The future of marriage

I keep telling you that, yeah, she probably had a reason, which she has chosen to keep secret from me and hence, for me, I went through it for no reason.What part of that do you not understand? For her there probably was a reason, but for me there was no reason.Just accept it and move back to the thread topic. "or at least considered". Hello? How's about reading what I write? Did I say "legally forced into counselling"? It needs to at least be considered.Chiro latched onto the word "whim" and everybody is blowing it way out of proportion. Get over it! And get back on topic. That would be one attempt to get at the root causes. I'm sure that somebody would also suggest having to take out a learner's permit, though others would protest that. And pre-marriage counselling would be a good idea -- oops, you're opposed to that, aren't you.

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If such a law had been in effect, then at the very least my ex would have had to have given me the reason.

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And then, maybe not. Maybe your ex-wife could not and cannot quite articulate in exact words why she no longer wanted to remain married to you, she only recognized that she was no longer happy in the marriage. People are like that sometimes. That is just the way people are. Feelings, almost by their nature, are not rational and can't always be logically justified.If she honestly couldn't quite explain the reasons, would you have been satisfied to force her to remain in the marriage despite that she obviously didn't want to? Would you have been more satisfied to have been forced to go through a much more complicated and expensive divorce procedure if the end result was that you were still divorce and still had no real clue as to why?

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But government...is not simply the way we express ourselves collectively but also often the only way we preserve our freedom from private power and its incursions. -- Bill Moyers (quoting John Schwarz)

Good point, Chirop. She also could have made something up and he still wouldn't really know and it still would essentially have been "for no reason."I suspect that lying would happen alot if people who cannot otherwise articulate their reasons are forced to say something in order to get a divorce and that could, in turn, cause alot more pain to the person who is being falsely accused of whatever it is the other person had to make up.Although, not knowing does tend to drive one mad. Dwise - did you ever get resolution from her after the fact? Have you asked?

That word irritates me. It sounds grammatically incorrect to me. Kind of like "conversate" when one could just say, "converse." Any way, enough about that. Right, this would be a reasonable assumption. I mean, honestly, who would want to compile statistics on how many women just so happen to live away from their spouses? No one would be interested in that. The implicit nature is that divorce, separation, or that women in general are no longer interested in marriage. The body of the article makes it clear that his premise leans towards what he calls, "an unmistakable larger trend." He even says that women living away from their spouses, due to incarceration or the military, or whatever, is an extremely low figure. So what more could you deduce? No, not the "abolition" of marriage, either the abandoning of it or the degradation of the sacredness of it. Big difference, IMO. And that's what I've been saying, while everyone else is saying, "No, its just conducting a survey about how women just so happen to not live in the domicile as their spouse." Your are correct in your assertion. Though I don't think I "chose" to believe it that way. That's the way it is portrayed in the article, as well as mainstream society as we are polarizing our views on marriage in general with all of its no-fault divorces, constant clauses and loop holes, the general fascination of adultery that pervades television, the expressed hope of homosexual parity, etc, etc. I don't think I'm taking a leap of faith here. Its more than evident. The problem, I believe, is that we've just grown desensitized to such things, and it all seems so routine. But peoples core beliefs can't be changed overnight. It takes years of erosion to come where we are. I mean, look at the difference from the sitcoms of the 80's from those of the 90's and today. There is an ever-growing fascination from watching people's whose love life is in constant turmoil. What is so fascinating about that? Why does that tend to imbue the average American now or days? I think the choosing of the title was thought out very carefully by the author for this very reason. The way he arrived at his numbers is very manipulative. And he knows that everyone is going to assume that it is speaking about that "larger trend." I mean, it would be silly to conduct a survey on how many women live away from their spouses without arising the curiosity of why that is. And also, why not conduct a story on how many "spouses" live away from one another if it was about that? Why the focus on women in general? And why "add" unemancipated minors, who can't legally marry, in that equation if it was not for the reasons I've mentioned? Think about it for a moment. Its a thinly veined disguise. There is something much larger at the heart of the motivation for the article. Then you can't include "girls" as women. In most states, the legal age of marrying is 18, but there are some that allow it at 16, which should be considered in order to make an accurate accounting. Every women quoted in the survey was geared, specifically, as having been married and grew disenchanted with the whole thing. And that is their right never to marry again or to speak about how that particular marriage was a bad one. However, that only makes the point that this is what the article was hoped to uncover-- a growing trend that marriage is being viewed in less and less important terms. That seems quite obvious to me. Apparently I'm not alone in this assessment."If anyone doubts that this laughable analysis stems from a heavy-handed anti-marriage agenda, consider these quotes that Roberts features in his story, after declaring that today’s women are “sometimes delighting in their newfound freedom”: “Sheila Jamison, who also lives in the East Village and works for a media company, is 45 and single . ”Considering all the weddings I attended in the ”80’s that have ended so very, very badly, I consider myself straight up lucky,’ Ms. Jamison said. ”I have not sworn off marriage, but if I do wed, it will be to have a companion with whom I can travel and play parlor games in my old age.’ .

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“Similarly, Shelly Fidler, 59, a public policy adviser at a law firm, has sworn off marriage. She moved from rural Virginia to the vibrant Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C., when her 30-year marriage ended.

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“’The benefits were completely unforeseen for me,’ Ms. Fidler said, ”the free time, the amount of time I get to spend with friends, the time I have alone, which I value tremendously, the flexibility in terms of work, travel and cultural events.’ .

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“Elissa B. Terris, 59, of Marietta, Ga., divorced in 2005 after being married for 34 years and raising a daughter, who is now an adult.

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“’A gentleman asked me to marry him and I said no,’ she recalled. ”I told him, ”I’m just beginning to fly again. I’m just beginning to be me. Don’t take that away.’

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“’Marriage kind of aged me because there weren’t options,’ Ms. Terris said. ”There was only one way to go. Now I have choices. One night I slept on the other side of the bed, and I thought, I like this side.’”
Ah, the indescribable joys of slumbering on either side of an empty big, bed! Such profound pleasures and blissful rewards obviously make up for fleeting inconvenience of growing old alone.

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By featuring profile after profile of his joyously unattached females, Sam Roberts doesn’t just report on the purportedly husband-free majority; he celebrates it.

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He did the same thing with a similarly misleading and propagandistic article on October 15, 2006, which appeared under the headline: “It’s Official: To Be Married Means to Be Outnumbered.”

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This “report” began with the claim: “Married couples, whose numbers have been declining for decades as a proportion of American households, have finally slipped into a minority, according to an analysis of new census figures by the New York Times.”

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As with his “disappearing husbands” scoop of three months later, Roberts relied on twisting and squeezing numbers to reach his “marriage is dead” conclusion.

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Among the “unmarried” households he featured as part of his “new majority,” more than half involved individuals living alone”many of them widows, by the way. In any event, far more people lived within “married households” than outside of such arrangements - despite his insipid and wretchedly misleading claim that “married couples” have “slipped to a minority.” -Michael Medved

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"A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell." -C.S. Lewis

It seems that you're the only one who reads it that way. The object here is not to deduce "more" - it's to understand what the article says. I asked you before and I don't think you answered: How would extending marriage to more people "degrade the sacredness of it"?

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To me the funniest thing is that fundies are losing a "war" with nobody else fighting on the other side.Fewer women are living with spouses because that's the way they want to live, for the most part. They aren't fighting for any cultural revolution, it's just happening. You can't keep a society static any more than you can confine a river to its bed.The times they are a changing, and there ain't nuttin' you can do about it. To quote from Inherit the Wind; "All motion is relative.... Perhaps it's you who's moved away by standing still."

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin FranklinWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

