Are relationships and marriage all the rage?

[katyseagull]

For the married people out there, does the thought of being with only one person the rest of your life freak you out or is it comforting... or do you just never think about it because you're too busy? The day to day aspects of marriage seem really really really hard. What do you do if you get bored with your mate?

[Blarg]

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True love isn't romance and roses. It's taking care of sick kids, paying the bills, making a trip to the store for coffee when you don't want to and don't drink it yourself, but your partner does.

This is also the key to infidelity. People are more in love with the illusions that come with infatuation than they are with the realities of love and commitment.

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It has always struck me as a job. It's work, even if you like it quite a lot, and you have to do your damnedest to show up every day, no matter what you feel like, without resentment, and make the best of it for yourself and for your partner. Nobody can guarantee someone else's happiness or force someone to love him or her, but you can sure make it a hell of a lot easier by always making that extra effort, without resentment. That comes down to your maturity as an adult and your quality as a person. If you think love is just going to take care of itself, or that now that you've done your share you can slack off, you're going to wind up in trouble.

One of my fears, really, is that realizing love is a continuous job that you have to take on with a good spirit demands a level of maturity and selflessness from others that I just don't find that common. I think people do an awful lot of thinking and feeling and living pretty much by rote, and that actively remembering not to take your partner for granted is something you have to be a very aware person not to do. Even being very smart doesn't mean you are selfless or particularly aware of what you're doing and what you're like day by day, at all.

And heck, I've even known people for whom taking others for granted is felt as a positive welcome boon, that takes the pressure off and makes people more "natural" with each other. I think you can be natural without being slothful, and don't really like the idea of being an emotional sloth. A lot of people tire quickly and are not fond of challenges.

[J.A.K.]

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And heck, I've even known people for whom taking others for granted is felt as a positive welcome boon, that takes the pressure off and makes people more "natural" with each other. I think you can be natural without being slothful, and don't really like the idea of being an emotional sloth. A lot of people tire quickly and are not fond of challenges.

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QFT.

I was going to respond with something like this. There is freedom when you can take the love for granted, just make sure you don't take the person for granted- which goes to your point about sloth. I remember reaching that subtle maturation where there was not a malaise of the relationship breaking down over the stupid [censored] you worry about when younger.

As for relationships in general I always think of that quote from "She's Having A Baby" where Kevin bacon has some doubts and asks his best man (Alec Baldwin)- "Will I be happy?"

"Yeah, you'll be happy. You just won't know it, that's all."

I believe that to be true. And there is nothing in life to replace the kind of happiness of a loving relationship. Not success, not pleasure, not anything. The realization of this is usually what twists many a person into bitter creatures.

I also agree that the selfless qualities needed for the longterm happiness are becoming obsolete. Women, it seems, are now demanding that men do the things they would freely do if the woman possessed even a modicum of selflessness. Do women really WANT to be wives anymore? Or is marriage simply security and a practical means to an end...like a good merger? Not putting it all on the females, it's just that's what I notice more since I am a male.

[diamonddawg]

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Do women really WANT to be wives anymore? Or is marriage simply security and a practical means to an end...like a good merger?

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I believe that some people want to be life partners with all the ups and downs that this implies and involves and some people do not.
For me, as I have a pretty high stress freelance career, I am eternally optimistic that I will have a life partner who can cope with the variability of the stress of when I am working, the stress of when I am not (and wishing I was) and the blissfully rare in-between times when I am about to start a job but still have free time. This is what brought me to me most recent relationship, with someone who also worked freelance (poker), who also understood periods of high stress and pressure, and who also really loved their work.

Marriage, I would idealistically hope, could be compared to a good business merger between two practically matched companies, but making about money alone is silly and doomed to fail. Of course, if one of you has spendthrift ways and the other not, this dichotomy as huge a problem as if one wants kids and the other does not. Pretty much everything else can be worked out, if there is the passionate desire for each other that is essential to longevity.

If what you refer to re: being a wife has to do with staying at home and raising children and tending to chores/home upkeep, I am not sure how many women are interested in that. None that I know of, but I run with a fairly career-oriented crowd.

[katyseagull]

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Do women really WANT to be wives anymore? Or is marriage simply security and a practical means to an end...like a good merger?

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I wasn't sure what he meant by this question either. Do men even know what they want their wives to be? I don't think men or women feel they have a handle on the role of "wife" today. It's some idealized concept...partner, lover, mother, career woman, housekeeper, cook , landscaper, tax attorney, party organizer. Sounds kinda difficult if you ask me, trying to squeeze all that stuff in around the shopping.

[knowledgeORbust]

This thread reminds me SO much of Will Ferrel's therapy scene in the movie OldSchool. Particularly this:

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does the thought of being with only one person the rest of your life freak you out

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I would reference that film if you find yourself seeking a deeper understanding of marriage.

[J.A.K.]

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Do women really WANT to be wives anymore? Or is marriage simply security and a practical means to an end...like a good merger?

