Marriage

[Relambrien]

Re: Marriage

I will say that I think it is largely due to 'love' not fitting well with marriage. This is only confounded by the fact that our society thinkslove and marriage are supposed to go hand in hand.

This is actually a very interesting statement. I didn't realize it until now, but now I see that when I was younger, I thought of a clear cycle or pattern into which love fell.

Meet --> Date --> Fall in love --> Marry
^          |
|    Break up if necessary
|          |
|          |
^------------

You're quite right in that society considers love and marriage to go hand-in-hand (no pun intended). When you think about how this might not be the truth, things get interesting. It brings marriage down from a level of mythic elation, to a much more practical plane. Love is only one part of a healthy marriage--and thus, is neither necessary to create one nor to sustain one.

I'll have to think on that some more, actually.

EDIT: Responding to ninja.

As such, the adult decision should be to take steps to preserve and enhance the marriage instead of giving up.

Is this really the case? I would expect an "adult decision" to be one that is the most beneficial to all parties involved. I can think of many situations in which a divorce would be the best possible thing for both the husband and wife. If, as it turns out, circumstances have caused issues that mean the marriage isn't working, and both the husband and wife are unhappy, a divorce solves this 100%. The husband and wife are freed from their relationship problems, and don't have to worry about them resurfacing, as they would if they worked the problems out.

You'll have to explain why preserving a marriage is better than divorcing, which I haven't seen you do, yet. What benefits do the husband and wife have by staying together in unhappy conditions that cannot be matched by simply finding better conditions with another person? In other words, explain why preserving the marriage is "the most beneficial to all parties involved."

[devonin]

Re: Marriage

As such, the adult decision should be to take steps to preserve and enhance the marriage instead of giving up. How can easily will a marriage fail if both parties are willing to work on it like adults?

Relambrien answered exactly how I was going to. You tacitly assume that staying married is always the better decision, the correct decision, and really don't provide any support as to why that should be.

[1961casey]

Re: Marriage

Have you noticed how often it is said "Well this circumstance came up so we might as well get a divorce." Why aren't people saying "This circumstance came up, what are we going to do to resolve it." It merely indicates the low standards people are willing to accept to justify their decisions.

"You'll have to explain why preserving a marriage is better than divorcing, which I haven't seen you do, yet. What benefits do the husband and wife have by staying together in unhappy conditions that cannot be matched by simply finding better conditions with another person? In other words, explain why preserving the marriage is "the most beneficial to all parties involved."

First of all, it is an indication of one's character or lack thereof. Your statement also assumes that the parties cannot do anything to correct the situation. Don't forget, we are supposed to be talking about mature, responsible adults who have made mature, responsible decisions before getting married, made a responsible decision to get married and made a binding promise to stick with the person no matter what. Well 'what' has now arrived. What would be the mature, responsible thing to do? These are circumstances outside the relationship that should not have any bearing on the individuals decisions. Instead they should be looking to each other for support. You asked what benefits are there? Well, for one, the people learn to face their problems and deal with them. They develope character. They discover the depth of their commitment to each other. They discover that there is someone is going to stick by them for their mutual care, comfort and support. They relationship becomes stronger when they realize that, in spite of outside problems, their partner will remain their partner because of their commitment not their convenience. I could go on but I think I may have made my point.

Secondly, if a person is unwilling to stick with one relationship because of circumstances, they are not going to fare any better in the next relationship because similar circumstances will evoke the same response: quit. The problem lies not with the circumstances but with the individual. And they will carry those problems with them wherever they go until they learn to deal with circumstances. Therefore it doesn't matter if they divorce or not, they still have not dealt with their personal problems and their next relationship will suffer in the same way when those problems resurface, and they will.

[Cavernio]

Re: Marriage

quoting 1961casey: "The problem lies not with the circumstances but with the individual."
This isn't always the case though. Perhaps its those 2 people together who don't work out. However, seeing how long couples stay together unmarried these days, (their entire lives some of them), if one decides to get married after living with them for a few years, then I don't see how you cannot know the character of the other person.

As usual, I'm divided between the 2 arguments being made, in whether divorcing is good or bad. I certainly feel the attitude of "Why settle for less?", particularly in terms of relationships. And I'm also quite the revolutionary when it comes to following tradition for the sake of following tradition, especially when following that tradition can be harmful. Casey's argument comes together, I think, when he/she says that if one marriage isn't working out, then likely other ones won't either. Relambrien and Devonin, on the other hand, (although nothing is said yet), will probably say something like "So what?" to this argument, because the goal is not necessarily to have a life-long relationship.

