What does "marriage" mean to you?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve started this thread to redirect a potential hijack from another thread that is quite interesting enough on its own. The specific post that prompted me to start the thread is as follows:

I…just strongly disagree with this assessment. I’m sure there are plenty of marriages out there that involve nagging and spouses who act more like watchdogs than lovers, but this doesn’t define marriage for me or a lot of other people.

The type of communication I have with my spouse, particularly when it is about where I happen to be at any given moment, is out of respect and a desire to communicate rather than being on some kind of leash. I don’t need her approval and she doesn’t need mine. We’re both adults and can come and go as we please. When my wife decided to pursue better education and participate in a summer program overseas, she didn’t have to come to me and ask if it was OK. She DID want my feedback on the idea, but that is definitely not the equivalent of getting my permission.

Part of loving and trusting someone and committing to a relationship because of that love and trust involves knowing that that person is going to make decisions that are in their own best interests and in the best interests of the relationship. At least, that’s how it works for us. We were both complete individuals before we were married, and if – God forbid – we should ever split up, we would remain complete individuals. But we believe that our partnerships benefits both of us emotionally, physically, spiritually (however you define that) – that we have a lot to offer the other, and we enjoy the process of sharing that with one another.

I just don’t see that as codependency. Your mileage, quite obviously, may vary.

2

I don’t think I am normal in this regard but I do think that many people sneak and work around it even for mundane things. I do think that marriage cuts down on many basic freedoms that even an average 18 year old has. The big advantage that it gives is the ability to procreate and raise the kids responsibly. I know for a a fact that I am not alone in that assessment because men have told me that all my life.

My basic personality is to resist almost all outside control except for my daughters whenever possible. I love my wife but I know for a fact that I am strange in that regard because so many people tell me. If I get up on a Saturday morning and say that I am leaving and will be back before noon, I do not want anyone asking where I am going or why. I will most likely go to Barnes and Noble and read or go sit in a park somewhere. That is a core trait of mine and has gotten way more severe than the example I just gave at different times.

I don’t cheat. I just instinctively segment my life into different compartments so that my universes don’t touch. I wish it were easier in a way but I have met many married men that do versions of the same thing. My marriage is one of my important relationships. My daughters are way higher. I trust my wife completely no matter whatever other flaws she has but she is not the sun in my solar system. She is more like a Jupiter.

3

I’m with Shagnasty here–well, I am not with him, but we’re on the same page. My spouse is not on the same page, at all. He makes disparaging comments about “your private life,” as if I’m really not supposed to have one.

Example: I have an office where I write. I like to decorate it with things that will get me going and keep me on track with whatever project I’m working on, fiction or freelance or whatever. I have big sheets of paper–actually, really big sticky notes–that I will tape up on the wall and write on, or put photos on, scribble notes on–whatever.

The thing is that when somebody walks into my office they comment on whatever’s there. Even if they don’t say a word, the act of walking in, looking at whatever I’ve got up there, and saying “Hmmm,” just drives me crazy, because it’s like a judgment of what I have up, which is personal. Or if I hear somebody coming and I’m listening to music, maybe I’ll switch it off because I just don’t want any discussion about what I’m listening to.

Obviously, I would prefer it if nobody came in there at all, ever.

I realize this is a quirk, but I need my den, and I need people to stay out, and it’s not like I’m embarrassed about what I do there or that I’m up to anything sneaky. I just want this personal space. I need space, okay?

My husband doesn’t get this at all, and used to needle me about it until I just went ballistic, and now he’s sort of indulgent and instead of coming in, he kind of stands at the door, a la Les Nessman. (Probably I didn’t mention that there is not really a door here, but in order to get into my den I do go around a corner.) Even that feels like an assault. It’s gotten to the point where there’s nothing he can do. There’s no way for him to do it right. Maybe there never was.

This, plus a good helping of “don’t ask me where I’m going” has made me realize that someone with my personality should never have gotten married at all. I could have made a really good hermit, by god. But I think if I had married the right person (and obviously, I don’t think I did), this wouldn’t be an issue.

I got married because I was crazy in love, and if I’d thought about it on an intellectual basis, I probably wouldn’t have done it. I was depressed as hell the whole first year I was married. Repent at leisure, and all that. Might be best to remain dispassionate about these things–of course it’s easy to say that now. Stupid hormones, anyway.

4

First of all, I disagree with these statements:

And that is because I don’t think that a ‘soul-mate’ relationship requires all that updating and approving and whatnot.

Secondly, a definition of marriage is going to be unique to each marriage and often different depending upon which partner you are.

Folks who are ‘hermits’ by nature may or may not enjoy marriage but that depends upon their spouse. My hubby and I are both ‘loners’ by nature so that we naturally give each other plenty of elbow room and it works quite well. There is a lot of give and take but it’s complicated yet boring at the same time, so I’ll spare y’all the details of it. :wink:

5

First of all, I wouldn’t take anything that Shagnasty says seriously. He has a history on the boards as being very extreme, like he’s trying to get a rise out of people. If his wife is only, as he says, “Jupiter” in his universe, and if he doesn’t feel any need or desire to tell anyone in his household where he’s going when he leaves the house, then compared to conventional standards, his marriage is pretty dysfunctional. If he thinks that “marriage cuts down on many basic freedoms,” then that speaks volumes to me about the type of person he is, and the problems that he has in his marriage.

So clearly I think his description of marriage is only a description of a dysfunctional marriage. Now, I haven’t been married, but living with my boyfriend, I never felt that my freedom was limited in any way. We never needed each other’s permission to do anything. That is a sign of an abusive or controlling relationship.

My ideal definition of marriage would be one where the partners (whether they be a man and a woman or same-sex) are best friends, truly enjoy each other’s companionship, and love and trust each other completely.

The way Shagnasty describes it, it sounds like he has a very sad relationship. I feel sorry for his wife (based on this thread and multiple other things he has posted here on the boards).

6

I’ve been married for 45 years and it seems to be working just fine thank you. :cool:

7

To me, marriage means that your spouse is now your nuclear family–it’s a public statement that they come first. That doesn’t mean everyone else gets shafted, but the priority is there: your spouse and your relationship with your spouse become your first concerns.

This doesn’t mean you have to know everything each other does or live in each other’s pockets–we all have quirks and needs, and part of putting the relationship first is accommodating those quirks and needs. I’d have no problem with a husband who just went “out”. That’s nothing, that’s a quirk. What I couldn’t stand is a husband for whom “we are together” was always negotiable: when my husband and I were finishing up college and trying to decide “what’s next?”, there was never any chance he or I would have said “well, why don’t you go to Indiana for grad school and I will go to Texas to teach. Have a nice life” or whatever. That was never an option. No matter what, we are a team, we are family. It’s not a gooey, romantic relationship–in ten years, my husband has never once said he loves me–but it is not (from the other thread) one where we “operate much like famous people and we will drop someone as soon as it suits us”.

8

Huh. That would rive me crazy, not because I’m controlling, but because we have a partnership, and we run our household together. That entails responsibility on both our parts, especially for the baby. Right now that means there isn’t much free time for either of us, and that’s life, not some attempt to be strangling.

Our marriage and our family are our central responsibilities. We are certainly not all of everything to each other- we both have lots of friends and diverse interests etc.- but we believe in the promises we made at our wedding, and we made a covenant to put each other first. We take that seriously. It’s not a set of chains, it’s a pleasure and burden assumed willingly.

9

I’m posting this in the sure and certain knowledge it will put the hackles up on any number of people, but here I go anyway.

In my view, a good marriage is, in a lot of ways, really quite similar to a religious calling or secular vocation. It’s something you feel irresistably drawn to do. I spent some time years and years ago speaking with an elderly, retired Catholic priest and he told me that when he took up his calling he knew it would be restrictive and hard and would limit his personal freedom to an extent that beggared the imagination - he knew it would be a struggle and sometimes a pure burden of hardship. He knew there’d be moments when he regretted it profoundly. He knew there’d be moments when the temptation to just say “Fuck it” and go find himself some women and whiskey would be well-nigh irresistable. But he still felt himself called - felt drawn to that kind of life. He still spent over sixty years devoted to that life. You hear artists and athletes say the same thing about their vocations - that they can’t imagine themselves not drawing or writing or playing basketball.

I think marriage - when it’s right - is like that. I think it’s something you can’t imagine yourself not doing and still being whole and yourself. This is not to say it’s easy or always fun or in any way resembles the Cinderella-Harlequin-romance-novel fantasy embraced by little girls everywhere - but ask any artist of your acquaintance if their art is always happy and fun. I have a shiny dollar that says the answer is “Hells no!” How often are the most satisfying things we do easy? How often does it pan out that the things that give you the greatest joy are hard-won?

