Divorce

[tdw]

Originally Posted by tdw

As far as all this is concerned my thought is not that divorce being easy is the answer, rather that it should be harder for people to get married in the first place.

Wombat Whoops.

That should read "divorce being harder" .

[sailaway21]

The reason I think that we ought to re-examine the no fault divorce laws is not to compel abusive relationships to continue, but to return a degree of seriuosness to the subject. And that get's me around to tdw's angle on things. How can we make it harder to get married? I think you do that by making it harder to get out of, giving pause before jumping in.

My personal feelings, and I do not hold them up as suitable for public policy, are that I do not much care what a couple does as long as there are no children. The dirty little secret in America is that a great number, if not most, children are being irrepairably harmed by divorce and it's consequences. Many second marriages are worse than the first-little wonder that children, especially boys (tomorrows fathers), are lonely and lost. They feel abandoned. And abandoned they are, when the law grants a divorce and then allows the custodial parent to move a half a continent away. I strongly suspect that those boys are having the sins of their father's revisited upon them in their own adulthood. I hear too much, at least too much for one from a divorced house-hold, of. "children are resilient, they adapt." Last I heard, children aren't supposed to have to be resilient or adapt-that's what parents are for.

I don't want to get into "war stories", and everyone has been good at avoiding that so far-thanks, but the best divorce decree I ever heard of was by a judge in Detroit, over twenty years ago. It went something like this: The husband and wife both wanted a divorce and neither would abandon the home, on advise of attorneys. Upstairs Dad/downstairs Mom. Two sons aged 14 and 16. The judge held that his duty was to protect the children, and since the parents were in such obvious disagreement on resolving the issues of custody and property, he held that the house was to be allocated to the children. The husband would be entitled to live their for six months, after which he would vacate for the wife's six months, until such time as they were able to reach an agreement on joint custody which better suited the children's needs, and met with his approval. A Solomonic decision in my opinion.

[Valiente]

Originally Posted by sailaway21

A Solomonic decision in my opinion.

Good story. I notice no one's commented on my ventured opinion about whether monogamy is a model worth emulating at all...but I will certainly agree that whatever form of marriage you contract, any children that result from it should be protected from the drama and the material fallout of marriage breakdown as much as possible.

Unlike the adults, they didn't voluntarily join the procedure and can't easily leave.

[PBzeer]

Personally, I have no problem with monogamy, nor see it as a bad model. Otherwise, why bother getting married in the first place? Marriage is supposed to be a commitment, not a temporary arrangement. Changes in attitudes, and laws though, have increased the view of the latter, while trying to position the former as somehow "old fashioned" and irrelevant to our modern and sophisticated society. Sophistication though, seems more apt as a euphemism for "please yourself".

[sailaway21]

Valiente,
I read your post and was saddened by it. By my reckoning, I am the luckiest man alive. It took me over thirty years to find my wife and, somehow, ended up with the perfect mate for me. I can only thank the Higher Power that brought her to me, because I kissed alot of frogs on the way. every day that I have with her fulfills my life in ways I cannot begin to imagine or list. I know I could live without her, but I sure would not ever want to do so. The only negative about her is that I think she's not so bright. She wonders how i put up with her, and so I have to thank my lucky stars silently each morning I wake up with her! I don't know where I'd find another like her, a fact I choose to not fill her in on lest she figure out how much I rely on her for the joy in my life. Monogamous? No problem. Everything else out there is what women look like before they become what they should really be; an emulation of my wife. I'm staying with the real deal.

[Valiente]

Originally Posted by sailaway21

Valiente,
I read your post and was saddened by it. By my reckoning, I am the luckiest man alive. It took me over thirty years to find my wife and, somehow, ended up with the perfect mate for me. I can only thank the Higher Power that brought her to me, because I kissed alot of frogs on the way. every day that I have with her fulfills my life in ways I cannot begin to imagine or list. I know I could live without her, but I sure would not ever want to do so. The only negative about her is that I think she's not so bright. She wonders how i put up with her, and so I have to thank my lucky stars silently each morning I wake up with her! I don't know where I'd find another like her, a fact I choose to not fill her in on lest she figure out how much I rely on her for the joy in my life. Monogamous? No problem. Everything else out there is what women look like before they become what they should really be; an emulation of my wife. I'm staying with the real deal.

