All I'm going to say on it...

[lithera]

I believe marriage should be a beautiful thing that lasts between until you both die.

It should be an ideal.

It seems to have become a formality. Something you do to change your legal status and the way you are taxed. It feels to me that it had become another victim of the throw away culture that seems to be fostered in America right now, one where if it doesn't work, you just get a new one, not taking responsiblity for your actions or feeling any need to try to fix something before just getting rid of it.

Talking about the sanctity of marriage in a culture which has shows like "Who Wants to Marry a Millionare" is absurd. It is obvious that any respect we had for the institution is already gone when we can put something so disrespectful on TV and have millions of Americans watch it.

I do not believe that marriage is for everyone nor to I think it should be. It is something you should decide with your partner and enter into with your eyes wide open, regardless of race, gender, religion or anything else like that. I have been to more than one wedding that could not be legally recognized and am proud to have done so.

Comments

[thezzyzx.livejournal.com]

"It feels to me that it had become another victim of the throw away culture that seems to be fostered in America right now, one where if it doesn't work, you just get a new one, not taking responsiblity for your actions or feeling any need to try to fix something before just getting rid of it"

I go back and forth on this. On one hand, my father had three divorces; clearly people have issues about taking marriages seriously. On the other hand, a lot of those long lasting marriages were with people who were just miserable for decades. Is it worth the chance that they'd fall back in love again to force people to be miserable? Like I said, I'm of two minds.

[lithera.livejournal.com]

I understand where you are coming from. I too have problems with it. I am just sick of people not being able to make a commitment and sticking with it. Marriage is one of those things that I am pretty srue I would have to think on it for a long, long, long time before I did it. It isn't an impulse decision. It isn't something you just jump into blindly.

I am just tired of people shrugging off responsibilities and commitments because they aren't convenient. It makes me very angry.

I don't want people to be miserable but I have seen too many cases of there being a little difficulty and people deciding to give up on it. What happened to trying to work things out?

[thezzyzx.livejournal.com]

Well the problem is that the person you marry isn't always the same person that you're with 20 years down the road. When you've both changed to the point where all you do is fight, is it really a good thing?

On the other hand, people do seem to quit long before they should per se.

A lot of my anti-marriage bias comes from living in Las Cruces. I saw the downside of the 1950s culture first hand. People got married because they believed that they shouldn't have sex outside of marriage and they sure were horny. Then they couldn't get divorced either because that's wrong too. It's the ol' Paradise by the Dashboard Lights syndrome.

As long as people are allowed to marry before they turn 25 or so, they should definitely have a safety valve to protect them if they made an incredibly stupid mistake in their youth.

[lithera.livejournal.com]

There are certainly cases where I think that divorce is a good idea. There are people who should not be together. There are people who got married for the wrong reasons. I know that not all of these can have been avoided by waiting before getting married but some of them can be.

Marriage should be an important and sacred thing. It should take a lot of time for you to decide to enter it and it should not be entered lightly or on a whim. It if is going to be something culturally valued than we should treat it as if it has some.

[thezzyzx.livejournal.com]

Now on that we agree. Perhaps the ideal would be to have the current morality about living together pre-marriage but making it closer to how it was to get a divorce. I'd like to think that that would make people only get married if they were serious, but I know that there would still be the same pressure put on people ("If you REALLY loved me..." "We've been together for X years, it's time to do something about it") and people would still get married for the wrong reasons.

Dangerous topic

[eggiebert.livejournal.com]

I do not think it ought to be an ideal. To me that implies that you're satisfied all the time, and no relationship marriage or otherwise would hold any interest if the were without change, conflict and resolution. And anything worth doing is worth doing without perfection. Imagine if Michelangelo's David were thrown out because he realized he made him out of proportion. He's beautiful and irregular at once.

And how about romance? How about the concept that idealizing your partner will make all the things that don't mesh with you wither away, because you don't acknowledge them! What a ridiculous proposition! It is a huge part of our cultural identity when it comes to marriage and love. It's easier to have situation tailored to you rather than on the interaction you have with your partner. It's that stereotype that makes people think they will find something worth hanging onto on a show like "Marry a Millionaire"

I agree about it being a symptom of throwaway culture though. People are more than willing to disagree with their partner without being committed enough to come to a resolution on any issue. We also lack refinement when it comes to prioritizing. In your life, it's very unlikely to find a partner who supplies 90% of the things that are important to you [and if you do, the other 10% may just drive you into madness!]. So you have to pick the top ten or so things that you cannot tolerate conflict on, and trying to find somebody who values those same ten or so things, wooo, major pain in the ass.

Marriage is absolutely not for everyone. Especially people who aren't committed to their values, or whose values are in constant flux. It's possible to be committed to somebody under those circumstances, but on a different timeline than mainstream America. Commitment in general is what I find to be lacking in our culture.

I told you it was dangerous

Re: Dangerous topic

[lithera.livejournal.com]

I think the institution of marriage should be an ideal, not nessicarily that any one specific marriage should be ideal, if that makes sense. All of the specific marriages are works in progress, or at least should be, towards that ideal. Nothing is ever perfecr nor, in many cases, should it be.

[lyssachan.livejournal.com]

I don't necessarily believe in marriage - I know I don't personally plan to ever get married myself. mostly, though, I just believe that if people want to get married, they should be able to regardless of gender or anything like that. Not that it should really matter, I mean it's just a formality, but the idea that not everyone has that right is what annoys me, really. I don't really know, I'm just rambling and tired.

[ysabel.livejournal.com]