Here’s a fairytale you’ll never hear:
Once upon a time, a man and a woman decided that it made good sense to try marriage on for size before jumping in with both feet. They agreed to commit to being legally bound for 5 years and to avoid bringing kids into the mix until they were sure they had a solid enough connection to be great co-parents.
Or, how about this one:
Once upon a time, a couple of adults who barely knew each other decided they would raise two children together without ever being sexually involved with one another. They decided to put all their focus on the well-being of the kids and, while they may or may not have outside romantic interests, this would not be the primary focus of their lives. That spot would be reserved for the kids.
And, finally:
Once upon a time, two young men met, fell in love and got married. After living together for a few years, they decided they’d rather live in separate residences. One of the men moved across town and they lived happily ever after.
While these scenarios sound ludicrous at best and unromantic at worst, these are in line with what is actually happening in relationships (and marriage) these days. Yet, we still have our romantic notions and ideals and we continue to make people wrong who don’t follow the one-size-fits-all mold we think of as marriage.
Here’s what we currently expect:
1. Couples should only marry for love.
2. Each person in the couplehood will forsake all others.
3. “Successfully” married couples will stay in the union until one spouse dies.
Lovesick?
The Pew Research Center reported that 93 percent of people surveyed listed love as the number one reason to get married. Yet, love is an emotion. A changeable—if not fragile—one at that.
Any onlooker would agree that placing such a foundational pillar of our adult lives on something so weak is not smart.
George Bernard Shaw warns about the ludicrousness of basing marriage on love in his quote, “When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear they will remain in that excited, abnormal and exhausting condition until death do them part.”
It only took Kim Kardashian 72 days to sober up in her marriage to Chris Humphries to realize that she had been more in love with the idea of love than actually in love with her blink-of-an-eye husband.
Annie Oudom wrote about “getting lost” in love. When she asked herself how it happened that she got dumped (again) by someone who didn’t cherish her, she realized, “The idea of being in love happened. That’s what. I wanted that romance, that fairytale. I wanted to finally know what it was like to be in real, grown up love and not kiddie, high school love. I wanted all of that.”
In doing research for our latest book, The New I Do, Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels, journalist, Vicki Larson, and I were pleasantly surprised to see that, even though romantic notions are still alive and well, people are actually marrying for other, more stable reasons such as companionship or to have children together.
Gen X- and Y-ers are not buying the romantic myth and many are putting off marriage until their careers are well-established. In fact, many of these younger adults are enjoying modern day websites like Modamily.com and Pollentree.com where they can actually pick out a suitable (and well-researched) co-parent and skip the fairy-tale track altogether.
Ethical Non-Monogamy
What? Are you crazy? If it’s not monogamy, that’s not marriage.
Fidelity is evolving (or should I say devolving) and fewer people are adhering to the one-mate-for-life paradigm. Polyamory is becoming a household word.
Most mammals are, in fact, non-monogamous and social scientists question whether we are even wired to be with one mate our entire lives.
There are two main theories of why we humans became monogamous and it looks like love had nothing to do with it.
According to one study by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), primates are monogamous so that nonrelated males don’t kill their babies.
Dieter Lukas and Tim Clutton-Brock of Cambridge University, disagreed and found no correlation at all between infanticide and monogamy.
They believe that males, who were charged with defending and protecting their females, simply couldn’t fend off the competition over too large of a territory so by keeping to one female, the male could be more certain that the offspring were his to protect.
What is monogamy?
Monogamy is defined as having one mate for a lifetime or having one mate at a time (serial monogamy).
Dan Savage is quite outspoken when it comes to non-monogamy. In fact, he coined the term, “monogamish,” to describe the kind of relationship he currently enjoys where he has his primary partner/lover but each is free to have as many other sexual partners as they want.
Canadian sexologist, Jessica O’Reilly, offers novel concepts in her TED talk on how couples can explore non-monogamy without physically crossing any lines. She provides creative ideas on how couples can explore the outskirts of monogamy.
If both partners consent to outside-the-box sexual practices and they are safe about it, who are they harming?
Because of how much choice we have these days as well as how much longer we’re living, the number of those who stay exclusively with one person their entire adult lives is dwindling. This leads me to the next point.
“You’ll Do” ...For Now
Unlike the once-held belief that half of all marriages end, it’s actually only 41% of first marriages that end in divorce. The average length of marriages that dissolve is 8 years.
The Pew Research Center compiled some stats in 2013 showing that: 33% of those 55 and older have married 3 times or more; 25% of those 45-54 have married 3 times or more; and, multiple marriages for Americans has tripled since 1960(14 million to 42 million).
As much as some people would like to believe that they have stability, they are chosen and they are safe, other people prefer choice, novelty and adventure. We no longer live in a time when we cling so hard to the illusion of security.
Given the data, it’s time we let go of defining marriages that don’t last forever as “failed marriages” or calling them “broken homes.”
Leaving Normal
Not only is it okay to marry for reasons other than love, to be in a committed partnership yet not practice monogamy, and choose to marry, divorce, marry and divorce again (and again), it is becoming the new normal.
These trends are simply the indicators of the new ways of coupling we will likely see more in future generations.
As professor of public policy, Andrew Cherlin states, “This churning, this turnover in our intimate partnerships is creating complex families on a scale we’ve not seen before. “It’s a mistake to think this is the endpoint of enormous change. We are still very much in the midst of it.”
We don’t have to like the changes but we do have to accept that marriage (and family) is getting drastically redefined every day.
What is your experience in either watching these marital transformations or being part of them?
from Psychology Today - Relationships http://ift.tt/1stB0nv
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment