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Tuesday, September 18, 2007
A Trend In Mendacity
Your Curmudgeon is widely known in the Blogosphere for his Cro-Magnon perspective on human relationships; it's part of his charm. While he was aware that his is a minority viewpoint at this time, he didn't realize how far attitudes toward sex, love, and marriage have decayed until he saw this article, courtesy of the esteemed Dr. Helen Smith:
You'd never buy a car without test-driving it first right? So why settle into a lifelong marriage before trying one on for size?"I'm just really not ready to be committed like this." That's what Andi said to Tucker, her husband of 11 months, after she came home from a crazy day at work two years ago with an overwhelming urge to quit her marriage. Today. Right now. "This just isn't for me."...
"I was married for like, two seconds." That's what Andi says to me today, her enormous kohl-rimmed blue eyes crinkling as she recounts her drive-through union. "It was literally an entry-level marriage." We're sitting in a cafe in a funky Boston neighborhood known for its liberal attitudes and alternative lifestyles — this is where gay couples raise their children — and yet women are actually swiveling in their seats, doing indiscreet 180s to get a look at the impeccably coiffed, blonde-haired woman saying such things....
Her own parents split up when she was 3, and she didn't want to condemn another generation to that hell. Andi and Tucker got divorced almost a year to the day after they had vowed to be together forever.
"Oh, my God, it was so easy," she says, exhaling loudly. "I realized, I can get out of this, and he can get out of this, and we can get on with our lives.... It's true. I wouldn't have married him if I didn't think I could get out of it."
For some, a starter husband is like a starter home — a semi-commitment where you're willing to do some of the surface work, like painting the walls, but not the heavy lifting, like gutting the whole foundation; he's just not a long-term investment. Others compare a starter husband to a first job, where you learn some skills and polish your resume before going after the position you really want....
"Simply put, my 20s were freaking me out," says 29-year-old Elisa Albert, a wavy-haired brunette and adjunct assistant professor of creative writing at Columbia University. "I felt unqualified to be barreling into adulthood alone — I felt at loose ends in regards to my career, my ability to support myself, even my post-college social identity. I was lonely and scared. At the same time, I'm watching Sex and the City and going, OK, so should I spend the next 20 years getting my heart broken and pretending that it's all in good fun? Or should I marry this dude I'm dating, have a gorgeous party, and make my parents really, really happy?"
It's easy to write these women off as callous or self-absorbed. And yet on some level, they just might be pioneers: Why stay put in an empty shell of a marriage — an arrangement on paper only — instead of calling it what it is?...
"I think women our age are like, We're either going to fix this, or we're going to end it, and that's for the better," says Kay Moffett, coauthor of Not Your Mother's Divorce. She married her own starter husband in a funky, flamingo-filled Florida wedding at 27, then divorced him four years later after realizing she could never make the real commitment of having children with him. But don't call her divorce a failure; in this enlightened world, it was simply a relationship that ran its course. "I think maybe we're moving more toward a serial-marriage society — maybe you have three marriages in your life and several different careers. That's where I'm heading," she says.
After reading that -- and you may rest assured that the excerpts above are faithful to the rest of the thing -- your Curmudgeon wanted to barricade the doors and never leave the house again. It's the sort of cheerful abrogation of honesty and decency that makes him yearn for Queen Victoria, top hats and tails, and whalebone stays. Or failing that, for a fortified mountaintop with broadband Internet service.
"Starter husbands." "Starter wives." What can this mean? If you add water to a starter spouse, does he become a real one? Or are these cutesy phrases circumlocutions for starker realities: disposable husbands and wives?
Easy, "no fault" divorce has radically changed the face of marriage in these United States. Divorce is now "either party at any time," without a need for cause or mutual consent. Perhaps there's no going back to the old legal regime, given that the covenant-marriage movement has attracted so little interest and a steadily expanding set of court cases has conferred virtually all the rights of a spouse upon a live-in lover. But there was still a chance that the good sense of ordinary men and women, cautious about their feelings, fortunes, and futures, reluctant to gamble their happiness on a dubious match or a questionable partner, might adequately curb what the law has decided to permit.
What we see here is the normalization of infidelity. Not adultery, which is the usual referent for that term, but something a bit worse: young persons faithlessly contracting marriages, taking the vows while consciously unwilling to live by them. They're lying to their spouses, to the officiating clergyman or judge, and sometimes to themselves.
