![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Love and Marriage
This post seems to have touched a chord with a couple of people and bought up a couple of really interesting comments. In order to prevent me from repeating myself, I thought I'd try to answer a few points here and explain a little more what I think about marriage.
What: In the traditional service in the UK, you promise to have and hold, love and cherish etc in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad for ever and ever until death do us part. Now that might be a laudable ambition and something you want to strive towards and you really hope you'll achieve, but that's not what you've said. You've said, you've promised, that you *will*. And you can't know that. You don't know everything about the person you've promised it too - you never can. And, even more than that, you don't know everything about yourself - even if you're particularly self analyzing. Who knows where you'll be and what you'll want in 10 years time. Now, I don't believe in making promises that I don't know if I can keep. I can promise to try, I can promise to work at the relationship, to give it every chance over the changes and the bad patches, but in the end, I can't promise to stay in love with someone forever. If things change, then sometimes there is nothing you can do about it. You can't force yourself to be or stay in love with someone.
The enormity of this promise seems to be less and less regarded these days. Now that divorce is not so difficult to get, it seems to be just another step up in a relationship - once you've been together for a couple of years you might as well get married, and if things aren't working out a couple of years later, just get a divorce. It's just a longer, more expensive way to dump someone. Of course, in counterpoint to that, there is still some perceived stigma in a "failed marriage". You made an impossible promise - it shouldn't be surprising if you weren't able to live up to it.
Who: If you're making a promise about your relationship and how you're going to conduct it, the only person you absolutely need to share it with is the person you're making the promise to - the other person in the relationship. You may well choose to share the extent of your commitment with your friends and family, to a greater or lesser extent, but you don't need their sanction for that commitment. This is one thing that I would object to about having a church wedding - I don't need the permission of the church to be in love, or, for that matter, to have sex. I'm also suspicious about civil weddings - why does the state need to know about it anyway? What business of theirs is it who I choose to live my life with. And if we decide between us that things just aren't going to work, then we shouldn't need the state's permission to end our relationship either.
While it definitely needs some more work, that's a basic overview of my position on marriage. I'm now going to go back and look at some of the specific points made in the comments to the other post.
Anonymous: It's true that whether you and Alex are in love or not is nobody else's business. The legal questions have to do with 'society' having to pick up the bill(s) if you generate dependency relationships, based on "love" which then "doesn't work out".
It's true that marriage is a short cut to getting a big set of legal rights/responsibilities, but I'm not actually comfortable with short cuts of that nature generally. I would much rather make things like property rights explicit by having a joint mortgage. If I choose to have children, the fathers name will be on the birth certificate unless otherwise requested, which is sufficient for full paternity rights. I already have made a will, although, not owning a house, there aren't really any significant issues there yet. The one thing that you can't simulate is that co-habiting couples cannot designate each other next-of-kin, meaning that in medical situations, they have no rights over your treatment if you are unable to make those choices yourself. For me personally, this is not an issue as Alex and I are both close to my parents and it seems unlikely that there would be conflict, or an attempt to exclude him from such discussions, but it can be an issue for some couples.
Anonymous: Marriage, when it is undertaken in an informed way, ("not lightly or unadvisedly") trains you and informs you about what to do when you are headed for a tailspin.
I strongly disagree with this. Going back to my earlier point about easy divorce, I think that one of the problems is that it's something which is not taken seriously and for which no training or advice is provided until it starts to spin out of control. I don't really think that married couples are any better of than co-habs when it comes to hitting a rough patch. It gives you a stricture that you have to stick it out no matter what, which can be foolish and unhelpful, but it doesn't give any mechanisms for how to do this, or how to improve the situation when there are problems. That comes from within your relationship and yourselves, not from the institution.
Anonymous: Not everybody wants the framework of a marriage, of course, but they do have to take on board the consequences for others of their failed relationships. ... But in general, making a promise in public is a form of leading by example: it tells the rest of us that the persons getting married *have* thought about their responsibilities which would devolve upon the rest of us in the event of failure.
Again, I don't really think that this is true. Most people don't go into a marriage or a relationship making plans for what they'll do if it doesn't work out and that's more true of marriages, I would say, because the whole ethos of marriage is that it will work out. Till death do us part. So why bother. In some ways, marriage encourages you not to think about how things would be split if you split up for example, because you assume that it's all taken care of. In a co-hab situation, you have to be explicit about that sort of thing, which I think is healthier and safer - assumptions are often dangerous.
