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Quote of the Day: Marriage
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn’t they’d be married too. – H. L. Mencken
I have been invited to a wedding today. I don’t know the couple very well. They are a young couple that started attending my church a year or two ago. I approve of marriage on principle and they are a nice pair of folks, so I will be attending the ceremony. I want to encourage the institution. It is necessary for the preservation of civilization, and I would rather live in a civilized world.
Yet I have to admit on one level Mencken is right. Marriage requires a high level of commitment and (yes) sacrifice to succeed. On that level, a sensible person would run screaming from marriage. You can live along quite comfortably when you are the only person to consider. If you want to avoid conflict, stay single.
Marriage is an adventure requiring two for success. Both have to work at it. When it succeeds, it succeeds magnificently. When it fails, it generally fails spectacularly. If I had known as much about women as most bachelors, I probably would not have gotten married. The odds of failure are high. But oh, the rewards if you succeed. It is a gamble, especially today. But, like any startup, the rewards are worth it.
Published in General
I think what you have demonstrated in these two paragraphs is that human beings are very diverse, both in their cognitive abilities, their maturity levels, their interest in having children and their willingness to make sacrifices and compromises for the benefit of another person.
It is certainly true that people now have the option of having children outside of marriage. It is also true that some people get married and do not have children, either because of infertility or choice.
These days people have more options in front of them than, say, someone living in 15th century France did. Back then, people didn’t wonder whether they would attend the University of Texas or Baylor University. They just did what they were told.
These days, living in an environment of freedom, we have the freedom to make mistakes.
Well, some didn’t. As a matter of fact, I think doing what one is told is a learned behavior. Having children, one learns this fact.
Good point. But back in those old days, a woman who didn’t act “the right way” might be accused of being a witch and end up being burned to death. It was a different world.
These days we place a much higher value on individual autonomy. I think this is a good thing. If some people, in this environment of greater freedom, decide that marriage isn’t for them, that’s not the end of the world. Perhaps we could try to figure out ways to make marriage more attractive to more people. But I am not exactly sure how to do that.
Jerry mentioned that marriage works well when a woman submits to the leadership of her husband.
Does anyone know of a current marriage where this is the case? For example, if you have a sister who is married, does your sister submit to the leadership of her husband?
My sense is that for many decades now, a huge majority of women do not simply defer to their husband, but view marriage as a partnership where the husband and the wife are equal partners in the decision making processes.
I am late to the party here because we (Mrs. Tabby and I, married 41 years) were with my brother and his wife (married 37 years, with some incredible difficulties along the way) and our cousin and her husband (married 46 years) all day yesterday.
I wish there was more overt and vigorous encouragement of marriage. Marriage is a long term project. The benefits accumulating over time. Those benefits are not necessarily obvious to the not-yet-married.
In recent decades the law, government, and society have de-emphasized the value of marriage. Employers are less likely to base employee benefits on marriage. Landlords can no longer favor married tenants. Social resources are heaped onto “single mothers”; not so much on the married. Ending marriage is easy. Social discussions often avoid distinguishing between the married and the unmarried, or even mentioning whether a person is married, even if the marriage might be relevant to an aspect of the discussion. [A particularly annoying example from several years ago, a young mother friend of ours died of a terrible disease, and her death and its impact on her children were chronicled in regional news media. But nowhere in that coverage was there any mention that the mother was married. She had a husband, the children’s father. Their marriage was important to them, and important to the children, but unimportant to the particular narrative the media was trying to spin.] What social discussion of marriage does happen often emphasizes the wedding ceremony and party, and less the long-term marriage that follows.
The benefits of marriage could use re-emphasized publicity.
My little niche is providing encouragement to new parents I know or otherwise deal with to keep up their marriage – that the best gift they can give to their child is to maintain a strong marriage that is not just based on dealing with the child. I’ll babysit or pay for a babysitter so they have time to do so.
It was in the 1970s when the social stigma of divorce was significantly reduced.
In a 1976 pronouncement issued by the United Methodist Church, the largest mainline Protestant denomination in America. The statement read in part:
More interesting facts about divorce:
I was engaged, at 19, not even four days after we met.
I wrote about it here.
Which one were you?
Last year I read Rob Lowe’s autobiography, “Stories I Only Tell My Friends.” I am not much of a fan of Rob Lowe, either his politics or his acting. But I read a review of Rob Lowe’s autobiography and it seemed like it might be interesting.
