Re: ugnet_: Do love and marriage really go together anymore?
Author writes: I have three female friends who to the world appear to be happily married women, but each of them has confided to me she hates her husband. One waits for the final misstep that will justify divorce, another can't oust her mate and the third waits for her affair to be detected. As a wise lawyer once said to me, when I bemoaned the growing number of divorces, "Divorce is all some people have to look forward to." All they are saying: 1. If I knew what marriage is, I would have never gotten married. 2. I want to sleep with another man. My husband has become very weak over the years. I don't want him. You go girl. This is the power and authority invested in you. 3. There is no happiness in myheartwithout freedom. _ I really sympathise with African women who don't have a choice. I can imagine how many women in Africa/Afghanistan wake up every day to satisfy, not themselves but a man, whose penis is the size of their finger. Even worst, they can't divorce becuase divorce is not part of their culture. And, of course, according to their culture, a woman who divorces her husband is a loose (slut) woman. I love America with all my heart. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Owor Kipenji [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: GEORGIE BINKS:Do love and marriage really go together anymore?January 30, 2004 In the book Still Life with Woodpecker Tom Robbins asks the question that plagues so many people these days - how do you make love stay? Can you make it stay by marrying, by enshrining it legally, by putting a ring on a finger and swearing to love till death parts you from your loved one? According to Statistics Canada, in 2002, there were 1.5 million divorced Canadians - that's 1.5 million people who walked down an aisle, took an oath, looked into someone's eyes and said "I do" forever, presumably with a few dreams of what that meant. Apparently, forever felt a little too long after a few years so they decided to call it quits. Was the problem them, or was it just that we expect too much of marriage? Many people speak of spending the rest of their lives with a soul mate. But is it even reasonable to look for a soul mate to be your spouse? Maybe your soul mate is one of your children, who you met in a past life. Or maybe it's one of your best friends. Samantha, Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte all discovered on one episode of Sex and the City that they could be each other's soul mates, instead of hoping to find that in a man. When men and women have such a difficult time trying to figure out what the other is trying to say, is it reasonable to think that they can spend eternity together? And should marriage be based on something as fleeting as what starts out as a ch emical reaction for many (although not all. For some it's a financial calculation). Marriage is the union job of the love industry. If you've ever been a member of a union, you'll know that once you're in it, you enjoy protection from a number of injustices your employer might choose to wreak upon you. When one marries, there is that false sense of security the makeup can come off, the undershirt can go on, the bathroom door can stay open. For many it's a safety zone from cheating, from unfaithfulness. But for others, it's a jail, one that must be escaped by sex with random partners. Some say that men don't cheat in a marriage because they want more sex, but that they hate to be possessed 100 per cent by a woman. Cheating is their way of keeping that little bit of themselves. In a Reader's Digest poll last March, 19 per cent of married Canadians between 35 and 54 admitted wishing during their marriage that they could wake up one morning and not be married. Remember, that's from those who are still married. I have three female friends who to the world appear to be happily married women, but each of them has confided to me she hates her husband. One waits for the final misstep that will justify divorce, another can't oust her mate and the third waits for her affair to be detected. As a wise lawyer once said to me, when I bemoaned the growing number of divorces, "Divorce is all some people have to look forward to." True love for the rest of your life has not always been an expectation of marriage. In the past, marriage was more of a practical economic union, which seems to have morphed into a meeting of the emotions somewhere in the 18th century. But the expectations these days are different and when a marriage starts to falter, the couple is urged into counselling, so they can "work" at their marriage. Laura Kipnis in her book, Against Love, mocks the idea of working at a marriage, and the whole counselling industry that goes with it. After all, if you have to work at love, what's it all about? She says obviously maintaining a relationship nowadays is something no one should attempt to do on their own - it's far too complicated for ordinary non-trained professionals. The self help books abound with titles like Love in the Present Tense: How
ugnet_: Do love and marriage really go together anymore?
