To think women should prioritise being equally yoked when choosing a partner?

[ThisLimeMoose]

As a woman, I firmly believe that if you don’t have children, you should prioritise dating a man who doesn’t have children. If you’re financially stable, you should be looking for a man who is equally financially stable. The same applies to emotional maturity, ambition, lifestyle and general circumstances.

I think far too many women enter relationships where they’re taking on responsibilities, complications or burdens that they wouldn’t otherwise have, simply because they’ve been encouraged to believe that love should be enough. Stay equally yoked in all things and I genuinely believe you’d avoid a significant proportion of the relationship problems we regularly see discussed on here.

AIBU?

The expectation of continuing romantic love in a relationship is responsible for a great deal of harm.

This.

I’ve not heard it in that context before. As a knitter, immediately imagined a couple being dressed in matching jumpers 😆

But in marriage you are tied together, pulling in the same direction, and sometimes that load is very heavy. It sets aside the romantic, hearts and flowers idea of partnership and centres the fact that with marriage comes responsibility so choose carefully who you share your one life with.

I agree that shared values are important but I think you can be in different places with regards to earnings for example and it doesn't have to be a problem.
Ditto children - Mumsnet is a poor indicator for how raising children post divorce affects families as people are frequently asking for help. People don't come on to boast at how harmonious their blended families are. I married a man with 2 children. Sure, it's had its moments, but I have 2 lovely adult step'children' now who are great people and loving siblings to my DD. It's been a very happy outcome. Helped significantly by their Mum and a good job of co-parenting.

Of course you can help who you fall in love with - you choose who you meet, build a relationship and invest time and emotion in. You choose how far you let your boundaries slip for someone, and where you compromise your standards - doing in the name of love doesn’t make you less in control of your choices.

I dunno, I think we see quite a lot of boasting about harmonious blended families actually! It's a common feature on threads where there's some kind of issue for posters in the comments to come on to talk about how things are fine in their setup.

But those people are generally replying to threads rather than starting them, so I suppose that's the difference.

OP didn't misspell the word, though. And even if people aren't familiar with the word yoke and assume it must be referring to the yellow of an egg, when do you ever hear it used as a verb - as in 'to yolk' or 'to be yolked'?

If somebody uses a word that you're not familiar with, the obvious course of action is either to ask/find out what it means or, if you aren't interested in finding out, just ignore it and move on (easily done when it's only a thread on MN); but it seems to have very much become 'A Thing' to assume that people must be stupid or wrong if they use language and vocabulary that you haven't encountered before or don't understand. By that reckoning, Stephen Hawking must have been a right thicko!!

It does make very good sense as an analogy, as two yoked oxen have to pull together with a common goal (obviously, unlike with people choosing to date and/or marry, the oxen had no personal choice in the matter). Whether it's religious faith, ethical beliefs or any of all kinds of differing life circumstances, surely it's obvious that both people would be just as unhappy as each other if they ignore it?

If Katie Price ended up married to Jacob Rees-Mogg, does anybody really think that either of them would be truly delighted?!

I can honestly say I've never regarded myself as "yoked" and I'm in my 60s. 😁 What a bizarre expression.

Choosing a partner depends on so many things from basic affection to sexual desire, attitude to financial risk, personalities, work ethic etc. There is no formula.

And that's assuming a woman even wants a permanent, live in partner in the first place. My happiest years have been those I spent raising my child by myself. A clean, harmonious home with no nasty surprises.

Yoked?! I'm not an Evangelical Christian.

I’ve never heard this expression before, assumed it was a typo!

@ThisLimeMoosewas i speaking to you?? How did you find out about my life 🫣🫣🫣

Not feeling yoked probably is pretty new. Life was very hard for most of history, and you had to rely on those around you because there was no institutional safety net. So, as you are going to be yoked then be careful who you are yoked with.

Maybe he needs directions

I can honestly say I've never regarded myself as "yoked" and I'm in my 60s. 😁 What a bizarre expression.

It just means bonded together and working together towards a common goal - whether physically - as in oxen ploughing a field, who had no agency in the matter; or figuratively and legally - as in when two humans choose to marry or form other bonds such as having children together or buying a house/sharing a household together.

When people used to talk about 'wedlock', nobody ever thought it meant you were physically chained together. 'Family ties' clearly don't refer to being actually roped together. It's just figurative speech.

I'm ancient and I've never heard the phrase before. I could work out roughly what it meant though. Is it more common in certain regions/countries/social groups?

I wasn't brought up in Evangelical Christian circles, but it's an expression that I heard in Fife in the '60s.

Ours was a coalmining town, but the type that was surrounded by farmland; I had had relatives who had worked both in mining and in farming, so expressions related to farming didn't seem out of place.

People nowadays most know the phrase from the Bible (or don't, it seems); but people of all cultures, faiths and backgrounds have been farming using animals for millennia.

It's primarily a human thing, rather than a religious thing.

This 100%

No. People are just confused because to many of us it's not an expression we've heard before. I associate yokes with farming so had no idea it had anything to do with Christianity. And I don't think anyone is having a fit.

Yoked sounds like an old fashioned term but I do agree with the message of what OP is saying. Finding a partner who has the same family structure, ambitions, expectations, financial status etc. is a good idea. I used in work in East London with a lot of Muslim women who talked about their marriages working because they were arranged with this belief in mind. Not talking about horrible forced marriages, a lot of my friends were introduced to possible husbands by their family/community and they could date and choose if they wanted to marry the man but they said it worked because both partners were from similar backgrounds.

You hold opinions. It's not unreasonable to hold opinions.

It would be unreasonable to expect people to change their actions on the basis of your opinion.

Some. women love a project. It gives them purpose and meaning.That's their business.

But deciding whether to act on the love you feel is definitely a choice.
Feelings don't have to determine actions.

It would be very commonly known in the geekier end of the farming community (the people who know that you will never win a ploughing match if your heavy horses are not equally yoked). Given many city dwellers would probably struggle to recognise a plough, it isn't really surprising they don't know what a yoke is.

I agree with you in theory.

I know many couples who have nothing in common and it doesn’t work.

I know loads of people with no DC who then get into a relationship with someone with DC and it doesn’t work.

It really concerns me when there is a big pay gap.

But then I also know couples who are opposites but have an amazing relationship- they do say opposites attract.

I also know couples who have an amazing relationship with their stepkids.

I am someone who thinks partners should be as equal as possible.

But I recognise that just because I believe that, doesn’t mean it’s right.