SOURCE - https://brightwanderer.tumblr.com/post/681806049845608448
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I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.
Like… if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you’re a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.
The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.
| just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success… I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.
Agree with most of these I guess, but marriage specifically is the one thing that’s intended to be forever. Til death do us part and all that jazz.
There’s nothing wrong with forever, but it shouldn’t be some sort of “standard” we hold everything to.
My wife just moved out after 30 years of marriage, and it sure feels like a failure to me. Maybe some people get to the point where it’s not working, and they aren’t invested in the marriage so much that walking away is painful. I think most people would say they shouldn’t have been married if they weren’t that invested in making it work though.
A lot of people have suggested that we should have marriage contracts that have a renewable time limit. Like, “Hey, let’s get married for ten years and see how that goes.” I could see that being a good thing, but I also think it’s fundamentally a different mindset than the traditional expectation of forever.
I’m sorry to hear about your circumstances.
Me and most of my friend/family group have married in the last few years and I don’t know if anyone would have bothered if there wasn’t a promise of forever. There’s often the desire for a home and kids and it’s (in my opinion) hard to do that if you don’t have a commitment from your partner. I don’t want to raise kids alone or have to do custody arrangements if I can avoid it.
If housing and child rearing were more communal it would maybe be different but I think the commitment is kind of the point.
If you’d be willing to share your experience please feel free to. I didn’t have the experience of married parents or even watching them interact/divorce so I’m always on edge regarding the kind of issues I’m possibly missing in my own relationship.
The “death do us part” thing is a tradition, but marriage is a legal status. Not everyone is going to follow that tradition, and surely you wouldn’t argue this ought to bar them from the legal status
I think it definitely applies to relationships. It does you and any of your partners a disservice to say your relationship was only a success if one of you died.
A person isn’t a thing you possess. They have needs that grow and change with them. If those needs ever stop being compatible with the relationship, then the relationship should end. That’s not failure. It’s wanting the person you love to be happy.
Then I guess you, like me, dislike the concept of marriage. Because the whole point is forever. The forever part is not even what I hold against it though. Some people can and want to be together forever. Feeling forced to be by culture is a bad thing though.
Marriage is not just another relationship. It’s literally defined by people deciding, and vowing to stay together forever.
But realistically, we all know you can get divorced. While we might hope it’ll be forever, we also know we’re still not gonna stick around if things get too bad (nor should we). Nobody has the shocked pikachu face when marriage isn’t forever after all. No matter what the vows say, in practice we pretty well accept that it’s a big commitment, but not a permanent one.
How about this: things are allowed to fail and that’s OK.
If you marry someone with the intent of staying together for the rest of your lives but you don’t, the marriage failed. It doesn’t have to define you.
Wasn’t there a study about that Man instinctively looks for other partners after while, this being the natural behavior?
Given that, christianity sets unrealistic expectations.
99% percent of the times a study calls some ‘natural behaviors’ on humans, it’s just propaganda looking for legitimacy.
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Don’t know the study but any anthropologist can tell that’s a generalization on a certain time, place, and society. It’s (mostly) true, only under certain conditions.
Now did they study any other gender? Perhaps by Man they refer to all humans??
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Please, mother, stop slutshaming yourself…