The Future of Marriage: Question 3

This is where Margaret Cho starts to get a little tiresome. "I dunno, I don't care, (negativity), gay marriage." Sing me another tune, lady, this is getting old.

S.S. Barash says: "So while divorce is prevalent, so is remarriage. It's a triumph over adversity." Re-entering the same institution that chewed you up and spat you out is a triumph over adversity? A triumph over sanity, perhaps, which makes me think of something Jonathan Ames said: "the people who are too insane to get married are actually sane, because marriage and subsequent divorce will drive you nuts." A triumph over adversity would be to mend a failing marriage, like when one partner does something insensitive and stupid and wounds the other, but they talk and understand each other's point of view and things get back on track. Or they even get better. But such a concept seems to be lost on Margaret Cho.

David Moats makes a good point about generalization, but I simply love Ethan Watter's interpretation of "soul mate". I would like to expand a bit upon this. He says: "We no longer marry for sexual access, financial security, entry into adulthood, pressure from parents. It's just soul mate, soul mate, soul mate." To be fair, I think that right now we are more jaded about the soul mate bit than we were 20-25 years ago, in the age of "sensitive" men and so on. However, before choosing your mate was based on more concrete and necessary things such as being a provider, being a father, what you can bring to a household rather than just a romance.

But now everything is all about romance and passion. If it's not love and flowers every day, then it's lacking...something. In other words, its crap that's not worth having. You see it in the movies,, you see it on TV. You see it in books. You never see a great story about a couple that enjoy a great marriage because they have stable incomes, rules of conduct, well-defined responsibilties, are happy with themselves are individuals, and occasionally have the big movie gestures (in other words, people who have a normal relationship in my view) because no one wants to see that. I'm not saying that love-and-romance is crap, but rather that this is not all that is required. There has been such an emphasis on the self, and being self-sufficient, that a lot of people don't know exactly how to merge a life with someone else, and in terms of having goals with someone, it isn't clear that you CAN even grow together with someone else. It feels as if you have to completely make it on your own before you have something worthwhile to offer someone else. But I digress...I agree that we need to "Stop talking 'soul mate' and get down to brass tacks." otherwise marriage will not be the fairytale that people expect it to be, and they fail.

Jim de Sève notes that "legal divorce marked the departure from survival-based feudal marriage to a new form of marriage based on love. When the love is gone, so is the marriage.". Does this mean that it was normal for love to disappear and for marriage to continue, because there was so much more to the partnership that simply love? Are trained to throw away marriage, like a spent pair of old sneakers, once it no longer feels good? Is this right? Millions and millions think it is.

Molly Jong-Fast has nothing good to say about marriage at all, and she is married.

Perhaps our relationships standards are increasing. Women expect men to raise children, protect them and give them opportunities to grow as they see fit, make $200K a year, discuss Rimbaud's relevance to 21st century life, slay dragons and always want to cuddle afterwards. Men expect women to deal with office politics like them, like sex and sports like them, have their own wealth and security before entering into a relationship like they do, and so on. However these seem like reasons for marriages to not take place, rather than reasons for them to end.

Darcy Cosper's idea of modern marriage seems reasonable to me: "if one's expectation of marriage is that it will provide a lifetime of emotional security and unfaltering tender love and devotion — in short, what popular culture suggests to us a marriage should be — it wouldn't be difficult, at the first sign of strife, to feel that the marriage is a failure.". Scott Halzman agrees: "When lack of happiness becomes the standard by which couples can decide to end their union, it trivializes marriage." In other words, marriage is huge, not some sweet instant gratification candy that you can suck on because it feels good and never loses its flavour.

Marriage requires that people re-evaluate what they are attempting to do in marriage. They need a solid core around which they can base their future actions. You cannot forget the solid, practical reasons to get married. You have to look at common goals and decide that these are what you want to do TOGETHER. And you have to decide that these things are worth fighting for in tough times. However, another 30 years of the instant gratification pure love-based unrealistic shmoopy stuff and marriage will be as important as getting season tickets. To the Expos.

UPDATE: I had to change the second-to-last sentence as per the comments below. Also, I have no lunch and money and I am hungry.