Quite a tribute, and I think you are lucky that you have...and more importantly, want and value...this particular form of connection. Some others can't do it, some don't want it, and some shouldn't try in the first place. We can talk a great deal about how easy it is to divorce, and how today's couples lack commitment or a desire to "stick to it" as if marriage was some sort of Amazing Race, but if you speak, as I have, to a lot of older people, you'll find a great deal of bitterness in some cases that they felt pressured to stay married at a time when divorce carried a huge social stigma.

You will also meet people who had excellent and enduring marriages, too. But I wouldn't put the romantic notion of marriage that's developed in the last 150 years as an ideal or as some sort of societal goal. I would advocate it as a worthy option.

I come from a country where same-sex marriage is now legal, and my question to the (usually) religious types who oppose it is 1) surely they have the same right to be hypocrites as the straights? and 2) if marriage is a desirable state, then the more the merrier, right? It helps the tax base and uncomplicates pension and inheritance laws, and makes for an economically stronger family unit...isn't that good for the country?

As you can see, I take the somewhat utilitarian long view of marriage, which after all has historically had "love" as only a lesser byproduct not entirely necessary to its success. Having that view, I don't mind alternative forms of familial commitment (that don't involve kids and/or farm animals) that "paraphrase" marriage...and that make people as happy as sailing, for instance.

And I love my wife, and no, I don't want another. I'm already trying to sell an old boat...

[sailaway21]

I have never found the utilitarian view to be of help in my marriage, and I am not holding up my marriage, and especially me, as any sort of ideal in marriage. Basically, I feel if you're keeping score you're mistaking marriage for a baseball game. Love is that thing that keeps you together when you really think that killing each other would be nice. Like when she guts your new house's kitchen to the level of a racket-ball court. (see my litany of woe in the Boat Bucks thread) A few days later, perspective returns, the kitchen needed remodeling anyway, and you start to consider how you can market her in the "best pound for pound" demolisher in North America so you can make some money to re-do the kitchen.

Gay marriage is an oxymoron.

[Valiente]

Originally Posted by sailaway21

Gay marriage is an oxymoron.

And love needs no marriage. I know people together now for 30 years "without benefit of clergy" who have far truer "marriages" (and very decent, now adult, "bastards") than my multitude of "cheating, divorcing or just indifferent to their mates' needs" other acquaintances.

The external label doesn't matter. How one behaves matters. All the confetti and cake on the planet does not a marriage make: time and respect do that, something of which homosexuals of my acquaintance are fully capable, although most aren't rushing for the altar

[PBzeer]

Something I've always found somewhat ironic, is that the same people who are passionate about "gay rights", also have a firm belief in evolution.

While I have no problem with homosexuals on an individual basis, I do have a problem with their insistince that I accept it as natural behavior. And, at this point in time, at least in the US, that is the underlying rationale behind the push for gay marriage. As well as the push for things such as gay adoption.

So, to insert gay marriage, as being pertinent to the topic, is not really the case. Whilst you do make some good points, vis-a-vis, the unsuitablity of some people to partake of marriage, those who do decide to participate in it, assume a certain responsibility for doing so. Which is what I see the thread being about, in the main.

For any society to prosper and grow, it must have certain norms of behavior. To dispense with them, on a selective basis, for one's own personal convienence, is the first step to dissolution. Monogamy is a conscious choice that one makes, which is one of the things which raises us above the level of our base instincts.

[tdw]

Ah me. These old debates just go on and on. Ignoring the supposed (im)morality of the situation it is beyond reason that any two people in a long term relationship should have less legal rights than any other two people. I'll leave the moralilty aspect up to others cos I don't give a flying platypus as to the sex of those two people.
As to the issue of homosexuality itself the reality is that homosexuality is quite common in animal species throughout this planet of ours so why should we be any different ? It is no business of anyone elses as to who I or anyone else chooses to poke.
We don't have a lot of gay friends but I for one refuse point blank to condemn them in any way when I don't really think they are doing anything all that dastardly.
The debate is a silly one.
Monogamy on the other hand is slightly more difficult to come to terms with. Again I don't give a damn from a moral point of view but it seems to me that the green eyed jealousy monster makes polygamy unworkable unless the dominant (read male I presume) partner rules with an iron fist.