but I think it's
going to seem that way anyway.
   I'm not, at present, even remotely close to marriage, but I certainly 
expect to marry someday.  I also expect to become very sound financially,
preferably before marriage.  I am also a realist, and this is where the
cynicism seems to arise.  I recoginize that a great number of marriages today
end in divorce, no matter how perfectly suited they seemed in the beginning,
and that divorce settlements can become extremely large.  
   My question is no doubt obvious at this point: how can I be even relatively
sure that five, or twenty-five, years past marriage, I'll find myself 
divorced, losing perhaps half of my assets?  
   I do not, by any stretch of the imagination, plan to enter into a marriage
with thoughts of it ending before death do us part.  I am not planning on
divorce.  But by not thinking about it, or refusing to believe it could happen
to me, does not guarentee that it won't.
   I can think of few things more sacrilegious then requesting your fiancee
to sign a contract relinquishing her rights to your property.  The very
mention of such a thing would completely contradict what I have stated in  
the last paragraph.  A friend of mine has suggested that perhaps the only
safe way out would be to find a wife whose career is as successful as mine.
This seems less than likely for a number of reasons, not the least of which
is my expectations to be, in a word, rich.
   So far, this sounds as though I'm far more concerned about money than love.
I'm not.  But in the event of a divorce, one can assume that love, at least
mutual love, is already gone.  I am not ashamed of my desire for wealth,
and do not place it above love, or marriage.  But in the absence of the
last two, it does mean something to me.
   I am completely confidant that this will cause everyone to forget
entirely about the other issues of net.singles, and focus their wrath upon
me.  I have portrayed myself as an evil money-hungry bastard, concerned
only with my own well-being, caring not at all for the needs of my 
eventual wife.  Anyway, like I have said, I haven't come to any conclusions
on all of this, and I am looking for input on the matter.

                                Kirk Glerum
                                ...microsoft!uw-beaver!kirkg