Marriage Thoughts

Morningstar's friend, Buffalo, wrote a couple of interesting and lucid pieces on "marriage" here and here. He asked:

"Why should marriage be forever? If you have to work hard at staying
married, is it worth it? It seems to me a lifetime of self-sacrifice, of walking
on eggshells, negotiating your way through minefields, and trying to make the
proverbial silk purse from a sow’s ear, is a colossal waste of good life... Two
people in a relationship don’t necessarily grown either the same amount or in
the same direction. Often our needs, wants, and desires change. Then one day, we
wake up and find that we not only don’t love the person we’re with, but we don’t
like them too damned well either.Why on earth would you want to work hard at
staying with someone you don’t even like?That bit about hard work doesn’t do it
for me any more than the “till death do us part” bit. When the love is gone, it
is time to say good-bye. “As long as love lasts,” seems reasonable to
me."

-- A number of commenters agreed with his reasoning and offered their own understandings of how life brings people to places in long-term relationships where it becomes clear that it may be time to call it quits and move on. Predictably though, there were a couple of folks who showed up sounding judgemental and self-righteous to make the argument that marriage is MEANT to be forever, and that anyone who doesn't INTEND to keep those promises; to SUCK IT UP, and act like a MAN/WOMAN, and keep their committments, shouldn't get married in the first place.


Now, this is awkward. Buffalo has no great love for the Heron Clan. But the fact is that, on this one, he's got it right, and his critics are showing their colors as narrow minded and judgemental folks who simply lack the compassion to allow for even the possibility that there might be good reasons why people do not remain in marriages, whatever their original intent may have been, and in spite of every application of character and courage to fulfill the promises they once made.


Whatever mythology we choose to load it with, marriage is a social/legal contract that is primarily about protecting property and the transmission of property. That it has come to be imbued (in western culture) with "Christian" religious significance is a relatively recent development in the history of human interactions. That particular twist is about issues of inheritance and wealth and the passage of monies into the hands of the Catholic church. Master lays that history out, for those who are interested, in His treatise on the Origins of Modern Monogamy . There really is nothing sacred about our "Christian" view of marriage beyond what we have made it to be. For those who do view marriage as literally sacred, that's fine, but at some point, I'd hope there could come to be a return to an understanding that we don't all share the same religious ground or vocabulary -- and that's not just "OK" but foundational to our free society.

With that said, it is probably a very good thing when a marriage works well and a family unit grows in good and positive ways throughout its lifetime. If that happens, the members of the family unit can live and grow and everyone is nurtured and supported and helped to become exactly who they can be in the very best possible way. We ought to all be glad and celebrate the marriages where that happens.

But it doesn't happen that way all the time. Or even most of the time. People make mistakes. People change. Some marriages fail from the beginning. Some fail slowly over time. A dead marriage is dead, and we ought to simply acknowledge that reality and determine what is the best path forward for those humans who are part of that reality. Telling people to simply stay and tough it out is unrealistic, cruel, destructive, and sometimes even deadly. It serves no purpose and accomplishes nothing good. People can survive the ending of a marriage and come out the other side well and strong and good and happy. The end of a marriage does not have to be a disaster or a catastrophe, and may very well be the beginning of some new and good phase in the life of the people involved.

I'm not suggesting we throw out every marriage that encounters a bumpy place. I'm not saying that we ought to tell partners to give it up at the first sign of trouble. I am however, horrified at the notion that there is never, ever any reason to end a marriage. Such thinking is the sort of idiocy that gets people killed, or leads them to suicide, or results in horrible abuse. Humans have limits.

Those who just KNOW that they have the answer to the marriage question; who believe that it is all about guts and courage and character and perserverance and righteousness may think they are on the side of the angels. Perhaps they have the credentials to justify their braying. I'm sure some do. On the other hand, I'm pretty damn sure that there are plenty of self-righteous saints, making judgements -- who ought to be trying on a few other folks shoes for a few miles. From where I stand, an awful lot of that nonsense is just ignorance, arrogance, and a heartless lack of compassion. What kind of pure "nerve" does it take for one human person to believe that they can look into the most intimate and private life of another, and determine the rightness or wrongness of that person's life choices? Especially when those choices go to life and death, joy and bitterness, love and sorrow?

