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From: tracy@hcrvx1.UUCP (Tracy Tims)
Newsgroups: net.singles,net.social
Subject: Re: Living in sin?  Why marriages fail.
Message-ID: <1099@hcrvx1.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 29-Jan-85 10:59:22 EST
Article-I.D.: hcrvx1.1099
Posted: Tue Jan 29 10:59:22 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 30-Jan-85 01:46:51 EST
References: <198@tekred.UUCP> <1091@houxm.UUCP>
Organization: Human Computing Resources, Toronto
Lines: 55

Back a few decades ago, a sidereal observer could predict how most men
and women would grow up.  You'd basically know how they would think
about success, money, religion, raising their kids and their careers.
Sure, there were exceptions, but on the whole society was more
homogenous with respect to playing sex roles.

Now, though, it is possible for an individual to find peers that will
support almost any belief or behaviour.  There is an unprecedented
opportunity to choose a dissenting lifestyle, and not become a pariah
as a result.  People are allowed (even encouraged) to keep growing and
changing, to discover their true "nature" rather than attempting to
reiterate the norm.

Marriage back then was a simpler matter.  A woman and a man would have
a pretty clear understanding of what the relationship should be like
(what all marriages should be like) and what each other would be like.
Few people seriously questioned the idealized structure of marriage.
They would be able to predict over a long period of time the character
and behaviour of their mate, and be able to depend on it.

Many couples that I know of getting married now are getting married for
reasons which may have worked in the 1950's, but won't work in the
1980's.  Most of the people involved are still growing, and still have
the capability for change, both in attitudes and behaviour.  At the age
of thirty, many people are only getting an inkling of what behaviours
they are really comfortable with.  Most of the marriages of my friends
have failed because one or both of the people involved suddenly
realized that they or their partner were simply not the person that had
gotten married, and that the "problem" (if you will) that the marriage
was to solve was in fact not a problem at all.

Is it important to stay committed in all circumstances?  I think not.
Better divorce than resentment for life.  These are people who would
always regret not taking their own direction in later years, if they
stuck by the marriage.  It is possible to talk about "making the marriage
work" as long as the problems are ones of adjustment.  If the problem
is a fundamental misunderstanding of the people involved, trying to
make the marriage work may be wrong and pointless.  Children, of course,
complicate all of this.

I think that people get married too young.  We are at a crossroads in
social expectations.  On one hand there is the tremendous danger to
marriage that I have described, which argues for later marriages, and
hard work coming to grips with oneself, and on the other hand the is
the "alienation" of people in modern society, which can force them to
seek escape in another person (before seeking strength in themselves).
The classical solution to loneliness is to get married and we still
believe that.  It was a good solution, because in your social class one
spouse was probably as good as another.  No longer, though, and I think
that we will need to adapt our expectations of marriage to the new
reality.

                              Tracy Tims    {linus,allegra,decvax}!watmath!...
   Human Computing Resources Corporation                     {ihnp4,utzoo}!...
 Toronto, Ontario, Canada.  416 922-1937                   ...hcr!hcrvx1!tracy