What defines marriage to you?
To me it is more than a ceramony. It is more than a comitment to be with eachother till death.
To me marriage has always been a rather fucked up venture. A ridiculous ideal brought on by a church whos theory of love and commitment is chastity and emotional seclusion. Growing up I knew my parents marriage was doomed. My father "confided" in me when I was about 8 that my mom was going to leave him, that she didn't love him anymore and that I should help convince her to stay with him. He was my father, and with everything that he said, I was worried that she wouldn't be able to take care of herself let alone me. I helped to keep a failed marriage together, for my father, for fear that my mother would starve, for me! Here I am 25 and my view on marriage is that it is a fucked up venture.
I watch people I love get married and I can honestly say that I can see the love that they feel for eachother beaming out of them on that day. Sometimes however, although I want to believe that nothing bad can possibly go wrong with "true love", it does. What then? Why should I have any hope of finding my "true love"? And if I do find someone I love with my whole soul, why should I believe that it will last? I am pesimistic on this subject, I know, but love is hard and finding someone who will love you and give you what you need and want everyday till you die is an overwhelming task.
Do I believe in love. It depends on what that love is. Do I believe that one love can be stonger or better than another? Yes. Familial love...that's a love that even with bad times and bullshit attitudes, can withstand the test of time and space. Friend love is only real when it is practically familial love.
I'm tired now, but the point is that when you are lucky enough to find your "true love", make sure you fight for it. If you've fought and tried everything you can to keep that love and it's still not working....find something else to fix it. After you've exhausted EVERY SINGLE POSIBILITY to stay "in love"....then you have to consider defeat and move on to loving yourself more than you are by staying in your own personal hell.
Try, fight, try, fight, consider other options, try, try....quit.
To me it is more than a ceramony. It is more than a comitment to be with eachother till death.
To me marriage has always been a rather fucked up venture. A ridiculous ideal brought on by a church whos theory of love and commitment is chastity and emotional seclusion. Growing up I knew my parents marriage was doomed. My father "confided" in me when I was about 8 that my mom was going to leave him, that she didn't love him anymore and that I should help convince her to stay with him. He was my father, and with everything that he said, I was worried that she wouldn't be able to take care of herself let alone me. I helped to keep a failed marriage together, for my father, for fear that my mother would starve, for me! Here I am 25 and my view on marriage is that it is a fucked up venture.
I watch people I love get married and I can honestly say that I can see the love that they feel for eachother beaming out of them on that day. Sometimes however, although I want to believe that nothing bad can possibly go wrong with "true love", it does. What then? Why should I have any hope of finding my "true love"? And if I do find someone I love with my whole soul, why should I believe that it will last? I am pesimistic on this subject, I know, but love is hard and finding someone who will love you and give you what you need and want everyday till you die is an overwhelming task.
Do I believe in love. It depends on what that love is. Do I believe that one love can be stonger or better than another? Yes. Familial love...that's a love that even with bad times and bullshit attitudes, can withstand the test of time and space. Friend love is only real when it is practically familial love.
I'm tired now, but the point is that when you are lucky enough to find your "true love", make sure you fight for it. If you've fought and tried everything you can to keep that love and it's still not working....find something else to fix it. After you've exhausted EVERY SINGLE POSIBILITY to stay "in love"....then you have to consider defeat and move on to loving yourself more than you are by staying in your own personal hell.
Try, fight, try, fight, consider other options, try, try....quit.
posted by Neri at Monday, June 26, 2006
1 Comments:
Marriage is really odd these days.
Personally I believe there needs to be a very strong distinction between "legal marriage" and "spiritual marriage". I would go so far as to demand that *all* references to "marriage" in legal contexts be replaced with references to "civil unions". This is simply a separation of church and state issue for me. Churches can talk about marriage and how they'd like it defined but that should have nothing to do with the law.
Coming from this point of view a civil union is just paperwork and marriage is whatever you believe it to be.
You can make a marriage of 8 committed individuals or 2 people who love each other. Current law in the US restricts legally recognized unions in significant ways but that doesn't change the way people live or love, just how they fill out the paperwork.
In terms of love, I'm a sort of hardliner. Love is forever. "In love" isn't necessarily the same as the general concept of love. Even in good relationships "in love" wears off, but love prevails. Worse, or at least more complicated, I believe that to love someone is a choice, initially. You choose to fall in love but the bitch of it is that you're stuck with your decision later even when you don't necessarily like each other or want to be together anymore. That's what makes the end of a relationship, any relationship, hurt. There's always still good things and still love but there's not always enough to make it worth the work.
Anyway...marriage is not something to aspire to but something to be found accidentally. If "married" is what you want, you can do the paperwork with anybody. Forget marriage. Find love, do the paperwork later.
A good husband or wife is formulaic. You look for a healthy, responsible individual with enough wealth to live comfortably. You try to get along well enough not to make each other crazy. If your partner cheats but still takes care of their responsibilities that's good enough.
Personally I'll follow love to marriage if it leads that way, not vice versa.
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