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I wasn't sure what he meant by this question either. Do men even know what they want their wives to be? I don't think men or women feel they have a handle on the role of "wife" today. It's some idealized concept...partner, lover, mother, career woman, housekeeper, cook , landscaper, tax attorney, party organizer. Sounds kinda difficult if you ask me, trying to squeeze all that stuff in around the shopping.

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Diamonddawg and Katy,

I'll try not to dig a hole here, but I probably will.

In one of my college courses, my professor made a statement to the effect that Bill and Hillary Clinton's marriage was probably typical of future relationships. I cannot remember if this was during the Lewinsky stuff, but the professor's point was that relationships would be much more pragmatic than romantic.

At some point in our culture, a stigma got attached to stay home moms and wives. If I allow that the culture of a certain period was repressive for women, I still think it is unfair to say that being a wife and mother was inherently the source of unhappiness. I have no problems with my wife working. I could even be a stay home dad. But why can't I want a wife to stay home with our child during the formative years? How has that simple desire become taboo for men? How does that translate into the man wants a wife to be his cook and clean slave?

I have watched one by one as my friends wives end their careers once they had a child. It was of their own choosing, and for a couple of them even after it had been settled that they would continue to work and certain financial burdens had been assumed. It was kind of neat, really to watch that instinct kick in. None of them plan on returning to work. Of the two remaining friends that work, one is constantly complaining that the daycare is not giving the child the type of care and attention that only a mother could and the other voices her intentions of quitting as soon as her husband gets promoted. All are college educated and a couple are the main breadwinners.

I remember seeing a Barbara Walters or 20/20 where some of the most successful women in the country gave up their seven figure salaries to be a stay home mothers. In the interviews, the women allowed that it was an adjustment at first. But none of them said they regretted their decision and they did not plan on returning to work. Their was a feminist on the show who said point blank that those women were making a mistake, both personally(she felt that they would eventually come to regret the decision) and in the bigger picture of having influence in the corporate world. WHO THE [censored] IS SHE TO SAY ONE WAY OR THE OTHER???!! She has been "angry" so long she can't afford to be wrong on this because so much of her life is tied up in the fight.

So the reason I asked if women wanted to be wives is that so many influences are in the face of girls today to make sure that they know motherhood and marriage is inherently unfulfilling. I feel at times our culture is driving a square peg of ideology into the round hole of human nature. That god forbid if you simply wanted to be a wife and mother, you are a failure to an extent.

So I am sure I have now articulated myself into the very hole I wanted to avoid.

[LearnedfromTV]

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For the married people out there, does the thought of being with only one person the rest of your life freak you out or is it comforting?

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both

(one year in sept)

[Ser William]

[ QUOTE ]
For the married people out there, does the thought of being with only one person the rest of your life freak you out or is it comforting... or do you just never think about it because you're too busy? The day to day aspects of marriage seem really really really hard. What do you do if you get bored with your mate?

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I wouldn't have gotten married if I didn't want anything other than to be with just my wife for the rest of my life. 10 years later nothing has changed other than I love her more now than I did when we first got married.

Marriage and all it entails isn't really that complicated. The hard part is finding the right person.

[Blarg]

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Do women really WANT to be wives anymore? Or is marriage simply security and a practical means to an end...like a good merger?

[/ QUOTE ]

I wasn't sure what he meant by this question either. Do men even know what they want their wives to be? I don't think men or women feel they have a handle on the role of "wife" today. It's some idealized concept...partner, lover, mother, career woman, housekeeper, cook , landscaper, tax attorney, party organizer. Sounds kinda difficult if you ask me, trying to squeeze all that stuff in around the shopping.

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The problem is we have a very unbalanced society. There are two ideas that have really taken root in our culture very strongly, and both are stupid and poisonous. One is the myth of the superwoman, that it's not only possible, but quite the ordinary fact of life to be able to be everything to everybody, and to not make choices that limit your outcomes. The second is the drastic overshooting of the women's movement in America that has resulted in taking men for granted, if not being outright hostile toward them, covertly or overtly. There is far less respect for fatherhood than there used to be, and than there should be. This elevates the pressure and expectations placed on women even further, as their hard work and role as repository of all societal virtue is overburdened with the task of filling in the gaping space where healthier, more balanced ideas of how families work and the limits of what one person can do and do well fall away.

Ironically, it's the higher respect and esteem for women in our society that has led to their being burdened with unrealistic expectations. We haven't really as a society learned to negotiate between opposite ideas and settle into them sensibly; rather we tend to overdo things one way or the other until it can't work any more, and then go back the opposite direction to make the same type of error. Whereas a century ago women couldn't even vote and were posited by some as mentally inferior, today we are stuck with the idea that they should have more than 24 hours in a day and be able to handle more things with aplomb than used to be expected of any man.

With such unrealistic outlooks on what it is that a person can be and what can really be done within the limited frame of a single life, it's no wonder that often neither men nor women seem too clear on what each or the other is about.