What word? Funnily? I could have said "Oddly" or "Strangely" (both of which are synonyms) but I wished to convey a humorous note to my disagreement. It may seem "gramatically incorrect" to you, but it is definitely a word and was used in a gramatically correct context. Unlike "conversate." I don't know who you know that uses "conversate," but I do not feel that it is on the same level...at least not yet. It appears only in the "Urban Dictionary," but that may very well be a sign of things to come. Languages change all the time. Yea, except that is not what I suggested would be the motivation for the study. You took your above biases away from this study. The quote you imparted to me told you what I thought of immediately without even reading the article.PS - have you ever read studies about how many people own cats? Dogs? Flat screen Tvs? More than one refigerator?How many people have more than 2.5 kids? How many people own or rent their homes? How many people are in debt over $10,000?Do you think I really care? Do you?You just impart some ulterior motive on the part of the NYTimes for their info and then shout "WHO CARES?" to give it more meaning.But, seriously, who really wants to know statistics?Besides you implied, erroneously, that the study only " compile[d] statistics on how many women just so happen to live away from their spouses?" when the study did everything but. The article even told the reader that the statistics showed only a small percentage of women answered based on the temporary absence of their spouses.Why are you misconstruing the intent of the article? That women who are choosing not to marry or re-marry or marrying later in life or spending more time between marriages, should they divorce. It is an "unmistakable trend" of women spending more of their lives outside of marriage...not that they are abandoning marriage... I wish you would actually quote whole sentences of mine, but...The "sacredness" of marriage is a construct of religion. The "civil" purpose of marriage is to bind people into a contract in order to provide financial protection for their spouse and/or their children. That is all it has ever been.People have "married" off infants to middle aged men or to each other in order to cement or create bonds for politics.Of course, people (usually the common folk) have married for true love (including an ancestor of mine who abdicated his line for the throne and married a "common" girl only to become destitute after his ship met an iceberg). However, marriage has usually been a brokerage between two fathers (ie "I'll give you my daughter with a dowry of two goats and twelve bolts of silk and her sons will be heirs to something or another). That is the "traditional" definition of marriage." Would you like to go back to that? Actually, none of us or even the NYTimes have said or implied that the analysis of US Census data said "No, its just conducting a survey about how women just so happen to not live in the domicile as their spouse."In fact the article and all of the respondents have made it clear that this is not what the article or the data was about.The fact that a small number of women replied that they were living apart from their legal spouse was made quite clear in the article. The sitcoms of the 50's showed perfect families living mostly perfect lives. My grandmother tells me that she cried every night because her family was not the way it was "supposed to be." They fought. They had kids who didn't just say "OK you're right, Dad" just because it was portrayed on TV as "Father Knows Best." No matter how hard they tried to be picture perfect (even with GOD!!!) they couldn't get it right.Sitcoms of the 80's also showed families with problems solved within a 30 minute time limit. So did the 90's sitcoms. The ones who actually showed problems evolving beyond the format were cancelled (maybe because they were real??).So, we've moved from preachy sitcoms which show what we cannot do to realitty shows which show which we wish we could do but cannot.It is still the same. People living out the lives we wish we lived. Of course there is a curiousity as to "why that is?"This stems from that fact that most women have not lived independently throughout history.WHY??? Why are women living their own lives?? Why are women "deciding" that they can have a career or have kids and a career, or marry a man and still be independent??? Why is this having an affect on marriage stats?I mean, what kind of horseshit is this??PS - NJ...The focus on "women in general" was because they took the stats from the Census. And the "addition" of unemancipated minors was due to the fact that the US Census lumps 15-24 year olds in one group (and 15 year olds can legally marry in many states with parental consent). Yes, but the research was done on the US Census which counts 15-24 year olds in the same group.It was not done arbitrarily. I will not argue with the fact that the women interviewed portrayed themselves as happy and unconstrained, but if the NYTimes quoted some women as "miserable" or "my life is not complete without a man" or "I wish mariage was more secure" or "I wish those damn homosexuals weren't trying to define their marriage the same as I am or else I would marry that guy who proposed to me," would you be more satisfied (I even gave you 4 options!!!)?There are two sides to every story. Maybe the NYT could have covered the "other side," but this piece was not about them. It was about the growing number of women who are opting out of marriage or divorcing more often or choosing not to remarry. The "unmistakable trend" is there. The article only addressed it.

Once I got scolded by AdminSchraf on this thread for wasting space on the bandwidth. But wait, hold onto your johnson,* crashfrog wrote this with impunity: I thought this thread was about “the future of marriage.” Just what ARE the standards here for the acceptability of posting? Do I have to be in favor of “gay marriage” to get away with drivel like this?”Hoot Mon*Resident pud-pounder DC gets the nod for this one.

Gasp.The shock.The horror.Up is down, night is day, black is white, and nothing makes any sense anymore. Stealing jokes is still lame, Ralph. Grow your own funny.In the meantime, long as you're posting on a gay marriage thread, why don't you go ahead and answer thatquestion you left dangling in the last one.What is the legal reason for preventing homosexuals from marrying, that works around the fact that all citizens must be treated equally, but is somehow, miraculously, not bigoted?

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"I know some of you are going to say 'I did look it up, and that's not true.' That's 'cause you looked it up in a book. Next time, look it up in your gut."
-Stephen Colbert

I would like to refer you to this explanation of the forum rule by Admin.