So Shagnasty’s attitude towards marriage just kind of fills me with confusion. One wonders why he bothered getting married.

10

I got married to have children which is something that is similar to what you describe. It is hard and sometimes frustrating but I feel called to do it. I am happy when someone feels a calling into a soul-mate or covenant type marriage. Good for them. I think kids need solid and committed parents.

What I don’t like is for the ideals being described to be considered the norm because it isn’t by any stretch of the imagination. Most people can’t pull it off at all. I am not unique in that regard. One person agreed with me in this thread and several others have in previous threads. Since I was a child, men that I have respected have said the same thing. I took my daughter to a birthday party once and there was only one other man there. He is a slightly older distinguished businessman. I have no idea how it came up but we were talking and announced what I said a little too loudly and a group of mothers heard it. Their heads whipped around so fast that they were lucky their necks didn’t snap right off. He just said “It’s true” and we started talking again.

Marriage has little to do with love. It is a legal contract and the two components of marriage need to be broken apart so that couples can choose either component or both of them as they see fit. In many societies, including western ones, marriage hasn’t always been tied to everlasting spiritual love. It was often used to bond families or ensure practical resources for both parties. I am not sure why people think that most others are capable of the type of pure everlasting relationship that many people are advocating here. Even a casual look around indicates completely the opposite is true.

11

Is your marriage what you would hope for for your daughter?

I agree with you that people have unrealistic expectations of marriage. However, I do think it’s quite possible and rewarding to have a relationship that has more depth than one you describe: you seem to see parent/child relationships as something more than practical, and I think that level of affection and bonding is also possible in a marriage: my parents love all six of their children deeply and without reservation, and they certainly don’t live in each other’s pockets–my mom travels on business at least six months out of the year (2-3 weeks a month, usually) and takes separate vacations (she and her siblings go primitive backpacking)–but I will tell you they love each other with a fierceness that goes way beyond what they feel for us kids. Would they sacrifice each other to save our lives? Of course. That’s what parents do. But my mom would rather spend time with my dad than with anyone else in the world, and my dad thinks my mom is the most amazing person in the universe. They love their kids, but that is not their primary relationship (thank god–what pressure!). Their primary relationship, their lodestone, is each other.

12

I could answer the question posed in the thread title (“marriage is a formal & institutionalized form of the monagamy/exclusivity type of pair-bonding”), but the question as elaborated on the OP goes elsewhere, and for me has nothing to do with marriage…

For me the ideal is where my partner has stuff to get immersed in, totally wrapped up in, her stuff, which she is good at, obsessed with, cares about, etc.; and I have mine. I’d be disappointed if she did not forget I existed a good portion of the time that she is so involved, yet at the same time I like it when she shares stories and talks about how it’s going or what happened today etc. and explains what it’s all about.

I can’t imagine doing pairbond (or foursome for that matter) where the other person(s) must be the central focus at all times, or where you aren’t supposed to get your attention deeply held by something other than her/them. I would not consider that healthy.

13

I didn’t say it was the norm - or at least I didn’t mean to imply such. What I meant to imply was that that sort of relationship - where you feel called to your marriage - should be the ideal. Not all functional relationships are ideal - hell, not even most functional relationships are ideal. I don’t even think that marriage is necessarily tied up with everlasting spiritual love - and even a marriage you feel called towards may not last forever. People change - and sometimes marriages are casualties of that change.

And, frankly, it’s my personal opinion that a goodly number of marriages fail purely because people are not treating the institution seriously - or are treating it incorrectly. It’s my personal view that people who get married to serve a goal other than being called to marry a given person - be it to have children, to meet cultural expectations, bond families, ensure resources, what have you - are treating marriage incorrectly. It should be a calling unto itself, not a tool used to serve another calling.

Here is my understanding of your marriage based solely on your posts in this thread: You felt called to have children. You feel that a stable marriage is beneficial to raising children. Therefore you got married and remain married to your wife in order to service your calling to have children. The thought of this sort of marriage makes me sadder than I can possibly say for your wife. You’re making it sound as though she’s a fungible component.

14

Not really but I do try hard. I can just barely understand the whole concept myself. My family tends to be smart, successful, attractive, and funny but they sure do know how to burn through spouses like wood in a fireplace.

