A friend of mine once told me: Find a woman you hate, and give her half of everything you own, and then move on to the next stage of life... It was a lawyers cliche, the wisdom of the self appointed savvy white man, but the greater cliche is that the guy who told me this once is now married with I believe two children.
For him it was a kind of cost/benefit analysis, another part of his endless 'practical' wisdom... putting up with what it takes to have a modern American family was better than being alone. There was no discussion of a middle ground.. to him, you have to indulge her fantasy to get your better reality, maybe your fantasy of sorts.. it's kind of a math equation based in a weird resignation to Karma, finding things "rewarding" as a way to pass the time, and some notion of "how things work" that isn't purely existential. It's like doing easy time... working in the kitchen so you can smuggle food to your cell.. it's not the same as breaking out of Jail. It involves a lot more resignation..
I will go on to say I have never seen a marriage I wanted.. I have seen a lot of women I wanted, even women in marriages with other men, and women maybe I thought I could make happier than the marriage they were in, more honest, I know now marriages are not about honesty, they are a narcissistic fantasy, survival, and unconcious oedipal drives, loaded with denial, and somehow destined to go wrong eventually, with a snap.. the people I meet with happy marriages at present have an endless capacity to ignore the lack of emotional growth occurring to those around them in order to satisfy their primal needs, most notibly procreation. The most annoying married couples are together because they want their kid to look like someone they were sexually attracted to, and that person can afford to lvie the lifestyle they want after the kid pops out. The funny thing is that the more dedicated to procreation they are, the more blind they are to the animalism of it.. the less aware they are of their own emotional needs, or the ignored emotional needs occurring with their spouse, higher and lower,.. it's a shared denial based in biology, ethos takes a back seat, and they act like it's anything but primal, it's a divine charge, the right thing to do, a gift to the world, a religeous obligation ( I don't remember Jesus having kids.. in fact.. I think he treated things like that as a bit absurd, but most people don't read the whole book.. ).
There is a difference between lust and love.. and the more people confuse the two, the better their marriage tends to technically be... wanting someone to grow, to transcend and free themselves from suffering, or to self actualize.. those things don't tend to go with successful child rearing, which is the point of those contracts.. those other lofty goals are the dreams of recovery boy/girl-friends, the single dreamers and idealists, and also-rans..
There was a time before marriage.. who knows when.. we started to settle down about 8000 years ago.. a friend of mine cited beer as the reason.. we wanted to raise wheat to make beer, so we fuckin gave up and stayed in the same place.. maybe the edge of the black sea before it flooded in, or the rift valley, or Ur, who knows, but we stopped in one place, and there certainly was sex and jealousy before then, maybe even monogamy for extended periods, but there sure as hell wasn't anything like a legally binding contract.. that came from people who weren't bold enough to vote with their feet, so they decided to keep things working to their liking by telling others how to live, and it became enshrined as a virture with all the garnishes..
Here in America, if you get past the Disney fantasy side of it all, the validated princess, who is in such a narcissistic fervor on her wedding day I wonder at half the weddings I go to if the bride will even remember the grooms name at the Altar.. there is the whole legal side.. 50 states and a few territories who all independently decide, in one or two lgislative chambers packed with not necessarily the most questioning white men, and an office with a big cheese and maybe a few courtrooms, what shall constitute this weird pact between consenting persons who have made enough trips around the sun to sign this contract. It involves basically a bunch of rules you have to choose to enforce in most states, which are arbitrary areas drawn on a map for the most part, and more often than not where there is one of these units, a 'state', there was 'Fault' divorce.. a kind of sanctimonious notion that means that one person can be blamed and held financially liable, or worse yet, access to their kids held as a kind of tool of judgement and behavior modification method, if they don't live up to a societally enshrined notion of what makes that 'union' perfect.. however, it's self enforced, so there are get out of jail cards.. one or both have to pull the emergency break.. if you are swingers, well hell then, if you still want to go home together at the end of the party, no reason to get rid of the tax break, not that they are necessarily wanting to think of it that way, and if they are, it makes it all the more twisted and abnormally arbitrary... although now, there isn't fault divorce anymore.. the last state voted for no fault 3 years ago, New York, but the whole crazy notion lives on in our hearts, and in the perceptions of just about every 'ordely' society, and by orderly, I mean organized around the demands of successful reproduction, because who the hell but a lawyer knew that until I told you...
I guess I figure if you truly love someone, you will choose them every time.. our brains developed to live in societies of 50 to 150 people, that's about as many names and life histories as we can remember, so back in the day walking away from a spouse usually didn't mean you wouldn't see them again... it's a fantasy to want to be with the same person 'For Ever'. We have the capacity to distinguish between fantasy and reality, especially the more we separate our logic from our emotions... there is also something nice about reality once it catches up to us and we get past it's worst challenges... the less we have separated the two, the more we fall for these confusing binary notions of good and bad, where morality is paired with creating people who can bring in the harvest and follow orders properly...
Count me out... although I can't deny it seems better than nothing.. does it have to come with all the fucked up baggage.. people who aren't narcissistic, who know what truly caring for the person and not the body or the job or the reputation, usually come with enough baggage and miles on their own.. but those are the interesting ones I guess.. the funny thing is.. those ones, the ones who are above it all.. they are the ones I want to marry...
Catch 22..
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