I'm not saying that I think marriage is a dreadful thing, or that no-one should ever do it, but I wouldn't. Partly, it feels like a validation that I don't need, and mostly because of the first point I made. You can't make a promise for ever and ever. You don't *know* about the other person, and you don't *know* about yourself.
What: In the traditional service in the UK, you promise to have and hold, love and cherish etc in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad for ever and ever until death do us part. Now that might be a laudable ambition and something you want to strive towards and you really hope you'll achieve, but that's not what you've said. You've said, you've promised, that you *will*. And you can't know that. You don't know everything about the person you've promised it too - you never can. And, even more than that, you don't know everything about yourself - even if you're particularly self analyzing. Who knows where you'll be and what you'll want in 10 years time. Now, I don't believe in making promises that I don't know if I can keep. I can promise to try, I can promise to work at the relationship, to give it every chance over the changes and the bad patches, but in the end, I can't promise to stay in love with someone forever. If things change, then sometimes there is nothing you can do about it. You can't force yourself to be or stay in love with someone.
The enormity of this promise seems to be less and less regarded these days. Now that divorce is not so difficult to get, it seems to be just another step up in a relationship - once you've been together for a couple of years you might as well get married, and if things aren't working out a couple of years later, just get a divorce. It's just a longer, more expensive way to dump someone. Of course, in counterpoint to that, there is still some perceived stigma in a "failed marriage". You made an impossible promise - it shouldn't be surprising if you weren't able to live up to it.
Who: If you're making a promise about your relationship and how you're going to conduct it, the only person you absolutely need to share it with is the person you're making the promise to - the other person in the relationship. You may well choose to share the extent of your commitment with your friends and family, to a greater or lesser extent, but you don't need their sanction for that commitment. This is one thing that I would object to about having a church wedding - I don't need the permission of the church to be in love, or, for that matter, to have sex. I'm also suspicious about civil weddings - why does the state need to know about it anyway? What business of theirs is it who I choose to live my life with. And if we decide between us that things just aren't going to work, then we shouldn't need the state's permission to end our relationship either.
While it definitely needs some more work, that's a basic overview of my position on marriage. I'm now going to go back and look at some of the specific points made in the comments to the other post.
Anonymous: It's true that whether you and Alex are in love or not is nobody else's business. The legal questions have to do with 'society' having to pick up the bill(s) if you generate dependency relationships, based on "love" which then "doesn't work out".
It's true that marriage is a short cut to getting a big set of legal rights/responsibilities, but I'm not actually comfortable with short cuts of that nature generally. I would much rather make things like property rights explicit by having a joint mortgage. If I choose to have children, the fathers name will be on the birth certificate unless otherwise requested, which is sufficient for full paternity rights. I already have made a will, although, not owning a house, there aren't really any significant issues there yet. The one thing that you can't simulate is that co-habiting couples cannot designate each other next-of-kin, meaning that in medical situations, they have no rights over your treatment if you are unable to make those choices yourself. For me personally, this is not an issue as Alex and I are both close to my parents and it seems unlikely that there would be conflict, or an attempt to exclude him from such discussions, but it can be an issue for some couples.
Anonymous: Marriage, when it is undertaken in an informed way, ("not lightly or unadvisedly") trains you and informs you about what to do when you are headed for a tailspin.
I strongly disagree with this. Going back to my earlier point about easy divorce, I think that one of the problems is that it's something which is not taken seriously and for which no training or advice is provided until it starts to spin out of control. I don't really think that married couples are any better of than co-habs when it comes to hitting a rough patch. It gives you a stricture that you have to stick it out no matter what, which can be foolish and unhelpful, but it doesn't give any mechanisms for how to do this, or how to improve the situation when there are problems. That comes from within your relationship and yourselves, not from the institution.
Anonymous: Not everybody wants the framework of a marriage, of course, but they do have to take on board the consequences for others of their failed relationships. ... But in general, making a promise in public is a form of leading by example: it tells the rest of us that the persons getting married *have* thought about their responsibilities which would devolve upon the rest of us in the event of failure.
Again, I don't really think that this is true. Most people don't go into a marriage or a relationship making plans for what they'll do if it doesn't work out and that's more true of marriages, I would say, because the whole ethos of marriage is that it will work out. Till death do us part. So why bother. In some ways, marriage encourages you not to think about how things would be split if you split up for example, because you assume that it's all taken care of. In a co-hab situation, you have to be explicit about that sort of thing, which I think is healthier and safer - assumptions are often dangerous.
