Love and Marriage...

A couple of friends and I were recently discussing love and marriage, which - in my mind - can be very touchy and contentious subjects. I promised to put some thought into elucidating my views... (I tend to explain myself much better in writing than verbally.)

(I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I was working on a rather controversial posting. Ta-daaa! Read on if you're curious, but if you're likely to just get angry if I have off-center views then you might just want to go ahead and close the window.)

As humans, we spend lots of our time worrying about love. Are we loved? Are we in love? Can we find love? This inevitably leads to - for most people - marriage. And marriage (I don't know if you've noticed or not) tends to lead to divorce.

But I wouldn't call myself an expert of any kind. Please don't mistake my thoughts as advice of any sort. I myself have never been married... Nor can I claim to to have any expertise in managing relationships. I haven't had many, and my track record there isn't really stellar.

Come to think of it, I'm probably the last person you should listen to about these things.

Nevertheless, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the general subject matter over the years.

I should admit up front that my feelings on monogamy were first influenced by something rather silly: movies. Specifically period pieces in which dashing heroic figures have tragic romances with beautiful mistresses. You never see the wives much in those movies. Or if you do, they're really not portrayed in a good light. (A good example would be Dangerous Beauty.)

When I tried to reconcile my idolization of these stories with "real life", I came up with two things:

1. The marriages were not based on love, and therefore there was no conflict with contemporary marriage.
2. I would be okay if my husband cheated on me, as long as I didn't know about it.

Keep in mind I was probably 19 or so as I started to sort my thoughts out on the subject... I would not agree with either of these sentiments as stated today.

Life went on. I fell in love, and I fell out of love. Sometimes, in retrospect, what I thought was love was really not at all. And then sometimes I decide that I was wrong and that it was after all. At the end of the day, I would say that I have - in some manner or another - truly loved approximately five men in my life. Not all in the same way, and not all to the same degree, but five.

My next conflict that I had to reconcile was that I could clearly identify being in love with more than one of them simultaneously. According to contemporary relationship normatives, that's a no-win scenario. On some level, I would always be unhappy.

So I thought some more.

Infidelity could be driven by many things. Most of those things involve an inherent problem in the existing relationship. It is easier to run away from problems or not confront problems by creating larger problems.

But what if it was just sex? What if it was love? I've had sex that was just sex, and I've been in love with more than one person at a time before. Both were completely plausible scenarios in my mind.

I still haven't completely figured out my mind on this. I suspect that the concept of polyamory is much easier in theory than in practice. I haven't had much opportunity to experiment yet, but I think that mentally I am in a place where it could work. I'm much more able and willing to be honest with myself and others and understand my motivations than I ever have been in the past.

Feeling like this makes marriage a complicated subject for me. It doesn't help that I think that most marriages are broken before they even start...

In one of my recent classes we were discussing the evolution of marriage. (I wish I could remember the specific class / source we were discussing as a point of reference...) Historically, like in those sappy ass movies I'm so fond of, marriage was never about love. Marriage was about power, property, protection... Lots of things that weren't love. In fact, marriage didn't really reach the tipping point and change to become more love-centric until troops returned from WWII and money from the G.I. bill helped create an American middle class and a suburbia for them to live in.

Coincidentally, this is when the divorce rate in the U.S. started to rise.

Marriage that is centered around love - and only love - is passionate, but in my mind likely to be short-lived. I've seen it time and time again. This is not to say that a marriage that is built on love cannot be successful, but it can't be built only on love. When that love is tried and the passion wanes, it breaks.

I think a marriage that is built on mutual respect, goals, shared interests, and love would have a much better chance. I might be able to get behind a marriage like that, but even then I'm not sure. I would have to weigh the advantages to marriage (and there are some - mostly financial) with my dislike of the institution as a whole. Whether or not it's useful, it's still an outdated patriarchal ritual that passes me from one man to another. That's a lot to wrap my head around, much less my heart.

I once told my father that if I ever did get married, I would let him walk with me down the aisle but that he wouldn't "give me away". He wasn't too pleased.

I also, as detailed above, question whether monogamy is sustainable in a long-term situation. That would be something I would probably also want to give careful considersation and negotiation to up front. I know there are open marriages, and maybe that would be my choice.

Of course, I might feel completely different if I was ever in a situation where I had to make that decision. Who knows. These things don't have easy answers.

All I know is that for now I am reasonably happy, and I hope I have the wisdom and foresight to remain that way.

***

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens...