GEORGIE BINKS:Do love and marriage really go together anymore?January 30, 2004 In the book Still Life with Woodpecker Tom Robbins asks the question that plagues so many people these days - how do you make love stay? Can you make it stay by marrying, by enshrining it legally, by putting a ring on a finger and swearing to love till death parts you from your loved one? According to Statistics Canada, in 2002, there were 1.5 million divorced Canadians - that's 1.5 million people who walked down an aisle, took an oath, looked into someone's eyes and said "I do" forever, presumably with a few dreams of what that meant. Apparently, forever felt a little too long after a few years so they decided to call it quits. Was the problem them, or was it just that we expect too much of marriage? Many people speak of spending the rest of their lives with a soul mate. But is it even reasonable to look for a soul mate to be your spouse? Maybe your soul mate is one of your children, who you met in a past life. Or maybe it's one of your best friends. Samantha, Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte all discovered on one episode of Sex and the City that they could be each other's soul mates, instead of hoping to find that in a man. When men and women have such a difficult time trying to figure out what the other is trying to say, is it reasonable to think that they can spend eternity together? And should marriage be based on something as fleeting as what starts out as a chemical reaction for many (although not all. For some it's a financial calculation). Marriage is the union job of the love industry. If you've ever been a member of a union, you'll know that once you're in it, you enjoy protection from a number of injustices your employer might choose to wreak upon you. When one marries, there is that false sense of security the makeup can come off, the undershirt can go on, the bathroom door can stay open. For many it's a safety zone from cheating, from unfaithfulness. But for others, it's a jail, one that must be escaped by sex with random partners. Some say that men don't cheat in a marriage because they want more sex, but that they hate to be possessed 100 per cent by a woman. Cheating is their way of keeping that little bit of themselves. In a Reader's Digest poll last March, 19 per cent of married Canadians between 35 and 54 admitted wishing during their marriage that they could wake up one morning and not be married. Remember, that's from those who are still married. I have three female friends who to the world appear to be happily married women, but each of them has confided to me she hates her husband. One waits for the final misstep that will justify divorce, another can't oust her mate and the third waits for her affair to be detected. As a wise lawyer once said to me, when I bemoaned the growing number of divorces, "Divorce is all some people have to look forward to." True love for the rest of your life has not always been an expectation of marriage. In the past, marriage was more of a practical economic union, which seems to have morphed into a meeting of the emotions somewhere in the 18th century. But the expectations these days are different and when a marriage starts to falter, the couple is urged into counselling, so they can "work" at their marriage. Laura Kipnis in her book, Against Love, mocks the idea of working at a marriage, and the whole counselling industry that goes with it. After all, if you have to work at love, what's it all about? She says obviously maintaining a relationship nowadays is something no one should attempt to do on their own - it's far too complicated for ordinary non-trained professionals. The self help books abound with titles like Love in the Present Tense: How to Have A High Intimacy, Low Maintenance Marriage and The Sex Starved Marriage: Boosting your Marriage Libido. Just add water and it's all fixed. I've spoken to young men about their greatest fears in getting married and sadly they don't focus on falling out of love, but rather that their wife will gain weight, cut her hair and stop having sex with them. Is their expectation of marriage simply good sex? Men's Health magazine jokingly refers to marriage as "sex for life" but men soon find out that it's usually anything but. The newborn passion of an affair is like a drug, that people want to prolong by enshrining it in marriage. For the more cynical, marriage to a good breadwinner is the answer. And to some, it's the scene from An Officer and a Gentleman where Richard Gere carries Debra Winger out of her factory job, "saving" her from her life of drudgery. Does any of this do the trick? Many women and men disappear when they marry, complaining about noisy beer drinking friends and gossipy girlfriends. People's careers are sacrificed to meet the agenda of the other person who makes more money. In front of the mirror, people watch as their personalities, their sense of humour, their joy of living disappears rather than flourishes
