my first reaction to married couples who appear happy with each other is mild surprise and puzzlement. my parents are happily married, don't get me wrong. but i've never been in a relationship that lasted more than a year, and knowing what i know about the inherent difficulties of two humans maintaining a long term relationship (with economic, social, cultural, religious, familial and other elements) a marriage that lasts shocks me more than a marriage that ends.
so often i feel that divorce should be celebrated as much as marriage.
anyway i'm not comfortable with my lukewarm philosophical understanding of marriage. i know these things:
1. the human species is not biologically monogamous
2. the human species is not biologically heterosexual
3. the nuclear family has no biological basis. the village raised the child.
4. the commonly held notion of love/romance began during the industrial revolution and until then american marriages were just like any other: business arrangements.
marriage, you stand on shaky ground. the ground of modern cultural assumptions based on economic trends.
but it's really appealing. (yes, i am a product of my culture)
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What do you find appealing about it?
ReplyDeleteI have stumbled on several studies which compared married and single people. One study done in Russia found that married women are four times more likely to be depressed than single women (taking into account age and socioeconomic status), but married men are twice less likely to be depressed then single men. In another American study, married men were more likely to relax when asked to think of their wife, while married women were much more likely to go tense when asked to think of their husbands.
These results make sense. In a society that regards a married woman as better than a single woman, women feel pressure to get married, even to suboptimal partners, for the sake of the status.
Also, there is this myth of marital bliss for women, and a persistent myth of marriage as a sentence for men (e.g., the wife is "ball and chains"). Once married, women find out that it ain't all that, and men find out that it ain't so bad.
reason coupled with statistics make a sharp sword. it's appealing to me, but because i am aware that i am a product of my culture i must doubt its appeal.
ReplyDeletethe simple fact that a member of the press asked simone de beauvoir whether she felt she was a complete woman without having had children makes me want to gag at the thought of my life in any way paralleling the normal expectation.
probably there's no way you would see this, seeing as this post was written over a year ago, but:
ReplyDeletedon't lose out on something wonderful just to avoid "paralleling the normal expectation!"
i think i could have lived a great and fulfilling life without being married, but i wouldn't want to have missed out on spending life with my husband for anything.