I'm not saying that I think marriage is a dreadful thing, or that no-one should ever do it, but I wouldn't. Partly, it feels like a validation that I don't need, and mostly because of the first point I made. You can't make a promise for ever and ever. You don't *know* about the other person, and you don't *know* about yourself.
no subject
Now, I don't believe in making promises that I don't know if I can keep.
Well, you can always write your own vows.
In some ways, marriage encourages you not to think about how things would be split if you split up for example, because you assume that it's all taken care of. In a co-hab situation, you have to be explicit about that sort of thing, which I think is healthier and safer - assumptions are often dangerous.
This seems to me to come down to the difference between what marriage should be and what it is. I broadly agree with M(r|s) Anon that when undertaken with thought, marriage should provide that sort of framework and evidence of thinking things through, but I don't have enough experience of marriages breaking up (as opposed to long-term couples breaking up) to say whether or not it is that way.
I do know that I'd like to get married one day; you're right, I shouldn't have to share that sort of promise with the church, state, or indeed anyone...but I'm fairly certain that I'm going to want to.
no subject
Would you consider marriage if "until us do part" were not in the vows?
(Personally I've been married once and divorced once, and after that I said I'd never get married again, but I've changed my mind about that, and it's likely I'll be married again within the year.)
no subject
When it comes down to it, marriage is good for some people, isn't for others, of those for whom it is then for some a religious ceremony is a must, for others civil would be just what they want. Everyone's different and we should be accepting what we each want as equally valid...
Of course what happens if out of the two in the relationship one wants marriage and the other one doesn't, then you might have a problem...?!
Re:
no subject
1) We take out the for ever and ever stuff. I'm also not sure about the idea of promising to be in love - it seems odd to me - like the wording is slightly out. You are in love or not. You can promise to try, to work for it and so on. But that's mostly a wording issue
2) That it's not a church wedding, although if we're doing point 1 I suppose it wouldn't be anyway. I really object to the idea that the church have some kind of authority to tell me if it's OK for me to have sex with someone.
Good luck with your marriage!
no subject
(Anonymous) 2003-04-23 09:46 am (UTC)(link)Going technical
----
Re: About marriage...
Re: About marriage...
paternity/marriage
(Anonymous) 2003-04-25 04:59 am (UTC)(link)It's interesting that the notion of knowing oneself seems to take precendence over the notion of the power of the will. One doesn't commit oneself to "be in love"; one commits oneself to exert one's willpower until death parts one spouse from the other.
But all this comes from the point of view that marriage should not be undertaken lightly or unadvisedly. Any good priest or minister or rabbi or imam will talk to a couple about the "what ifs": what if we hate each other some days, what if s/he gets chronically ill, what if we meet someone else who fires us up more, etc., etc. --- the idea that "marriage encourages you not to think about how things would be split if you split up" is simply, flatly, not true in real life for most couples. It isn't possible to contemplate buying a house together, for example, without the solicitor or the estate agent or both telling you in detail about the disposition of the house and your mutual obligations if you are or are not married.
But enough; as others say, and I agree, marriage is for some people and not others. I think the statistics show that it is more trustworthy and better for children, and that society as a whole has a stake in those issues, but there are lies, damned lies, and statistics, quoth Disraeil, and he was right!
Re: paternity/marriage
I guess that I think that in some situations that is not a good thing for either partner and having made that sort of a promise can mean that people are less willing to step away from what has become a bad situation because they feel like they've failed, especially when there is religion involved.
As far as statistics go, now that there is less social pressure to marry your partner than there was, I think that they are considerably misleading. What I think we are seeing is that the type of couple who are more likely to stick together and bring up their children carefully are also more likely to commit to getting married for whatever reason. There's a clever name for this (where 1 item appears to cause another but both are in fact caused by a third thing) but I can't remember what it is.
Agreed!
(Anonymous) 2004-12-02 12:17 pm (UTC)(link)If you love someone, you stay with them. If you don't, you leave. There's no reason at all to make a big public spectacle out of either scenario.
Times change, situations change, relationships change, people change. The only existing constant is change.
There are no guarantees, and some promises cannot be kept. Such as committing the whole of one's natural life to a single person. There's a reason truly successful marriages are rare. They're unnatural freaks of nature.
Signed,
Newlywed in CA
Re: Agreed!
I agree that it's very rare indeed for two people to actually stay committed to each-other for the whole duration. I suppose in a relationship there is a bit of give and take, committment might wax and wane a little, but for it to be worth it, that has to be within quite narrow bounds, and, I guess, relies on not meeting the right other person when committment is lower. Anyway, I think freaks of nature is a little harsh, but I see what you mean?