Marriage
One of the features of a modern, liberal society is the
acceptance of “love” as the legitimate basis of short and long relationships.
While falling in love has always been a feature of the human experience,
spontaneous pair bonds have not always been the basis for marriage.
We can assume that for thousands of years, a marriage was a
private contract between two families with the endorsement of the local
community. Marriage rites are found in every community. Parents in many
countries continue to arrange the marriages of their children. Arranged
marriages are based on the needs of the family and community rather than the
desires of the individuals who become married.
Even with the elevation of love to a higher status, there is an
ongoing conflict between individual desires and group control. Experienced
parents will know that the bonding energy of love is as brief as it is intense
and will express appropriate concern when their son or daughter chooses a lover
who lacks evidence of long term compatibility. Wise parents will also know the
hazards of interfering with a love bond and may attempt to make the best of a
bad situation, ready to rescue their child when the marriage fails.
In Europe, the Roman Catholic Church prevailed in the
marriage business as a third party that validated marriage contracts and
performed ceremonies. By 1215, the Roman church claimed a marriage monopoly.
In early settlements in US, state laws required legal registration of
marriage but also viewed public cohabitation as sufficient evidence of “common
law” marriage.
Some states in the 1920s attempted regulate who was allowed
to marry whom and prohibited whites from marrying blacks and other ethnic
persons. Governments relied on marriage licenses for census purposes and to
distribute social benefits, health insurance and pension benefits. Social
progress involved more personal determination with rights to fall in love, to
live together with sexual privileges and to have children without a marriage
license.
Close relationships were liberated more or less from church and state control. Coonz stated: “Today,
however, possession of a marriage license tells us little about people’s
interpersonal responsibilities. Half of all Americans aged 25 to 29 are
unmarried, and many of them already have incurred obligations as partners,
parents or both. Almost 40 percent of America’s children are born to unmarried
parents. Meanwhile, more legally married people are in a second or third
marriage; their obligations are spread among several households. Using the
existence of a marriage license to determine when the state should protect
interpersonal relationships is increasingly impractical. Society has already
recognized this when it comes to children, who can no longer be denied
inheritance rights, parental support or legal standing because their parents are
not married.”
Novelist Alain de Botton described a realistic view of
married couples who discover inevitably that they are incompatible – it’s a
matter of degree: “Indeed, marriage tends decisively to move us onto another,
very different and more administrative plane, which perhaps unfolds in a
suburban house, with a long commute and maddening children who kill the passion
from which they emerged. The only ingredient in common is the partner. And that
might have been the wrong ingredient to bottle. The good news is that it doesn’t
matter if we find we have married the wrong person. We must not abandon him or
her, only the founding Romantic idea upon which the Western understanding of
marriage has been based the last 250 years: that a perfect being exists who can
meet all our needs and satisfy our every yearning. Every human will frustrate
anger, annoy, madden and disappoint us — and we will (without any malice) do the
same to them. There can be no end to our sense of emptiness and incompleteness.
But none of this is unusual or grounds for divorce. Choosing whom to commit
ourselves to is merely a case of identifying which particular variety of
suffering we would most like to sacrifice ourselves for.”
Meghan O'Rourke described a pessimistic view of marriage:
“The classic 1960's feminist critique of marriage was that it suffocated women by
tying them to the home and stifling their identity. The hope was that in a
non-sexist society marriage could be a harmonious connection of minds. But 40
years after Friedan and Kipnis arrived with a new book, Against Love, to tell us
that this hope was forlorn. Marriage, she suggests, belongs on the junk heap of
human folly. It is an equal-opportunity oppressor, trapping men and women in a
life of drudgery, emotional anesthesia, and a tug-of-war struggle to balance
vastly different needs. The numbers seem to back up her thesis. Modern marriage
doesn't work for the majority of people. The rate of divorce has roughly doubled
since the 1960s. Half of all marriages end in divorce (in the US). A Rutgers
University poll found that only 38 percent of married couples describe
themselves as happy.
- The book, I and Thou, focuses on intimate relationships. Innate tendencies are hard at
work when people meet, become lovers and end with arguments and fighting. The
same tendencies determine how family members interact and explain why so many
families are “dysfunctional.” When lovers form an enduring pair bond, they often
become parents and everything changes. Humans seek bonding with others and are
distressed when they become isolated. Humans bond to each other in several ways.
The most enduring bonds are kin-related, based on closely shared genes. The
deepest bonding occurs when mother and infant are together continuously from
birth and mother breast-feeds the infant. Bonds among family members are the
most enduring. Bonds to friends, lovers and spouses are the next most
significant. Bonds to colleagues, neighbors and even strangers that are admired
from a distance are next. Friendships are often temporary bonds, based on the
need to affiliate with others for protection, social status, feeding, sex and
fun.
- I and Thou is available in a print and an eBook edition for
download. 199 Pages.
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