SOFA - Start Often Finish rArely

> Traditional marriage is the ultimate form of this ideal. You're supposed to stick to it until you die, no matter what, come hell or high water, even if it makes you and everybody around you miserable. That is neither sane nor healthy!

An interesting philosophy, but I don’t think marriage is the best place to apply it. Writing a README and then never starting a project has practically no consequences. Same for picking up a book and then ditching it after a few minutes. Marriage? That’s a whole different ball game, especially when children are involved.

SOFA works great for marriage, if you tweak the params a little. Most secular people arrive at this by default: You marry your 3rd serious partner sometime in your late 20’s.

Start a lot of long term relationships, finish the one that sticks when both partners are mature and more or less done growing up.

I think there’s another shakeup period (statistically) in your mid to late 40’s. That seems related to when kids start being old enough that they don’t act as a forcing function as much.

And that's when those couples often get divorced.

There's strong value in staying with a first partner, like a high school sweetheart. Growing together through life's challenges creates deep emotional bonds and shared experiences. Long-term stability comes from building trust over time and avoiding the emotional toll of repeated breakups.

Couples who navigate growth together often develop stronger, more resilient partnerships.

To add to this—most of the marriages I've seen that have come after multiple serious relationships struggle with baggage from those previous relationships.

Often it's obvious things like kids, but it's also more pernicious things like expectations, comparisons, and even just different worldviews. A couple that grows up together can end up substantially more unified than is possible when you're joining lives after a decade of adulthood shaped by multiple partners.

There are obviously exceptions on both sides—first-timers that were toxic and 'experienced' partners who work well—but I certainly haven't seen an unqualified series of successes in the pattern described by OP.

I haven’t seen any patterns, and I’m wondering where people are getting these kinds of insights.

Like I have 1 friend that married somebody who could reasonably be described as like a first serious relationship. Other than that… everybody tended to settle down after college, after a few more serious relationships. Nobody has gotten divorced yet (late 30’s). But (and this is being generous to myself), I’ll say I probably only have like 5 friends who I’d really be confident in saying much about the health of their relationships.

I think everybody in this thread is just making things up, tbh.