Recently, I voted (though no opinions had been solicited) a hearty "NO" when the author of the So the Thing Is Blog wondered aloud whether her blog was becoming a knitting blog. Good news...the latest entry is about sex.
Of course, she did the whole Seinfeld thing; it doesn't SAY it's about sex. But trust me--it's about sex. And maybe it's good that it's done discreetly, because, you know, it's a family show over there. Not so this blog, so I'm going to call it like it is. She advocates, via advice from an unnamed friend, having sex twice a week as a means of improving communication in marriage.
I think it works. Of course, I'm not married, but when I was, I developed a theory that marriage was much happier and easier for everyone if you had sex every day. That's right--not twice a week, but every single day. If you gave it the same priority you gave to things like eating dinner and showing up at work and showering, it could really improve everyone's attitude. I suggested this to other married friends and at various times various of us experimented with it, and it worked. I never heard anyone say that it didn't. Interestingly enough, it seemed to make no difference whether or not one or both partners actually WANTED to be participating--the feeling of closeness increased, regardless. The tension and intolerance for little annoyances decreased, regardless. It seemed, all in all, to be the key to a happy marriage.
So why, then, doesn't everybody do it?
Partly, I suspect, it's one of those vicious circles--the worse you're getting along, the less inclined you are to make love. The less you make love, the worse you get along. And so on and so on. I think that the generally accepted view is that of course you're going to have less sex if you can't stand each other, but my absolutely non-scientific and small-scale study indicates precisely the opposite...you'll be able to stand each other if you just make it a point to have more sex.
You may have noticed that, despite having discovered the foolproof means of maintaining a happy marriage, I'm divorced. So is at least one of the friends who participated in my experiment with positive results. So what went wrong?
It's not so much a flaw in the plan as it is a balancing. It works, but is it worth it? At least some of us, obviously, decided that it wasn't. And that's pretty representative of marriage as a whole, isn't it? There are so many little things that, if we did them consistently, would significantly improve our homes and marriages and the way we live together, but we don't do them. It isn't because we don't know they would help, it's simply that we can't or don't or won't make them a priority. Maybe it's more important to be right. Maybe it's more important to get some fucking sleep. Maybe it's more important to watch the latest episode of X-Files. And maybe that's because we don't view marriage as the framework of our lives, we don't start out willing to work at it, we start out with a fairy-tale vision and never expect that a lot of times, it's going to be as much fun and require as much effort as cleaning up the bathroom after the sewers back up.
But we don't just move out of our houses when that happens, do we?
Recently, I offered the opinion that it's just too damned easy to get married. I still believe that, but Danny Bonaduce provided a surprising counterpoint to my argument this week by...getting divorced. You see, Danny Bonaduce has been married--or so I learned this week--for sixteen years. And if their story is to be believed, he's been married to a woman he didn't know, a woman he married in Vegas while he was drunk so that he could get her into bed, and who introduced herself as his wife the next morning. Sure, the marriage is ending, but they've made it longer than a lot of couples who planned their weddings in advance, stone-cold sober and for what they thought were much better reasons. That doesn't mean I think instant weddings are the way to go now, but it does go to show that if you're committed enough, you can make almost anything work. They must have had sex at least twice a week.
Showing posts with label covenant marriage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label covenant marriage. Show all posts
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Thursday, March 8, 2007
It's Just Too Damned Easy to Get Married in This Country
For as long as I can remember, I've heard people complain that it's too easy to get divorced in this country. In fact, some states are enacting laws that will allow couples to enter into a kind of "super" marriage, a "covenant" marriage, that will be harder to end. It's nonsense.
Are there too many divorces? Sure. But the problem isn't that it's too easy to get divorced. The problem is that it's too easy to get MARRIED.
Think about it. Why do we always hear that "it's too easy to get divorced"?
Remember when it wasn't so easy to get divorced, and hardly anyone did it, and it was socially frowned upon? Well, I don't either, but I know there was such a time, and I know that fewer people got divorced--but I know something else that no one ever seems to think about: it was pretty damned rare in those days for someone to pop off to Vegas and marry someone he or she had known for three days then, too.