I have often wondered if very famous men, men who apparently have dozens of women willing to provide them companionship, still have an interest in a monogamous relationship or if these men inevitably prefer to “play the field.”
In “Stories I Only Tell My Friends,” Lowe presents the situation where he was dating the woman who would become his wife, but Lowe was heavily into alcohol and under the influence of alcohol would not abstain from “playing the field.” Lowe’s girlfriend (future wife) called him as Lowe was hungover, sleeping next to another woman.
Lowe’s girlfriend asked, “Is someone there with you?”
Lowe denied that there was anyone with him.
Lowe’s girlfriend said, “I can be your friend. But I can’t date you. Not like this.”
Soon after this converstaion, according to the book, Lowe checked himself into an alcohol rehab center, got clean and married this girlfriend who demanded more of Lowe than just being a famous actor. Lowe says in the book that his wife would “jump in front of a bus” for him.
I didn’t really need to read that book to learn that men desire more from women than sex, that it isn’t just women, but also men, who seek emotional intimacy and a “soul mate.” But that book reinforced the point.
Marriage requires compromise, patience, understanding, self-sacrifice, certainly. But the difference in ease and freedom between a single man and a young married husband is one thing; the difference between a young childless couple and two parents raising a little bundle of infinite need and dependency is another.
Actually growing up, maturing, requires children. At least, I think it does for most of us.
I think you might be right.
On the other hand, many people are perfectly capable of creating new babies while lacking in the maturity to care for those children.
The example that comes to my mind is my next door neighbor.
When I moved into my current house, about 14 years ago, I learned that my next door neighbor was married with 3 young children. I also learned that he was without a job. During the next 14 years, he never got a job. He would just spend his days watching TV in his garage (where he placed a TV) and drink beer.
I later learned he was an alcoholic. Whether his alcoholism preceded his joblessness or the reverse, I do not know. He checked into rehab a few times, but never took it real seriously. He told another neighbor, “My dad was an alcoholic all of his life. I will be an alcoholic all of my life.”
He killed himself a few months ago. His children are college aged, except for the oldest who is in his mid-twenties. The oldest son didn’t want to attend the funeral because he had so much resentment against his father. But he came at the urging of his mother.
I can’t really blame the mother for filing for divorce about six months before the father killed himself, given the circumstances.
I guess my point is that while almost everyone desires sexual intercourse, not everyone desires children and even some who do desire children probably shouldn’t have children, at least if they can’t control their addictions.
From an evolutionary biology perspective, human beings desire sexual intercourse more than they desire children, even though most people desire both.
These two things are not in the same plane. One is part of our animal nature and is in the same plane with evil deeds.
Having children rose to a different level when human beings developed their capacity to become civilized.
Some humans, through religion or reason, strive to distinguish between the desire that is good and that which is evil or sinful and establish boundaries to help in that endeavor.
Having offspring is every bit as part of animal nature as is the sexual intercourse that generates offspring.
Sexual intercourse isn’t intrinsically evil. It might be evil in some circumstances and not in other circumstances.
Same for having offspring.
When a man has 20 children with 5 different women, that’s not necessarily a good thing.
I think we can all agree that a man who creates lots of babies but doesn’t do anything to take care of them has done something morally bad.
There is a difference between a strictly instinctual behavior and a conscious act with a known objective by a rational being even when the underlying drive is instinctual. This is what sets humans apart even though much of our behavior stems from our animal nature.
I agree that sexual intercourse is only made evil or sinful by circumstances.
The vast majority of folks who think that marriage isn’t right for them either have a defective view of marriage or of themselves.
Small follow-up to my comment 36 about encouraging marriage: the wife of one of the couples I regularly encourage told me this morning at church how much they appreciate the encouragement in their marriage they get from others of us in the church. They are rather counter-cultural for the 21st century in that she wants to focus on being a mother and a wife, so she particularly appreciates the encouragement some of us “old folks” (my term) provide.
I am happy to encourage marriage, and to help marriages succeed.
Maybe the have the right view of themselves and they are bad. Like Quagmire.
Or they might have a pessimistic view of their potential partners. For example, a woman who has had the experience of having her boyfriends cheat on them might think that there just “aren’t any good men out there for me.”
