GEORGIE BINKS:
Do love and marriage really go together anymore?
January 30, 2004
![Georgie Binks]()
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 in a marriage.
Kipnis believes that falling in love doesn't just mean committing to another person - it means committing to commitment. Maybe marriage is not the right place for those who love each other and want continual passion. Maybe the permanence of it is what takes the magic away. Maybe it's not the way to make love stay.
The ideal, of course, is those rare couples who genuinely enjoy each other's company, not to be confused with those people who have been married for 50 years. You've seen those people verbally abusing each other over the grapefruit in the supermarket. It's only because we still live in a dream that no one has made banners that herald "Too Old to Get Divorced" rather than "Happy 50th."
Now that gay couples can marry, it will be interesting to see how their relationships fare. For awhile now, it seemed that perhaps it was the problem of putting men and women with their opposing needs and wants together that caused the problem, like expecting cats and dogs to live in harmony forever.
Perhaps those who are truly happily married have different expectations of marriage. Maybe they see it as the home of two companions - two very good friends sharing the good and bad times, rather than wondering where the passion went. Is that object of everlasting love really simply that partner who sits patiently outside the antique store as you paw through the old cameras, and who gazes lovingly at you as you rejoin her?
Maybe by trying to keep love alive in the glass jar of marriage we simply smother it. Maybe marriage is a great place to bring up kids, share companionship and know that there is someone there with whom to share your daily goings-on (whether or not they actually listen).
Perhaps it just isn't the place where you can make love stay.
Do love and marriage really go together anymore?
January 30, 2004
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 in a marriage.
Kipnis believes that falling in love doesn't just mean committing to another person - it means committing to commitment. Maybe marriage is not the right place for those who love each other and want continual passion. Maybe the permanence of it is what takes the magic away. Maybe it's not the way to make love stay.
The ideal, of course, is those rare couples who genuinely enjoy each other's company, not to be confused with those people who have been married for 50 years. You've seen those people verbally abusing each other over the grapefruit in the supermarket. It's only because we still live in a dream that no one has made banners that herald "Too Old to Get Divorced" rather than "Happy 50th."
Now that gay couples can marry, it will be interesting to see how their relationships fare. For awhile now, it seemed that perhaps it was the problem of putting men and women with their opposing needs and wants together that caused the problem, like expecting cats and dogs to live in harmony forever.
Perhaps those who are truly happily married have different expectations of marriage. Maybe they see it as the home of two companions - two very good friends sharing the good and bad times, rather than wondering where the passion went. Is that object of everlasting love really simply that partner who sits patiently outside the antique store as you paw through the old cameras, and who gazes lovingly at you as you rejoin her?
Maybe by trying to keep love alive in the glass jar of marriage we simply smother it. Maybe marriage is a great place to bring up kids, share companionship and know that there is someone there with whom to share your daily goings-on (whether or not they actually listen).
Perhaps it just isn't the place where you can make love stay.
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