Could there be a departure from sincerity more callous than undertaking a marriage while saying to oneself, "I don't have to follow through on this" or "this is just a tryout" -- ? Is it even possible that such a practice might not degrade the institution of marriage to a nullity?
Conservatives have fretted over what same-sex marriage would do to the esteem of the institution. They were right to fear, but if the women described above are at all representative of the younger generation, same-sex marriage might just be a cherry on top of a slag heap.
Marriage isn't an adventure or a form of recreation. It's about children, long-term planning, and striking roots into the soil of one's chosen locale. A community of any sort is always made up of families, never of individuals. The reason is the unique biological stability of the family, its ability to endure and prosper over time. A healthy community cannot be founded on the mobility and variability of unmated individuals, though an existing one may tolerate an aliquot of singles as long as they don't disturb the public order. There are more single adults than ever before, and they have more latitude than any singles have ever had in the history of Western civilization. So far, we've withstood the perturbations to which they've subjected our communities, but can we withstand the removal of all presumptions of permanence from the institution of marriage?
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Comments
I’ve long thought that gay marriage was much more a symptom of marriage’s decline than one of its potential causes. How often do you see someone try to argue for gay marriage based on the fact that opposite-sex marriages so frequently end in divorce? It’s a complete non sequitur, but even though the statement is utterly lacking in logic, it’s easy to see the psychological effect of marriage’s decay in its reasoning.
The enshrinement of no-fault divorce in the laws of the states is easily one of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated on our society. It promised greater freedom for women to end abusive or unhappy marriages, but what it has given us is a situation in which one can never know if what should be the deepest of commitments is in fact a sham. Introducing such an element of mutual suspicion can only serve to weaken the bedrock of our social fabric, which is the family. That is of course what many of the anti-marriage activists want.
Opposition to gay marriage is all fine and well, but in the end it is not a fight we can win unless we address the decay of marriage as a whole.
Posted by on 09/18/2007 at 08:10 PMI can only speak for myself, but I will NOT be having a starter husband.
Posted by The Kate on 09/18/2007 at 09:43 PMThe lackadaisical attitude toward marriage expressed in the excerpt makes my skin crawl. However, I doubt many of us would want things to return to exactly the way they used to be, as that means that women are essentially treated as chattel. So what would a good replacement look like?
On the one hand, having the ability to withdraw from an abusive or loveless marriage is very important to an individual’s liberty. Suffering the sort of social and economic penalties imposed in previous times after a divorce are, in my opinion, contrary to any kind of respect for individual rights. But on the other hand, being able to simply fold one’s hand on a whim and suffer no consequences at all will lead (and has led) to a deep undermining of a crucial social and biological benefit. So perhaps we as a society can strike some sort of balance such that there are clear benefits to being married (which is in the interest of the state as well as of society, and also the people involved) but that the gravity of the union is better understood and respected, and thus not entered into lightly.
Sadly I have no clear ideas on what that would look like. Perhaps the state should get out of the marriage business altogether, and simply offer tax breaks and the like to people who enter into certain kinds of contracts, particularly if they involve making and raising children. Perhaps all marriages should have a short length, and all parties must renew, for example, each year by the anniversary date or the marriage simply ends. Perhaps we should emphasize marriages arranged by the parents, where the (adult) children under consideration each have a veto.
In any case, it seems to me that the primary purpose of marriage, as far as the state is concerned, is the creation of a new generation of healthy, sane, and productive citizens. Any scheme we come up with must improve the odds of that or it will be a non-starter. Individual citizens will also resist any scheme that involves too much coercion, either in the establishment of the new form or in the marriage itself.
Posted by on 09/19/2007 at 01:23 AMFirst off…
“Simply put, my 20s were freaking me out,” says 29-year-old Elisa Albert, a wavy-haired brunette and adjunct assistant professor of creative writing at Columbia University.
Doesn’t that just say it all. “An assistant professor of creative writing at Columbia University”. Well, we know what kind of vision of reality she espouses. No pun intended there.
I can tell you from personal experience that amongst our peers (those of my wife and myself) we are unique both in our belief in God, his importance in our marriage and the fact that we don’t regularly discuss divorce as an option to problem solving. Iam 32 my wife is 28.
Every single one of our married friends discusses the possibility of divorce at nearly every fight or disagreement. And not in anger, they say, but just ‘looking at their options’. Its terrifying. Some of them have kids and here I am thinking that we are the next generation of Americans and maybe when we are able to have kids, our kids will play together, maybe date each other and the cycle will start again. And that’s a good thing. But when I hear them discuss their issues, I shudder.