I think I'm too young to say whether it's better to have something life-long or not. Rather, I'm leaning towards saying that life-long must have some merits that I obviously haven't experienced yet, however, this is totally counter what I've held since highschool, which is that it's foolish to ever believe I will only ever fall in love with 1 person at any given moment. I know that this isn't true for everyone though.


quoting relambrien: If, as it turns out, circumstances have caused issues that mean the marriage isn't working, and both the husband and wife are unhappy, a divorce solves this 100%. The husband and wife are freed from their relationship problems, and don't have to worry about them resurfacing, as they would if they worked the problems out.

A divorce doesn't always solve things 100%, especially if kids are involved. However, even if their personal problems are worked out but divorcing, there's other problems which can arise. What if you were a stay-at-home parent, who has absolutely no source of income? What if you and your spouse have all the same friends, and even worse, what if they've chosen to 'take sides' against you? What if you're from a small town and avoiding further arguments with them means changing cities? What if you both work at the same place, or in the same field and have regular contact with them outside your home? Even if none of these apply, you're still upsetting your life, which can be very hard to deal with. Besides, these are all situations that can happen when both parties want to divorce. If the divorce is largely 1-sided, you're not going to be happy with it.

As an addition to my previous post, I've since thought of another fairly obvious reason why divorce is rising along with women working. Good relationships need time together, and when both people are working, there's a lot less time for simply being with each other. Complimenting this, there's also more stress.

[devonin]

Re: Marriage

First of all, it is an indication of one's character or lack thereof.

It takes a lot of character to get a divorce in a culture full of people like you who will insist that only idiots and weaklings get a divorce instead of 'sticking it out' or trying to 'make it work anyway'

Don't forget, we are supposed to be talking about mature, responsible adults who have made mature, responsible decisions before getting married, made a responsible decision to get married and made a binding promise to stick with the person no matter what.

Pretty sure not everyone who gets married gets married in a church that requires you to stipulate "until death do us part" Not every marriage involves such a promise, nor do I agree that even having such a marriage constitutes a -binding- promise.

They discover the depth of their commitment to each other.

It's when they do this deep soul-searching and discover that the commitment isn't quite as deep as they had perhaps earlier assumed that they consider divorce. I don't know what it is about divorce that you think anyone who gets one is using it as "the easy way out" Sure, there are plenty of people who consider divorce at the first sign of trouble, but virtually every divorcee I know exhausted pretty much every other avenue beforehand. Counselling, therapy, you name it. It's perhaps more of a -last- resort than you seem willing to even consider.

Secondly, if a person is unwilling to stick with one relationship because of circumstances, they are not going to fare any better in the next relationship because similar circumstances will evoke the same response: quit. The problem lies not with the circumstances but with the individual. And they will carry those problems with them wherever they go until they learn to deal with circumstances. Therefore it doesn't matter if they divorce or not, they still have not dealt with their personal problems and their next relationship will suffer in the same way when those problems resurface, and they will.

Once again, you're assuming that a whole lot of circumstances are simply true of all cases of divorce. My dad got divorced, and has since remarried and believe me when I tell you, that there is -no- chance whatsoever that such a thing will happen again. He has been quite happily remarried for the better part of two decades, surely enough time for the glaring personal flaws you want to automatically assign him to assert themselves.

I've since thought of another fairly obvious reason why divorce is rising along with women working. Good relationships need time together, and when both people are working, there's a lot less time for simply being with each other.

If the husband is spending a full working day out of the house, they are apart whether the woman spends the -exact same hours- also at work, or sitting at home watching soap operas. This reason simply holds no water.

[1961casey]

Re: Marriage

Boy, where do I start. Well, let's begin with Cavernio's last post.

You state "if one decides to get married after living with them for a few years, then I don't see how you cannot know the character of the other person." You are exactly right, which bolsters the argument in favour of a long dating and engagement period during which "This extra time in the relationship also gives more time for that 'love high' to dissipate." and cold rational analysis can begin. The end result being that you know with whom you are dealing and the rose-coloured, or 'love-coloured', glasses have come off.

'Falling in love' is an emotional event, it can occur with a variety of people in your life for a variety of reasons. It is wonderful when it happens but it is also as unreliable as the rest of one's emotions and therefore not a standard by which to judge someone else. Basically the thinking goes 'He/She makes me feel so wonderful that I know I am falling in love.' but that changes when they do or say something unpleasant and the feeling disappears. Then what is left? The object of your affection must make you feel wonderful all the time or else it is not love. It is an unfair and unrealistic burden to place on someone and doesn't require effort on your own part. Talk about selfish especially when it is used to judge the quality of a relationship.