I have a terrible habit of naming all of my favorite things. If I examine it too closely it all becomes a bit sad - almost as though I surround myself with imaginary friends - so I don't look at it too closely. Don't get me wrong... I don't give them any further personification. I don't imagine that they're happy or angry, and we certainly don't have conversations. Still, on some level, it's weird.

My iPhone is one of my favorite things of all time, and so it needed a very special name indeed. It took me a while, but I have finally decided on the right name. Please meet Neil:

I struggled for about five minutes with what exactly to call my iPhone. Do I just come out and call it Neil Patrick Harris so that it's plain and everyone knows exactly how awesome it is? NPH instead, so it's a bit more subdued?

In the end, I went with just plain ol' Neil. I'm keeping it real.

***

Crisis of Self

Life is a funny thing.

Each day we wake up, and we do our best. Or maybe we just go through the motions. Or some combination of the two. We go to work, we raise our children, we buy things, we watch the news, we drive our cars... We run through our mazes, looking for the little bits of cheese that make it all worthwhile. We hope that we don't get shocked.

There's this pervasive idea - that I myself have supported in the past - that good things happen to good people. That everything happens for a reason. That there is meaning in this chaos.

I no longer find this even remotely possible.

Because every day I wake up, and I do my best. Or maybe sometimes I just go through the motions, but really I do try more often than not. And I see other people trying. And I see us all struggling to make sense of the world around us, not in terms of the physical world itself and it's laws, but in terms of our own humanity. And failing.

And winning sometimes too. But that's the point. It's completely random. We can only control what we can control. There's no one else pulling strings for us, making us win or lose the big game or helping us overcome cancer.

I feel like we've got about a 50-50 shot at any given point, and the beautiful thing about humanity is that we insist on the winning hand. We - like a gambling addict - know that if we just can hold on a little bit longer, if we can just try a little bit harder, things will go our way. They've got to.

We've got to find that bit of cheese. It's out there somewhere. It must be.

It's easier to believe that it's there, waiting for us. It's far easier than believing that there is no maze. There never was. The walls are our own rules and regulations, closing us in and herding us through life.

Today I am lonely, and if I am lonely it must be of my own choosing. Because if there truly was a higher power of some sort, why would they wish this upon their creations? Why would we have the disease, the famine, the greed, the depression, the plain ol' shitty luck?

I'm not having a crisis of faith. I'm way past that. Faith and I parted ways several stops back. Today I am having a crisis of self, because I realize that my life is as I myself have made it. Not what anyone else has done to me or destined for me. Me. Myself. I.

I have built up these walls in my maze. Only I can tear them down.

The great thing about humanity is that tomorrow is a new day, and I have a 50-50 shot of that winning hand. I will continue to do my best, and I will hope that it is enough.

Enough for me. Because I'm the only person I need to please. That's the part that slips my mind sometimes.

***

Just in Time for the NOW Convention...

So I'm in our office break room this morning, waiting for my Friday morning bagel to return to me from the toaster. A couple co-workers are having a casual conversation nearby, and I happen to overhear this from the male participant:

"My friend makes $30,000 a year, and his fiancée makes $90,000. I could never marry a woman that made that much more money than I did."

I couldn't really be quiet at that. So I politely interjected, "Really? I would think you'd just say thank you."

His reply: "No, it would be too weird."

I couldn't help it. I responded, "Well, we're destined to never get married then. I could never be with a man that thought like that."

Now, I barely know this guy. I'm not even sure I know his name. He works on the same floor as me though, so I'm sure he's off in a corner telling someone I'm a feminist bitch.

But really? It's 2009. Are we still there?

***

Need Workout Music Suggestions

I have once again befriended the gym... I have a really good feeling about this go-round.

Last August I mentioned a secret project I was working on that I hoped to turn into a book (which I am actually already working on). It was a bit of a sketchy mention, so even if you've been reading me for that long you might not have noticed. Well, the secret project has been in full swing, and I am happy to say that phase one and phase two are complete. We are now beginning phase three, which starts with getting into better shape.

(The book, if you're curious, is going reasonably well so far. But you won't see it for a while. It's a three-year plan, and the bulk of the book can't actually be written until the third year.)

So... I need your help. I took my lovely iPhone with me to the gym this weekend and quickly realized that most of my music is a bit laid back to be motivating in a gym-shaped environment. Now I realize that you are not the most comment-y readers in the blogosphere, but I could really use your help this time. There's a hundred or so of you out there... I'd like to get at least 20 good songs that I can download for this week.

So... what's on your gym playlist? What gets you moving? What makes you dance in the car like an idiot? I'm open to ideas, people.

And... go.

***