I used to think I was sheltered up here in Glens Falls (my downstate friends call it Mayberry) but I’m not so sure anymore.
Posted by Jim Sullivan on 09/19/2007 at 07:35 AMThe pathology you describe looks to me as indicative of a more general degredation of personal integrity. It manifest itself in myriad ways, but seems to come down to this: “I will have what I want, without respect to the rules that gainsay me.”
People who think the speed limits don’t apply to them.
People who find the story of Abe Lincoln walking 20 miles to refund miscounted change to a customer ... quaint and amusing.
People who will do anything to gain priority in a queue.
People who think nothing of cheating a parking meter. Who would short their taxes if they thought they could get away with it. Who find the idea of adultery exciting and romantic.
Cliff notes. Internet term paper mills. Social promotion—accepted by and urged upon the population.
The brisk collectibles market in “memorabilia” that implies a closer connection to celebrity than is either possible or even really desirable.
The emphasis on “self esteem” in the absence of real accomplishment.
I’m sure many, many more examples could be added on slight consideration.
All symptomatic of the desire for style over substance—for the status symbols of accomplishment without the real thing.
I want easy access to sex and the social and legal benefits of marriage without the lifelong commitment implied. So I’ll lie to a priest in order to go through the motions, then I’ll do what I want.
A wise person might be reluctant to associate with a divorced person because of this sign of lack of commitment and personal integrity—of the slightness of character it signals. But that’s probably illegal in some jurisdictions.
M
Posted by Mark Alger on 09/19/2007 at 11:17 AMMark,
You make a lot of good points right up until you talk about a wise person being reluctant to talk to a divorced person. You had me up till there.
Divorce is a problem but some people have honest reasons for it. Not everyone that has been divorced is as selfish and morally bankrupt as those quoted in Fran’s post.
Posted by Jim Sullivan on 09/19/2007 at 11:34 AMOutstanding post, as usual.
I think one potential answer to the degradation of the marriage contract is to start treating it as other contracts.
Two words: Performance bond.
Posted by IB Bill on 09/19/2007 at 12:01 PMWell, why not? Women marry up as a rule, and as long as that is the case, why not follow Zsa Zsa Gabor? Heck, why wait for marriage? Living together is the same as marriage, depending on the mood of the Judge.
If there is no equality, there is no partnership. Right now “no fault” divorce isn’t. If the leaving “partner” got to take out only what they brought in, I think you would see “starter husbands” gone, just like that. As the law stands, getting married is like winning the lottery for women marrying up. New house, someone to pay off you debts, new car maybe. You(the woman in question) don’t have to do anything in return, by law. If he doesn’t like it, throw him out of your house. Odds are good that he will have to support you in the manner in which you were living before you destroyed the “marriage”. And if he can’t(Judges set support on what they think you can pay....) send him to debtor’s prison and hold him there until those who love him beggar themselves buying his freedom.
This whole thing shows why the dream of no government will not happen with human beings. Most people are as good as they need to be. Right now, women don’t need to be very good.
Posted by on 09/19/2007 at 08:05 PMJim;
Your points are valid; thus the reasons for my careful wording—one MIGHT be RELUCTANT.
I’m not urging absolute shunning. Only caution.
Just as one might be wary around a convicted thief until he revealed himself to be of otherwise sterling character, one might be reluctant to associate with people who take commitment so lightly as to abarogate—for whatever reason—a supposed life covenant.
M
Posted by Mark Alger on 09/20/2007 at 12:54 PMMy apologies Mark.
Posted by Jim Sullivan on 09/21/2007 at 07:15 AMNone needed, Jim. As I said, your point is valid.
M
Posted by Mark Alger on 09/21/2007 at 12:17 PMI have a large group of friends who are married, and not one of them mentions divorce. I have been married for six+ years and have no intention of getting a divorce.
At least two of my siblings have spouses that dealt with divorce (or other problems with their parents) as children, and part of my siblings’ attraction was our parents’ long marriage.
In other words, the “trends” that the MSM follow come out of a particular culture, and the counter to that is showing a culture where marriage survives and thrives— and isn’t a trap.
If you’re the sort of person who thinks love is a trap, I feel sorry for you.
Posted by B. Durbin on 09/24/2007 at 02:46 PMThis whole thing shows why the dream of no government will not happen with human beings. Most people are as good as they need to be. Right now, women don’t need to be very good.
Posted by romantic gifts for her on 02/10/2010 at 10:57 AM
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