I think that travel idea is really good for some people and their spouses. My mother travels the world speaking more than six months out of the year and she and my stepfather seem to do great. My major problem isn’t with my wife herself. She is beautiful, smart, and interesting as well as a good mother. It is just that she is around too much and that would apply to anyone I think. How can you miss someone if they don’t go away? It is the mundane aspects that get to me because I have hermit instincts like others do and constant companionship by anyone starts to get to me.

15

Interestingly, Aangelica, in the Catholic Church marriage is a vocation, and a person’s vocation is not a job, it’s a calling. It’s part of who you are.

And I agree with your whole post.

16

Great posts, Aangelica.

I have remarried after a divorce from my first husband. My marriage now is a completely different animal than my first, and so I find it hard to make general statements about marriage. But maybe this little anecdote will help sum it up.

I worked with a woman and her family for many years. Julia was one of my professors in college, brought me along to two different employers, and I babysat her children for two summers. She told me several times that being married is great, and only gets better every year. She and her husband both told me emphatically that they were happier now than they’d ever been, and when I got married the first time, they both wished for me that my marriage would get better and better every year.

But I didn’t really believe them. I thought it would only get harder, duller, more routine, more constrictive. Instead of me examining my expectations for myself and questioning whether this was really the person I should marry, I went ahead with it and lo and behold, my marriage followed the path I expected, though I tried to pretend otherwise. I couldn’t emotionally believe in marriage as partnership.

Now I’m remarried to the right person, and it is, indeed, getting better all the time. It’s a joy. What would have felt like sacrifices in my first marriage feel like gifts now. We are each other’s champions and safety nets. For the first time in my life, I feel treasured for being exactly myself, which has been more freeing and empowering than I could possibly describe.

17

I agree with this. To me, marriage is of little importance. It’s paperwork, and ceremony, and affects my taxes. The changes in my relationship with my wife have been, in descending order of importance:
Having a child (big BIG changes)
Moving in together (also big changes)
Each of us graduating (we could spend more time together)
Getting married (nothing changed!)

(Chronologically, it was living together, marriage, graduation, then child).

18

Then it sounds like you might be married to the wrong person–you have an odd expectation of marriage–that constant companionship is inevitable–so you didn’t try to find someone who saw that side of you as a positive good, and instead compromised on something that you perhaps shouldn’t have compromised on, not if it’s still bothering you (that, of course, depends on how much it’s bothering you, which only you know). You and your wife may be able to work through it, but I think you need to quit being so resigned to the idea that marriage means constant companionship. It doesn’t have to.

I think the reason people are being so defensive about this is that often people in unhappy marriages seem to adopt this sort of world-weary air, as if they are now in on a secret–all human relationships are crap–and anyone who thinks they are happy are simply childlike gulls who will soon learn the sad, sad truth. It’s condecending and patronizing and false, and it’s impossible to refute because you just get more “Oh, you’ll learn”. I don’t think you are really doing this here, but that there are shades of that sort of thinking when you imply that most men really would rather be single, and that they are lying or deluding themselves otherwise, as if you know more about the man I sleep next to every night than I do. I think you are right, that many marriages are self-destructive co-dependent quagmires (as are many parent/child and sibling/sibling and other relationships), and many times people have unrealistic expectations that lead to these dysfunctional relationships, but there are also many healthy, strengthening relationships.

Another question: Since you married your wife to have kids, would you’ve left her if she was barren? How would you react if you found out your daughter’s (hypothetical!) husband thought that way?

19

So, are you planning to discard your wife after the children are grown? Does your wife know that you are just using her as a baby-carrying vessel and babysitter, and that you don’t feel that marriage has anything to do with love? Is she aware of all this? If so, why do you think she stays with you? What self-respecting person would stay in a relationship like that?

20

Yes absolutely, I would feel compelled to leave. I hope my wife would do the same to me. You can obviously get kids with an infertile spouse but that wouldn’t be ideal from my perspective. Luckily, we found we can reproduce at will but that isn’t important anymore. You have your kids for life. You don’t even know if you will have your spouse tomorrow. I wouldn’t be thrilled if someone abandoned one of my daughters for that reason but it would probably be for the best for her to find someone that loves the idea of adoption or doesn’t want kids if that is what they survive.

You are one of the few people I have heard that has an even perspective on this Manda Jo. I know that I am biased but the commentary that always come from the other side is just as bad and they rarely admit it.