Devonin: 'It takes a lot of character to get a divorce in a culture full of people like you who will insist that only idiots and weaklings get a divorce instead of 'sticking it out' or trying to 'make it work anyway'

I did not say or imply 'idiots and weaklings', I said 'a lack of character'.
It does not take 'character' to do what you want in spite of societal pressure. It the reason we have laws and why we have people who still break them. It is not 'a lot of character' to get a divorce but selfishness or foolishness.

I have to correct a redundancy I commited when I described marriage as a 'binding promise'. A promise is binding in and of itself and to say that it is a 'binding' is unnecessarily repetative.

Devonin states: "It's when they do this deep soul-searching and discover that the commitment isn't quite as deep as they had perhaps earlier assumed that they consider divorce."

You are referring to a statement I made as part of a list of benefits of sticking together in spite of problems. The benefits come after working through their problems, not after a divorce.

Finally, Devonin, you refer to your own Dad as an example of a successful second marriage. I would be very interested to hear what he would have to say. Why did the first marriage not work out? What would or should he have done differently? What changed between the two marriages? Why is his second marriage so successful? Would he like to see his son learn from his mistakes, and if so what would he teach?
Honestly, I am very glad that your Dad has managed to remain happily remarried, and I hope that will be able to celebrate a fiftieth wedding anniversary, even if it is overly-ambitious. I think it would be worthwhile to hear from someone who has gone through a divorce, what they learned and what they would do differently. Hopefully we can learn from someone's experience and perhaps avoid some disappointment at the least.

[darkness1477]

Re: Marriage

you all stated some good arguments
i agree with most of what casey says but she seems unwillingly to consider how unforseen changes can and should result in divorce. for example this man and woman were happily married for years and then he got addicted to crack and forgot all about his wife. isn't that a good reason for divorce? this man and woman were happily married for 10 years and then thte wife met up with with this guy she liked in high school and since she was never able to date him in high school she decided she would since she was able to now. is't a good reason for the husband to divorce her? this man and woman were married for a few years and then they had thier first child, a little baby girl. 10 years later the wife caught the man having sex with the child. when they asked him why he said she reminded him of his wife. isn't that good reason to divorce? my frind was married for 3 years and one day his wife told him he was everything she wanted except light skinned. is that a marriage worth staying in were your spuose will never be happy with you just because your skin is as dark as hers?



and what is the point of entering a loveless marriage

[1961casey]

Re: Marriage

I stand corrected: there are good reasons for divorce and darkness1477 hit most of them. The three reasons I would accept would be abuse, addiction and adultery. I will leave it at that, and accept the scorn that is about to be heaped on me.

[Cavernio]

Re: Marriage

If the husband is spending a full working day out of the house, they are apart whether the woman spends the -exact same hours- also at work, or sitting at home watching soap operas. This reason simply holds no water.

I really didn't think that I'd have to spell things out about this. Firstly, you talk about husband and wife working exact same hours, which doesn't always happen.
Totally besides this, however, I'm shocked at your lack of noticing how much work is put into everyday household chores, paricularly if you're a house-owner. Sure it's mindless work, but laundry, cooking, cleaning and yard-work are all time consuming. Not a full 8 hours worth of work a day, but usually a couple. An 8 hour work day doesn't mean only 8 hours of work for one to do in a day if they come home and have to make supper, clean up afterwards, and then vacuum. Or, you could not do these things and end up spending way more money than you ever thought possible on eating out, and living in a dirty home, which most people find stressful. And we haven't even considered kids yet, which we certainly should considering we're talking about marriage, but I think you can see where I'd go with that.
Even pretending there's never any housework to be done, working full-time can be stressful. If both people come home grumpy and tired, who ends up giving the other person a backrub, or cooking dinner, or doing the laundry; who takes the stress away from the other person? My experience in relationships is that when both people are grumpy, arguements tend to ensue, and its much harder to be level-headed after a stressful day of work.
Lastly, we should consider one of the reasons why so many women are working these days: because they have to for the money, regardless of their husband working full-time. Even in families where both parents are working these days, you can still be poor. And money problems definitely cause stress.

1961casey: I'm surprised you consider adultery to be an absolute to break up a marriage. I perceive cheating to be a common problem, and one which I also perceive, couples work out often. My perceptions could be wrong.
I also have a question; what if someone in the marriage develops serious mental illness, is it OK to divorce then?

[devonin]

Re: Marriage

Um...pretty sure I know exactly how much work is involved with keeping house. The purpose of the statement was "If the people are apart for 8 or 9 hours every day, it shouldn't matter whether the places they are apart are workplace/home or workplace/workplace they will still be just as apart" you latched onto a device of emphasis and completely ignored the actual point I was making.