All right, Pud, I'm going to try to stay on the topic "the future of marriage" to give you a straight answer.I AM CONCERNED ABOUT THE FUTURE OF MARRIAGE. The family unit in America is dying from the onslaught of modernity, as many tend to see it today. Too many children today leave their homes to go to school with nothing to raise them but peer pressure. Look at them on the streets with their gangsta-rap attitudes and their pants dragging on the pavement. What kind of parents would allow that? Well, the answser is the kind of parents who don't give a shit about what their kids wear or what they do at school, because they are not around to bother with it. The core of the problem is THE FAMILY AND THE FUTURE OF MARRIAGE. We need to protect this with all our might. It's a bigger problem than the threat from terrorism. Indeed it IS terrorism. But who wants to deal with that? There's no money in it. But, believe me, there IS money in it for the criminals.Case in point: Today this appeared in my local newspaper: Bremerton High Raid Nets Guns, Drugs and 17 Arrests. Our local high school is now called "The Pharmacy" by its students. Jesus! Where are the parents? Where are those chocolate-chip-cookie moms? Where are the scout-leader dads? Where are the round-table discussions at dinner about what you learned in school today? Ha! I know where they are. Mostly somewhere in Ozzie Nelson Land in a darkening past called "the family."We need to do everything possible now to stop the erosion of the family. We need to become mighty creative about how we preserve this institution. Here's an idea that strikes me as both plausible and potentially effective for resuscitating what I believe is now, in too many places, almost dead:1. Establish "marriage" as an institution of "the family," strictly dedicated to raising children in a way that is understood to be healthy for them, and also for society at large.2. Establish firm criteria for what constitutes "a family," and specify that its primary function is to raise children "properly," as defined by law.3. Establish a rule that the affected children can be either born or adopted into the family, disregarding the sexual orientation of the "parents."4. Define "parents" as any two individuals who show positive attributes and sincere attitudes for raising children according to items 1, 2, 3.5. Give these people licences to marry, with a strickly enforcible provision that they must comply with the rules of the "family-oriented marriage," as it is carefully framed in legislation.6. Everyone else, disregarding their sexual orientation, are NOT qualified for "marriage," per say, and must instead be joined together by another social contract called the "civil union."I'm almost ready to go along with gay marriage if it could usefully preserve the family unit and save these children from the deadly grasp of peer-pressure upbringing. But we would have to destroy the traditionally embedded meaning of "marriage"”between a man and a woman”to go this next brave step in our social evolution. I find it uncomfortable to say this, but something as drastic must be done now for our children.”Hoot Mon

Don't forget that we must also shackle them together so that they don't physically separate, since it's necessary for them to stay together for the parents to raise the kids. We'll also need to have monitors in the home daily, perhaps constantly, to see that they are actually doing the things that need to be done to raise children properly.I'm so glad that we have people who know so much about how I should raise my kid that can set me straight.{ABE} Oh, I almost forgot. To make sure that unlicensed people aren't having kids out of wedlock, we'll have to forcibly administer contraception to all unlicensed people. I understand there is now or soon to be available a pill for men. This will greatly aid this process. Until it is actually avialable, though, we'll probably need to have government monitors present during sex to make sure the men use condoms.Of course, contraception sometimes fails, so we'll either have to ban sex between unlicensed people, or just take the kids born to unlicensed couples and place them in officially state sactioned homes.Edited by subbie, : No reason given.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin FranklinWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

thank your for 1984.damn all if I'm gonna let the state dictate my behavior to that degree.

Yeah, it's probably a bad idea. I'll keep working on it. Meanwhile, I'm going to get a permit to carry around my .357 when I'm out and about my neighborhood where the kids are tripping off to The Pharmacy with somebody elses money to buy their daily doses of ecstasy.”Hoot Mon

Y'know what's funny? Back in the sixties, it was tight pants and long hair. Only most of the mothers were around to take care of the kids - because it was hard for women to get decent jobs. And most families did have two parents - because it was hard to get a divorce.Y'know what else is funny? It's the same tight-pants kids from the sixties who are complaining about the gangsta-pants kids today.An old guy like you should know that there is nothing new under the sun. The world has always been going to hell in a handbasket and it always will be. The family unit has always been disintegrating and it always will be.Don't waste your energy on CONCERN ABOUT THE FUTURE OF MARRIAGE.

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