« April 2007 | Main | September 2007 »
I am so totally into the Artic Monkey's song "I Bet You Look Good". I discovered it months ago, and I rediscovered it today. Yay! Also, they are from Sheffield. I had a pen pal from there. I decided to look him up on MySpace and there he was! I am so not the type to invite people that I knew ten years ago to be my friend, but curiosity got the better of me, and I messaged him.
I am so glad it's Friday. Kind of. So this is what I do at work:
"...We hope that you will consider a gift to [name of organization]– your local health care provider. Your gift of $XX or more will help support our efforts in your local community. We are so excited for you to partner with us as we...
BOLDLY GO WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE! Bah---bah bah bah---bah bah bah! Bah bah---bah bah---bah bah---bah bah bah bah bah!"
oh jeez. i lost my way and ended up in the "capital chill" section of the forum. it was all so serious and before i knew it, i was posting away. never again.
my parents' pending divorce (after 30 years) has caused me to reflect on my own views on marriage. growing up in a charismatic/pentecostal household, marriage was always presented to me as a beautiful metaphor for christ's relationship with church, as well as the only appropriate situation for having sex.
outside of conservative christianity, i don't really understand why people decide to get married. to me it seems a little obsolete, frankly. i particularly don't understand why it's better to get married than to simply decide on a committed relationship with your partner.
historically, marriage seems to be mostly an economic arrangement. there are certainly still financial incentives to marry. for example, your wedding is probably the only opportunity you have to get someone else to buy you a kitchen-aid mixer.
i decided to ask my girls about this. one friend responded with something like, "well, wouldn't you want to stand in front of all your friends and family and profess your love to another person?" for her, it's all about the moment and having other people there to share it.
is the presence of god and others the reason the actual wedding is important? in a country where 50% of marriages end in divorce, why is a wedding better than showing your commitment to another person over time, soberly and without ceremony?
perhaps my real problem with this stems from my family's lack of connectedness. i haven't lived near my extended family since i was a little girl, and there have been few milestones i've actually shared with any of them. why would my love and commitment to my partner, something connected to my soul, my sexuality be something i want to share with them?
i'm not trying to be overly down on marriage. it just seems like marriage is more and more at the forefront of my girlfriends' conversations. suddenly, it's all about whether he's ready to commit, i think childbirth would be rough, but boy will it be worth it, i just can't wait...
it frightens me when i don't hear the flipside: the questioning, the soul-searching... no one's asking whether marriage is necessary, if it's right for them, how it will change their identity.
it seems like men are enculturated to be more skeptical of marriage than women. it's almost as if they're more aware of the logical consequences. they know it will completely alter their identity and lifestyle, which is probably why they are traditionally more hesitant than women to jump into it. there's a great line in pillow talk where rock hudson says, "why does any man destroy himself? because he thinks he's going to marry."
i imagine the identity questions should still be asked with regards to a long term relationship, but they really are conspicuously absent from my recent conversations about how wonderful the big day will be.
my girls' answers left me dubious and surprised at their conservatism. so i pose the question to the g-rad community: why tie the knot?