In some states, you have to wait a few days to get married after applying for a marriage license, but if that's too long to wait you can always pop across the border. The Catholic Church is about the only institution in our society that puts any kind of restrictions and delays on the right to get married, and what happens? Lifelong Catholics--not nominal Catholics, but believing, practicing Catholics--get married outside the church so that they won't have to "jump through the hoops". That's a significant decision when you consider that the Catholic church doesn't recognize marriages of baptized Catholics that take place outside the church without permission. But it's even more significant when we think about how it bodes for a marriage. It essentially says, "This is the commitment I'm making for the rest of my life--I'm giving up my individual life to become one with you, and committing to sacrifice whatever is necessary to make you happy and to make our marriage work--but I can't wait six months and attend four classes. Let's cut some corners."
So we go into marriage determined to Get What We Want Now. Most people, I'm sure, don't go into marriage contemplating divorce, but it's always an option, isn't it? Surely that changes things. What if you knew when you got married that it really was a lifetime commitment, that you really couldn't change your mind, that you really were going to be waking up next to that person every day for forty or fifty or sixty years, no matter how you came to feel about him? Would you make the same decisions?
Yes, there are too many divorces. But the answer isn't to stick people in bad marriages, usually without the tools to make them workable, but to discourage bad marriages in the first place, to require the time and space and investigation necessary to let people make good decisions about marriage before they enter into it. Then, making it a bit harder to get divorced might be a good accompanying step. It might help to reinforce the seriousness of the commitment. But reinforcing the seriousness of a commitment never really made or understood, explaining after the fact that you've signed on for something you never intended or even recognized, isn't to anyone's good.
Let's forget about revising divorce legislation and require a six month waiting period after you apply for a marriage license.
Let's forget mandatory counseling sessions before a divorce petition can be filed and make couples counseling or marriage education classes a PRE-licensing requirement.
And let's assume that anyone who is too impatient, too bent on instant gratification and having things his own way, to "put up with" those requirements lacks the maturity for a successful marriage, anyway.
Are there too many divorces? Sure. But the problem isn't that it's too easy to get divorced. The problem is that it's too easy to get MARRIED.
Think about it. Why do we always hear that "it's too easy to get divorced"?
- People have unreasonable expectations about marriage being "perfect".
- People don't want to do the hard work.
- People have no sense of commitment.
Remember when it wasn't so easy to get divorced, and hardly anyone did it, and it was socially frowned upon? Well, I don't either, but I know there was such a time, and I know that fewer people got divorced--but I know something else that no one ever seems to think about: it was pretty damned rare in those days for someone to pop off to Vegas and marry someone he or she had known for three days then, too.
In some states, you have to wait a few days to get married after applying for a marriage license, but if that's too long to wait you can always pop across the border. The Catholic Church is about the only institution in our society that puts any kind of restrictions and delays on the right to get married, and what happens? Lifelong Catholics--not nominal Catholics, but believing, practicing Catholics--get married outside the church so that they won't have to "jump through the hoops". That's a significant decision when you consider that the Catholic church doesn't recognize marriages of baptized Catholics that take place outside the church without permission. But it's even more significant when we think about how it bodes for a marriage. It essentially says, "This is the commitment I'm making for the rest of my life--I'm giving up my individual life to become one with you, and committing to sacrifice whatever is necessary to make you happy and to make our marriage work--but I can't wait six months and attend four classes. Let's cut some corners."
So we go into marriage determined to Get What We Want Now. Most people, I'm sure, don't go into marriage contemplating divorce, but it's always an option, isn't it? Surely that changes things. What if you knew when you got married that it really was a lifetime commitment, that you really couldn't change your mind, that you really were going to be waking up next to that person every day for forty or fifty or sixty years, no matter how you came to feel about him? Would you make the same decisions?
Yes, there are too many divorces. But the answer isn't to stick people in bad marriages, usually without the tools to make them workable, but to discourage bad marriages in the first place, to require the time and space and investigation necessary to let people make good decisions about marriage before they enter into it. Then, making it a bit harder to get divorced might be a good accompanying step. It might help to reinforce the seriousness of the commitment. But reinforcing the seriousness of a commitment never really made or understood, explaining after the fact that you've signed on for something you never intended or even recognized, isn't to anyone's good.
Let's forget about revising divorce legislation and require a six month waiting period after you apply for a marriage license.
Let's forget mandatory counseling sessions before a divorce petition can be filed and make couples counseling or marriage education classes a PRE-licensing requirement.
And let's assume that anyone who is too impatient, too bent on instant gratification and having things his own way, to "put up with" those requirements lacks the maturity for a successful marriage, anyway.
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