Ideas on marriage

Lovely Sweet Laura, posted over a year ago

I believe it is a farce-for many reasons- one obviously being that half of them end in divorce. I believe in love and I also believe that some people are meant to be or are so called "soul mates". That being said in most instances I believe most people marry for the wrong reasons and not only that but that people change. What are your thoughts?

Posted on 2 July 2009 @ 17:58 (London time) - permalink
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, posted over a year ago

I neither support it or not support it. Many people require official labels to satisfy a social ego which includes tradition and religion. Some of them do it to get their feet grounded onto foreign soil. However, though I may be more indifferent to it, if my lover really desires a label to satisfy her own social and traditional ego, I would give in to her whims.

The key point in your comment is "that people change".

Since logically, people change, within the boundaries of a marriage, each person has to change similarly for the marriage to work. More often than not, people cannot change in a way that can maintain a connection with their lover due to a vast range of reasons.

One of the consistent and constant 'problems' associated to marriage is that the connection between the lovers decay over time, when at least one lover refuses to reason and use the emotional blackmailing of, "If you truly love me, then you should accept me for who I am".

'Good' change means to upgrade oneself and if the lovers can change accordingly while still maintain their relationship, that change will be able to further unify their connection. "Progression" is the key for relationships to work. Trial and error, experimentation, open to experience, open to change, open to exercising one's mind beyond what you read in textbooks and statistics and peer pressure yields 'good' change if applied responsibly and respectfully.

Of course, it all comes down to relativity.

Posted on 2 July 2009 @ 20:6 (London time) - permalink
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Tisha-1, posted over a year ago

I must be off in some different demographic group, because the vast majority of the people I know socially are married to their first spouses. (I can't count all the people I encounter in the course of a day, at the supermarket, at the science center, at the various stops in my day.) That's not to say that some of those marriages aren't teetering on the edge of extinction, but for the most part I think the people in the marriages are happy to be there.

Who decides what the "right" reasons to get married are? What are the "wrong" reasons? Does change necessitate withdrawal or separation from the spouse? And what does "change" mean? The friends I have had for nearly 40 years, or 30, or 20, or 10 may change in appearance, or schooling, or jobs, or skills, or even wisdom, but from my perspective, their fundamental approach to the world does not change. They either have some common sense, or they do not. They are either positive or negative about things. They either accept or complain. They either lead or they follow.

Would some of the people I know not be married if society didn't expect it of them? ("Society" mean family and friends and the peer group, the social class that they inhabit.) Perhaps not. It takes a particularly strong will and a strong sense of self to ignore class/societal conventions.

I expect we could indulge in an examination of the origins of marriage, the reasons the legal and religious unions came about and how those evolved over time. In some parts of the world, for example, having up to 4 wives is not only accepted, it's almost expected. In other parts of the world, you do not choose your spouse, your parents do. So there's lots to talk about there.

However, I think it would be fair to say that humans have some sense that being part of a monogamous couple isn't something to be avoided. Just as not everyone is cut out for monogamy, not everyone is cut out for serial monogamy, or polyamory, or casual dating all one's life.

I find some comfort in the thought that I am married. I'm part of a team, a unit, a partnership; and we go through life with its ups and downs, joys and sorrows, all the good and bad, together. I wouldn't change that for the world. Well, maybe if you catch me on a bad day and I'm really cranky, I might. But just for a day.

So I wouldn't say it's a farce. There are solid reasons for why it came into existence and why we perpetuate it today. Do those outweigh dissolving the notion of marriage? I think for me they do. But you could try to convince me otherwise.

Posted on 2 July 2009 @ 20:41 (London time) - permalink
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, posted over a year ago

Perhaps Tisha is in the right demographic group and I am in the wrong one, but I think that most people who both my wife and I know have been at least once divorced.

Her and I were both previously married and divorced. One of our best friends just left her husband of 28 years about a year ago. When we worked at the same place many years ago, many of our mutual friends had been previously married. I would guess that most of the people who we know well have been married and divorced at least once. I think that most of the people who I used to work with before I retired were married to their first partners though. However, I didn't know most of them personally or well enough to be sure.

I do think that a lot of people get married for the wrong reasons or get married too soon without really knowing themselves or the other person well enough. This is what happened to both my wife and I with our first marriages. We did better the second time. We dated for 4 years and then lived together for 2 1/2 more years before we decided to get married. Actually we got married as much for financial reasons than we did because we thought marriage was the right thing to do. We did however think that we were ready to make that commitment when we did get married. We didn't want to go through another divorce in our lives.

People do change. Their hobbies and interests change. Perhaps what they do changes because of health reasons. For the marriage to easily succeed the partner has to be willing to change too. I say easily succeed because we know people who have been married to one person for decades that have no common interests except for perhaps their children. Some of these marriages fail after the children are grown. Some continue but are not necessarily happy. We know 3 couples who have no common interests. One is our friend who left her husband last year. They go on vacation separately half of the time. There is another couple who are retired and she travels with friends and he stays at home.

My wife and I are also each others best friends and have been so for over 20 years. We don't actually have any real close friends, at least none who live close to us. We are happy with that and have been, but that can be dangerous. If one of us were to die then the other would have no one to turn to for support. If for some reason we would cease to love each other then it would be very difficult without close friends.

Our interests have changed over the years and we have both made adjustments to accommodate the other. Everything we do together we both like to do. I think our only interest differences are what we like to watch on TV. Yes, I like to exercise more than her and she likes to read more than me, but those are easy to handle.

I personally see nothing wrong with never getting married and just living together, although that makes things difficult if you have children. If people want to find a new partner every 10 years than that is fine if it doesn't cause hurt for the partner. Some people like swinging to keep things exciting. I have no idea how many of those types of marriages result in failure, but if not than I couldn't care less what they do as long as one doesn't cheat.

There was a relational psychologist being interviewed on the news a couple of days ago. She was talking about the cheating in politics that has been in the news. The news person asked her if she believed that humans were meant to be monogamous and she said the she believed that we are not biologically wired to be monogamous. I think that is true, although most of us suppress that urge to stray. I think that there are even people in a happy and satisfying marriage that can have the wish to occasionally be with someone else. Not to the exclusion of their current partner, but in addition. A lot of it has to do with wondering if we are still attractive to someone else. That is why people do harmless flirting. They have no intention to cheat and that flirting tells them that someone else might find them attractive in some way.

As Tisha said, marriages have their ups and downs. My marriage has had them. We have always worked on solving those problems and have never thought of divorce. Well, perhaps for a few minutes right after an argument when we are feeling hurt. A hug solves that feeling though.

I also don't think that marriage is a farce, but I don't think that it is necessary either. It is just part of our culture. People can have a lifelong partnership without marriage. If it were not for financial and insurance reasons, I see no reason for my wife and I to have gotten married. We don't have children. I don't think that our lives would have been different if we weren't married. We knew one couple who lived together for several years and then got married. They were divorced about a year later. I have no idea why. Perhaps they got married for the wrong reason, like to hold the partnership together if they were having problems.

Posted on 3 July 2009 @ 3:59 (London time) - permalink
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