Similarly, some men might have had bad experiences with woman to the point that they conclude that “there are no good women out there, only those that want to take advantage of me.”
Also, there are some people, like my next door neighbor who was married and had three young children. He didn’t have a job for at least the last 14 years of his life, spent all of his time watching TV and drinking beer and then killed himself.
Maybe if someone like that concluded that marriage wasn’t for him, he might be right. Marriage isn’t for someone who isn’t capable of overcoming their addictions. That’s not to say only perfect people should get married. It’s just that at some point, huge flaws in ones personality might make a successful marriage an impossibility.
I think there are multiple forces at work against the traditional institution of marriage today. The OP makes this point to some degree in the sense that to be successful it requires commitment from both parties. But the environment in which that commitment is happening has been changing very drastically.
Many people used to meet at church. That’s down. Many people used to meet at work. I don’t know but my guess is that is down mainly because of elements pushed by the feminists. I don’t know about college. So quite a few people connect on the internet. I can’t even guess what young people today are taught about marriage since religious participation has been dropping rapidly. I bet bachelors today know less than I did and that means they don’t know much at all.
I also meant to point out what has happened in China and Japan.
My wife was born and raised in Latin America where “casa grande” and “casa pica” were part of the ordinary experience in families. Probably not so much now.
Women are not as financially dependent on men as they were in the first two-thirds of the 20th century.
Women are much more capable of living independently than they used to be. Many, if not most, women still desire male companionship and many, perhaps most, want children.
But given the large numbers of men who have dropped out of the work force and aren’t even looking for a job, given that a majority of college graduates, law school graduates and medical school graduates are women, there is a shortage of desirable men in the single’s market, a mismatch.
The big drop in marriage has been among those without college degrees and those with middle to lower incomes.
Both of my young cousins (aged 29 and 33) met their wives at college. Neither of them are religious at all.
My wife’s youngest niece is getting married in 7 weeks. She met her fiance through a friend who realized that both my wife’s niece and her fiance were moving to Fort Worth at the same time and thought that the two of them should meet.
So, a woman raised by devout protestant Christian parents is getting married to a man who was raised in a secular Jewish family. My wife’s niece will be graduating from medical school a few months after she gets married.
My young cousins (on my Mom’s side of my family) never went to church because both of their parents were not religious at all. They had wealthy parents who sent them to very expensive private schools, where hardly anyone was religious.
I think most people in the young generation at least know of someone in their age group who is religious. Some young people who weren’t raised in religious households do end up converting to Christianity, at least for a little while.
But the movement seems to be mostly in the other direction, young people raised in religious households exiting the faith by the time they are 30 years old.
In Churches they train men to be masculine and women to be feminine. That’s one of the reasons why religious people are happier than others.
It might also be why people are leaving the church. Maybe many people like they don’t fit into the tiny boxes that church leaders are asking people to fit into.
Many people who grow up in religious households, attending church a few times each week, attending vacation bible school every year, studying the bible intensely, singing Christian music, end up leaving the faith before they are 30 years old.
So, religion might make some people happy, but clearly some people feel happier after they leave religion.
The “boxes” aren’t tiny at all.
That’s been my experience. I prefer large boxes to our current confusing gender free for all.
But that is a false choice, either go to church or believe in a confusing gender free for all.
Joe Rogan’s podcast often discusses the harms of transgender ideology and Joe Rogan is by no means a church going Christian.
Martina Navratilova, the former Tennis star, is a lesbian and has openly voiced her opposition to having males play in woman’s sports, even though one of her friends is a man who played in the woman’s tennis tournaments in the 1970s.
Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist and atheist has said that there only two sexes, opposing the idea that sex is “a spectrum.”
I think the boxes in many churches are tiny in the sense that in many churches you are told to believe in the Holy Trinity, that Jesus rose from the dead, that there will be a day of Judgement, that Jesus is the only path to salvation.
Thus, you are told that a large majority of the human population will suffer in hell for eternity.
Also, you are told that sexual intercourse outside of heterosexual marriage is a sin and that woman should be quiet in churches and submit (1 Corinthians 14:34).
It isn’t surprising that about 30 percent of the young generation raised in Christian households leave the Christian faith by the time they are 30 years old.
The church boxes are often too tiny to allow for the development of critical thinking skills.
So many young people are avoiding all commitment nowadays, especially marriage and kids, it’s almost novel to hear of a wedding.