[Chanz]

Re: Marriage

I think that marriage has just become something associated with God. Most marriages occur in churches and with that they are swearing their vows to one another under God's witness.

As the time grows on, more and more people begin to question who this "God" creature really is. With that people begin to think about their marriages as well.

Really, marriage doesn't provide anything more than a relationship with someone. Just the only difference is that it costs money to end a marriage and then the whole "who-gets-what" debacle. The only real need for marriage is just for two people to say that they want to be with so-so forever and this is how much I want to express what love is to you with this shiny stone in a silver/gold band. Let's go say our vows under "God's" eyes and then that is that.

And people usually look down on others if they have (a) child(ren) and the two aren't even married. But other than that I think the real reason that marriages are going down is because of the whole "God" concept as stated by the original poster.

That is just my opinion.

Because people are rude I would like to say that before commenting on this post please read the one about 3 post down.

[1961casey]

Re: Marriage

Cavernio,

You suggested that adultery would not always be the end of a marriage and the couples often reconcile afterwards. Obviously it is possible and I wish the best to those couples who try and succeed. However, one has to realize that the relationship has been damaged and it will never be the same again, regardless of the passage of time. Possible? Yes! but difficult.

You also asked about the case of mental illness. Let me tell you a real story. I hope that you may get to know a lady like Judy. She was not a 'classy' lady. If anything she could best be described as 'frumpy'. She was not someone to whom you go for advice, or ask to take on a prestigious task. She was sweet, however, and always had a smile and a friendly hello. She doted on her grandchildren, taking them with her whenever she could. Her husband, as a roofer, was somewhat rough around the edges as the saying goes but he managed to support his family well enough.
One day, he fell off a roof and fell the equivalent of three stories to the ground, landing on his head and was severely brain injured. To say his wife was in shock would be to state the obvious. Some how she had to take over everything that her husband used to do around the house, visit him in the hospital, and arrange for his on-going care. Later she had to sell the house, find a extended care facility to care for her husband and one that would allow her to be there with him as well. For the next three years she had to take care of her husband as a she would care for a baby. Perhaps I should rephrase that: for the next three years she decided to take care of her husband. There was no real reason to prevent her from turning the care of her husband over to some facility but she didn't. She could have made any number of reasonable choices but she chose the hardest one. She loved her husband and she was going to make sure he got the best possible care, even if it meant the she would have to give it.
As I said this lasted for only three years. He developed pneumonia and, complicated by his brain injury, it killed him.

One definition of a hero is: one who willingly risks or gives up their life or possessions in order to protect someone else's life or possessions. If you asked Judy why she did it, she would answer 'because he is my husband.' Wouldn't it be wonderful if we all could have a hero in our lives?

[darkness1477]

Re: Marriage

you don't have to get married in a church and many people who don't believe in god are hppily married so people questioning god cant account for everything

[_Adrian_]

Re: Marriage

Well, I'd like to put my 2 cents in here. I'm obviously someone who hasn't been married or had a girlfriend.
I think people don't get married because of "God" but because of their customs. Personally, I used to think there was a "God", but I saw this movie, Zeitgeist (http://video.google.com/videosearch?...t&sitesearch=#). Now I'm not some Anti-Christ. So anyways, I think that marriage is still something good for society, but only if it happens as 1961casey says. Many people today just go into with marriage wanting sex, I assume.
Marriage is still a good thing today, and when I find the right girl, I'll marry her after a couple of years maybe..

[Chanz]

Re: Marriage

Ah, I forgot to add to the whole "God" post up there.

So here is another:


Other than the whole "God" concept, I think that another reason to the decrease is this rise in the gay population and that George Bush has made same sex marriage illegal. Many more people are becoming gay and the fact that they can't be married they have to move elsewhere to somewhere that will allow them to get married.


Then another possibility is that times have changed many things and as it seems the entire world has become more open and free willing to do as they wish. With our forms of communication and traveling, it has enabled up to travel around the world more and to more with out life instead of settling down with the girl/guy next door. Things have become less restrictive than in the past that people want to do more with their life before they settle down at the age of 20 or so.


But with both of those statements combined, I think that with the rise in the gay population and the more ways to travel, it has made it so people get married elsewhere.

And that is just a thought.


Okay, this is just to make a point clear. I am just stating my opinions please do NOT IM me about this and start insulting me when I did nothing to you directly. I apologize if I offended anyone, I didn't grow up with your views so please, don't impose yours on me.