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?

I mean, I guess it's the ideal but given how much of a needle in a haystack exercise it is to find a decent partner (especially as you get older), I think insisting on exactly equal "yolking" is fairly unrealistic. I think a decent/compatible/kind man who is slightly uneven in terms of responsibilities/finances is better than focusing on circumstances primarily.

It’s not a Christian thing as such, the Bible is full of analogies that drew on concepts that would be familiar to the society of the time. In a society where people would have close contact with farming, the idea of having a mismatched pair of animals pulling a plough would have well illustrated the challenges of being mismatched in choice of life partner. It’s fallen out of use in a post-industrial society.

I thought yoked was something to do with oxen?

Not going to get into the yolked debate. I agree with you, the sensible approach is to be equal but a lot of women love a project/ have saviour complexes/ have low self esteem etc. we are not all operating rationally all the time.

This.

Generally, I think it helps if people.have similar values in life and a similar attitudes towards life. Unmatched attitudes towards major life things - children; money; politics etc make life so much harder. Enjoying doferent music or hobbies is less important.

I think that when people choose someone who isn't equally matched to them in those terms, women assume the man will just come round to her way of thinking eventually (eg children and domestic responsibility) because its the 'roght' way to think and men assume the woman has just accepted him the way he is and is happy with it.

So many threads on here from unhappy women say "I just assumed he'd grow up eventually," or, "I thought he'd change once the childen were here."

Someone said it's not that easy when you fall in love with someone. I've never fallen in love with someone who is so very different to me.I've been attracted to them or enjoyed their company but the disparity would make them someone I didn't fall in love with. I think some people read that as a signthsat they were made for each other, though.

I think the bigger issue is so many women not realising their worth and so accept someone believing they are equally matched when they're not.

But I don't think it's a hugely radical idea that people should be choosing partners they're compatible with!

You have to look beyond the surface factors to see the character.

Choose someone who is equally ambitious, no matter where they are currently in their career.
Choose someone with a similar work ethic and attitude to work, no matter what their current responsibilities and job role is.
Choose someone with equal energy levels and attitude to living to the full, no matter their current state of health or busy-ness.
Choose someone with similar attitudes to earning and saving, no matter their current level of wealth.
Choose someone with similar attitudes to having treats vs thriftiness, no matter their current ability to spend on treats.
Choose someone with similar liveliness of mind, curiosity and intelligence, no matter what educational level they achieved.
Choose someone with a similar love of reading, no matter how much time they currently have to read.

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

I think it makes a big difference how they are opposite, though. If it's about hobbies, interests or personalities, it's much easier to complement each other than if it's, say, one of you believes that theft is abhorrent and disgraceful whilst the other is out shoplifting and fencing their stolen goods in the pub every day.

It's the sort of thing AI comes out with isn't it?

Ex-H I were well-matched when we got together. Cue a baby and disparate earnings and earning capacity, a surprise twin pregnancy, things shifted and the marriage stopped being a happy or salvageable one. The "equal until a baby comes along" situation isn't unusual.

I have not heard that word yoked used with reference to human marriage for decades. Definitely not common parlance.

People make decisions based on love and romance. Often really unpractical decisions. Not sensible decisions. Ofc we should all be thoroughly sensible and practical but humans tend not to be.

I would say that if you are a single parent, choosing a partner who is not a parent is better than trying to create a blended family with pre-existing kids on both sides. There are just too many complications, e.g. with different contact patterns and amount of contact with the other parent on each side, needing three families to coordinate to book a holiday, issues of how much is spent on Christmas presents and the wealth gaps with children living part-time in different houses, and of course the big one is dealing with unequal inheritances.

Also, if you already have kids, choose someone who doesn't want more kids.

Yes, creating step-siblings and half-siblings can work, but it can also be far more trouble than it is worth, and make childhood less happy for the children than it would have been otherwise.

Not the point of the thread but doesn’t yolk come from the yoke of a shirt pattern, so what you’re carrying on your shoulders?

If you remove emotion from it all then it makes sense but life is rarely that straight forward. The very thing that makes us human is what makes things like finding a partner much messier and complex than this allows for.

A recently popularised term courtesy of American evangelical Christian influencers.

Yolk is part of an egg.
Yoke is part of a shirt or harnessed together.

I agree. I think this is slightly different though.

I'm in my early 50s. I have a career and a hme and my children are adults.

I've been with my partner for 5 years. I know I wouldn't have built a life with him when I was younger eg his children were raised very differently to mine so we wouldnt have been compatible in that sense.

But we are still on the same page in other important stuff. But my priorities and what makes him compatible with me now wouldn't necessarily have been the things that would have made someone compatible with me when I was younger.

I think what's important can change but I don't think anyone should settle for 'less' and accept things they're not happy with.

Exactly. I won’t be yoking myself to anyone thanks very much, regardless of their status.

I think your wording has riled people OP. If you’d simply explained your point in simple terms, you’d have had a better response.

This.

It's about having similar and compatible attitudes rather than your lives looking exactly the same.

Well I admit I'm old, but I'm amazed at how many posters are getting their knickers in a twist over quite an ordinary expression. I knew exactly what the OP meant, and I'm an atheist so any religious context is way over my head. But I do read widely and I'm a bit of an amateur historian, so maybe that's it.

Anyway OP you're not wrong.

My controversial opinion, have seen the pickle lots of women on Mumsnet get into, is that this works both ways.

If a woman is not financially stable in her own right, it might be tempting to look for a high-earning man and not worry about a career. Have a much nicer lifestyle for herself and kids than she could provide herself, or that a man with similar financial circumstances could. But there’s so many examples here of that turning into a terrible trap, with women unable to leave bad men because they can’t afford to. Even if married, because half of (the equity in) a house you can’t afford alone, and half a pension in 30 years, isn’t much use.

Indeed. whole thread derailed .

Some people are just being contrary. It was obvious what she meant.

Despite the ridiculous term youve used, I can see the logic of this in principle. However, you can’t help who you fall in love with and surely no-one would reject a relationship with someone they loved because their incomes were significantly different, or one had children.

I would, absolutely. I am not very romantic and don't believe love conquers all.