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From: chabot@6166.DEC (l s chabot)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: marriage
Message-ID: <536@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 11-Feb-85 15:18:49 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.536
Posted: Mon Feb 11 15:18:49 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 13-Feb-85 04:48:29 EST
Sender: daemon@decwrl.UUCP
Organization: DEC Engineering Network
Lines: 59

I agree with Chuq that the presumptions that some are making about marriages of
the past and the present are short-sighted, and through this lack or some
mistake of wording, the expression of these presumptions is offensive to many
who know more about the matter.

Please pardon me in my discussion: I'm going to paraphrase, but I will try not
to inflate.  Since I will not be quoting, I will enclose my paraphrasings in
asterisks, to signify italics.

To say *10, 20 years ago people were more willing to make a marriage work...
now because of changing mores there is less peer pressure to do so* in itself
is not a sea-worthy statement because of the conflict between "willing" and
"pressure": how truly can we attribute the length of a marriage to "will" if
there is external "pressure" to maintain the marriage? --How do we know that
these marriages only had the appearance of lasting to keep the gossips quiet
and inside they lacked more important consituents?  But even more importantly,
how can we say a marriage "works" just because it lasts two or more decades? 

If we are basing our suppositions on statistics, where do we find statistics
about the success of the partnership, about emotional satisfaction, about
good environments for any offspring?  Or about even more tangible items such
as separate houses, extramarital sex, and whether or not these indicate a 
working marriage or a failing marriage?  These kind of statistics can only
be gathered about celebrities, not about your neighborhood and my neighborhood.

I've not had the experiences Chuq has in marriage and divorce, but my family
has had marriages and divorces.  One almost 60 years ago.  One family member,
a widow with young children, remarried a couple of more times that didn't end
in burying a spouse, 30 to 20 years ago.  I had many friends whose parents
were separating and getting divorces about 15 years ago.  I've seen many 
families where one parent was so impossible to live with or crazy that it would
have been better if there had been less effort in keeping up appearances and
more effort towards autonomy it would have left fewer scars on the characters
of family members.  And also good people who just couldn't live together and
raise a family, but they were.  Ask kids: yes, who wants to see your parents
split up ("why is she/he leaving me?"), but who wants to hear your parents
fight all the time ("how did I cause this?" "why don't they love me?").

Simplifying a great deal for this discussion, I see two big causes of this
situation (marriages that don't last, marriages that never had the makings of
lasting): the lie of romance and the crippling effects of the division by
gender of roles.  I'm fond of romance too, but the big problem we all know
about is that you don't get married and live happily ever after. It's suicide
of the soul to think of it that way--it's not a goal, it's a road, but if you
think of courtship as the mountain to be climbed, then what can you do at the
top but jump off?  The gender problem is too big to discuss, but one corner of
it is the mythology with which little girls are raised to interpret life as
just this mountain and this jump abandoning autonomy.  Another corner: the
lack of instruction little boys are given regarding the emotional aspects of
human life.  How can we expect to communicate with each other across this
deep canyon?

L S Chabot
UUCP:	...decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-amber!chabot
ARPA:	...chabot%amber.DEC@decwrl.ARPA
USFail:    DEC, LMO4/H4, 150 Locke Drive, Marlborough, MA  01752

Posted:	Mon 11-Feb-1985 14:21 
To:	10382::DECWRL::"net.singles"