About the only thing you can be sure of is this: if you are married, you get the safety and security of insurance, and social security, tax benefits, health care decision making authority, and social status, and a whole raft of legal and social rights that are just assumed. You believe in your right to exist as the person you are in your relationship. You have the right to ask for acceptance of your relationship and expect that that acceptance will be forthcoming. You just live in a world where your "marriage" grants you legitimacy. Not because your relationship is better than another person's relationship, but because you have the socially normed legal contractual pairing. Congratulations. AND, if your marriage, through good fortune, turns out to be one of the (statistically) less than half that goes the distance, then you win the prize for having chosen well and having made all the right turns along the way. Good on you. That doesn't make you special. It makes you lucky. Learn the difference.

I only know what I know of my own experience. I married too young. I'll be the first to admit it. I was naive, and a bit desperate. I'd grown up in a household where there was too much alcohol and not enough sane parenting. He seemed alright at the time, and I thought I was in love. I'd been taught that sex before marriage was "wrong" (of course), but he was so earnest and insistent, and I was so innocent of any real knowledge that I was pretty clueless. Of course, no one had bothered to give me any information about birth control because that would have simply "encouraged" me, and interfered with some divine plan (BAH!), so along with the guilt of premarital sex, I joined the ranks of generations of young women -- pregnant out of wedlock. Abortion, according to the religious beliefs I'd been indoctrinated with in those years, was out of the questions, and so... we married. We were years away from being aware enough to know who we were. The wedding was in January. The baby came in July. Sixteen months later, there was another. I needed to survive, make my way, keep my children alive, and try and make that marriage work. That's what I'd been taught all my life; by my entire upbringing and the whole society in which I was imbedded.

But, it became clearer and clearer that the man I'd married was not a solid adult partner. There were "gaps" in the foundation. I found that I spent lots of time running around managing his behavior. He seemed to have no sense of how other people perceived his actions, or the things he would say. He couldn't keep a job, so I lived in continual fear of the next financial catastrophe that he might plunge us into. He was hopeless in terms of providing structure or guidance to the children, and frequently undermined me disciplinarily with the children. He was forever approaching our female friends and women in his workplace with inappropriate and (usually) unwelcome sexual comments and suggestions. I lived in a panic about the potential for legal ramifications for his foolishness.

None of that even touched on the parts of our life together that were sexual. Very early on, I came to understand that I had drives and desires that my husband viewed as "perverted" and "sick." He made it clear that there were things about my fantasies that he simply could never accept and that I was clearly "bad."

I believed him. I worked really hard to make it work. Somehow. I hid who I was. Tried to keep it buried. For twenty-eight years I did what the "know-it-alls" suggest people ought to do. It changed nothing. It kept us both miserable. In the end, when I finally called a halt, he took less than a year to find another and remarry. She, I think, makes him happy in a way that I never did. And, I've finally found the life that makes me happy. Keeping us locked together all those years served no purpose that I can imagine except to fulfill the ideals that others foisted upon us both.

I didn't make promises "lightly." Neither did he. We intended to do it "right" -- considering what we knew at the time. We didn't end our marriage easily or casually. We should have ended it far sooner than we did. Some will judge the reasons that we did that when we did.


For now, I live without marriage. The world says that marriage is defined by the "numbers," and the number for a marriage is two. No more and no less. So, I live in a family that loves and our committments are strong and true. There is no "social" status to my position or my role, and those who would likely judge the ending of my marriage would almost certainly judge the nature of my "non-marriage" as well. I can't imagine that my poly life fits well inside their narrow, moralistic, world-view. Oh well. Frankly, the thought that there is a bit of consternation in their constrained, and unkind souls gives me a curious bit of satisfaction.

I don't judge how people love. I do judge when people hate; especially people who claim to follow a religious view that teaches "love." Frankly, I believe we are made for joy. I think, when it comes to relating and sex, we tend to take it all far too seriously. There are simple legal ways to take care of the "stuff" that we try to make marriage do for us socially. We ought to separate those things and learn to love one another when and as we do.

swan