Do we really LEARN from experience?

Conditioning - the should do mentality - it's so powerful and difficult to break away from. I too got married cause it was the thing to do, I was in my mid twenties but still had the rose colored glasses on. I knew before I married him, that I was making a mistake, but fear, embarrassment stopped me from calling it off. It lasted 18 months. Some people never take off those rose colored glasses and look outside themselves for life's gratifications. It's the wrong place to look and it's the wise ones who discover that. Walking away from the painful and the ability to do just that - walk away is a major life lesson in itself. That means learning to stand on your own two feet for a change. Knowing yourself and understanding that you are stronger than you think, that can only be a good thing. One of the most difficult experiences (for me anyway) is being in a relationship and staying in my own integrity. Relationships are full of compromise - nothing wrong with that. But when you loose yourself to the other person - what's the good in that. Not sure if there are statistics on this one, but I bet you a heap of cash that at least 80% of marriages will show that one of the partners in the marriage is not being honored to their full potential. One person feels lesser than or is treated lesser than. Getting older and having learned some of life's lessons I am a bit more brazen about my choices. It's a dog eat dog world (sadly) and if you don't stand up and get a few of the things you want, then what the heck is the use of being here. Misery is not useful. Getting older gives me a bit more courage, probably through adversity and this sense that I'm tired of not being satisfied with life. Doesn't mean I don't shake in my boots every now and then - keeps me on my toes too! Hopefully people learn from their own mistakes, sadly that's not always the case. I now use a saying: Youth is wasted on the young and wisdom is wasted on the old because some older people don't learn and don't change their lives to have fulfilling experiences; And there would be no point in being young again unless you were going to do it differently.

Thanks for your very thoughtful comment! As I was reading your thoughts, it occurred to me that perhaps the reason people "change more" (spouses, jobs, ideas, life philosophies) as they age is a reflection of nothing more than our knowing ourselves better, and feeling free to step away from things we don't like. When we're young, we're far more locked into what we "should" do, and what "everyone else" is doing-- as we age, we learn to think for ourselves. I got married in college largely because I was pressured to "conform" with what all my friends seemed to be striving for. Whereas I'll be the first to admit that the divorce rate is a bad thing, I'd also have to pause and say that I married someone I had NO BUSINESS marrying, in the first place-- there simply wasn't enough there to warrant us being together, in the long run. Which brings me to that broader issue of whether age simply makes us more capable of recognizing all sorts of mistakes we make, AND gives us more of a sense that it is OK to move away from things that are causing us pain.

Hi Mimpi, and thanks for stopping by! I think it's often true that the answer to a situation is really "it depends." Or, as you say, "yes and no." Love is a funny thing, in the way it tends to "not make sense." I find it helpful to distinguish between "love, as a feeling," and "love, as an action." We can behave in a loving way and engage in loving acts, even if the "feeling" of love is not strong. Similarly, we can be deep in the throes of the "chemical" feeling of love, but to an outsider our behaviour may not be seen as particularly "loving."

Faith, you show a lot of wisdom (as usual!), but you also show by your words that you have a strong sense of self. Although I intended this to be about more than just marriage/divorce, I think it's also true that many of the breakups we see occur as a result of people's dubious sense of self. Clearly, you know precisely who you are, and what matters to you. But there are a lot of people out there who have a substantial part of their sense of self tied up in "being married." So they get married in order to "be married," rather than as a consequence of having found preciselt the right person.

That's exactly right-- it's not just what "happens," but what we DO about it.