Young Marrieds

[vovat]

bethje has remarked on occasion that the two of us are more best friends than anything else, which I guess is kind of true. When we'd only been dating for a few months, people compared us to an old married couple. I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that I'm not an exciting person to be with. I'm mostly just reliable, and I don't hear anyone saying that reliability is what they're looking for in a partner. I guess it's a good thing, but it isn't something anybody is really attracted to. I've always been clear that what I most desire in life is contentment, and I suppose I try to provide that as well. Is it weird for a married couple with an average age of thirty to be more close friends than anything else? Isn't that usually something that happens some time down the road?

What's kind of weird is that I'd wanted to get married for a while, yet I don't think marriage really has much meaning. Neither of us are religious, so we don't have the concern about being legitimately together in God's eyes. (And really, if I WERE religious, I doubt I'd think the Almighty would be that petty.) I wasn't really giving up my bachelorhood, because I'd never dated anyone else anyway. And for that matter, I don't even think marriage has to be about monogamy. I don't want to have an open relationship, but I don't really have a moral objection to the idea, either. It's more than I wouldn't want the complications (and I don't think anyone else would be interested in me anyway). It's more that I like being married because it means something to other people; saying "my wife" sounds more impressive than "my girlfriend," even if our situations were the same before and after the wedding. And, of course, there are the legal benefits of being married, like being able to share in my wife's health insurance. Honestly, I feel like giving special benefits to married couples is pretty ridiculous on the part of the government. I have to wonder if conservatives are so intent on preserving "traditional marriage" not just to pander to the Religious Right, but also because it saves money. If you can, for instance, limit the people with which someone can share health benefits to a spouse and children, that means less people for the insurance companies to cover.

Comments

[suegypt.livejournal.com]

I have to wonder if conservatives are so intent on preserving "traditional marriage" not just to pander to the Religious Right, but also because it saves money. If you can, for instance, limit the people with which someone can share health benefits to a spouse and children, that means less people for the insurance companies to cover.

DING! DING! DING! Give the man a prize! There is money in them thar marriage certificates!

Actually, i think marriages, or whatever you want to call goal relationships, are best if they are based on friendship. You have something between you that won't evaporate when lust, etc., eventually does. Well, lust doesn't always evaporate, maybe ebbs and flows is more like it. You know what I'm saying, friendship is more steady. Nothing wrong with that.

[dragonxbait.livejournal.com]

The marriage issue was really complicated for me too. I really don't agree with the idea that the state or the church needed to recognize our commitment for it to be valid. For whatever reason, it was really important to Tom that we get married before starting a family, and in retrospect, especially since his income is so, so much more than mine and I am going to be staying home I think it probably ends up protecting me in a lot of ways in case of disaster. I think we could have found other legal ways to get those protections, but marriage definitely made it easier. In terms of being mostly close friends- I have had relationships with lots of passion, but for the most part they tended to also have lots of conflict. Not to say this is always true, but I think the whole cinderella being swept off your feet myth does a disservice to marriage, because those feelings really can't last too long beyond the beginning of a relationship, and it contributes to people feeling dissatisfied and looking elsewhere for that feeling. Tom is super reliable, and we both agreed a long time ago that our relationship was something that was worth working at during the difficult times. I wasn't always convinced that I had found my "soul mate" but I have to admit that as the years go by, I feel more and more like he has become that. Meh, it's all weird to explain. I know some people who have arranged marriages (that they agreed to, mostly middle aged indian couples from the daycare center where I used to work) and one of them told me that they never saw marriage as being about falling in love, it's about working together to run your home and family and eventually you *do* love them, as a result of that. I think maybe I there is some value to that.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

one of them told me that they never saw marriage as being about falling in love, it's about working together to run your home and family and eventually you *do* love them, as a result of that. I think maybe I there is some value to that.

Yeah, that makes sense to me. I'm still glad that my own marriage wasn't arranged, though. {g}

And passion and conflict really do go together like flies and honey, don't they?

[dragonxbait.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't know that I would have wanted an arranged marriage either, but I do think our cultural expectations about love and marriage are sort of...broken.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Or at least overly optimistic, expecting the passion from early on in a relationship to last forever, and then getting disappointed when it doesn't.

[auronsgirl.livejournal.com]

hisgrouchyness and I are definitely best friends. We'll be married 15 years this year. Relationships have their ebbs and flows, but a foundation of friendship will help you get through the ebb times much better.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Thanks. That's definitely what I'm counting on!

[vilajunkie.livejournal.com]

Reliability might not be on people's wish lists, but it's definitely on their list of needs. Especially if said people have the intention of relying on each other's income/insurance or plan on having kids. And there's where I think the catch is. What's really more desirable: A man and woman that never see each other and the burden of raising the kids is on the mother alone, or two men/two women who spend quality time with each other and make the effort to raise their kids jointly?

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Good point. Of course, I don't want to have kids, but still. {g}

[bethje.livejournal.com]

I may or may not want to have kids.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

What would be so great about having kids?

[bethje.livejournal.com]

I think it might be the best way to relive the childhood magic for which I am always searching.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I guess my childhood wasn't all that magical.

[bethje.livejournal.com]

Mine had some amazing high points. You and our hypothetical child should come along for a journey. We'll watch Ghostbusters and Gremlins and go to Storybook Land and tell scary stories about the Jersey Devil. That's what's great about being a kid.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Yeah, as pretty much everyone else said in some form or another-- the people who are looking for passion instead of reliability are also most likely the people who can't STAY in a relationship (let alone a marriage)....

Personally, I've ALWAYS wanted someone who would be my best friend, but then I also think the "Jolly Holiday" scene in Mary Poppins is the most romantic scene in all of moviedom, so I may be weird on that count.

[vilajunkie.livejournal.com]

Who WOULDN'T want to go on holiday with Mary Poppins, especially a Mary Poppins that looked like that? :D

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Does Dick Van Dyke's bad cockney accent make it more or less romantic? :P

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

More; guys who do bad impressions for you are cute. wait, he wasn't doing it on purpose... oh well I don't know then.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I don't think guys who do bad impressions are INTENDING for them to be bad. Personally, I've come to realize that what I sound like to myself is absolutely nothing like what other people hear.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Well the question is if they'd find it ROMANTIC or not. I was watching some special features or commentary or something on the DVD recently and they mentioned during that scene that P.L. Travers had been adamant that MP and Bert be portrayed as purely platonic friends and they all agreed that they thought they accomplished that very well in "Jolly Holiday," and I was thinking "so what does that say about ME?" I have long suspected I am mildly more asexual than the average person....

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I always saw more of a romance than simply a friendship between Mary and Bert. I've heard that wasn't the case with the book, but I've never actually read it.

imho?

[bec-87rb.livejournal.com]

Could other people have different needs from a spouse? Some people were brought up with the idea that the other gender is an essential opposite, not a friend, which implies like, but a completor, different but complementary.

For those people, they can have viable life-long marriages with no real friendship, per se, but it helps to have well-defined roles for each person. Marriages where one spouse is the junior partner or the "kid" in the relationship can be stable long-term so long as the junior partner never grows out of the role and the senior/parent partner doesn't get tired of being the responsible party, or somehow become incapable of being the responsible party.

Friendship-type relationships weather those type changes a little better, because each person is used to switching off the "caretaker" role.

Re: imho?

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I think you have a point there. Maybe I looked more for a friend than for an essential opposite because I never felt I had any really close friends while I was growing up?