posted
I'm afraid I still don't quite get it, Bev. What kind of bizarre human being marries someone they're unsure about, resolving to love them later? Common goals are all very well, but I think we're better off having moved away from arranged marriages, political marriages, and marriages of economic convenience; by the same token, I don't think it's remotely logical to marry someone because you would both like to save the environment.
I think you're perhaps using a definition of "love" that's closer to my definition of "infatuation;" certainly, the way I'm using the word "love" doesn't seem to match up with the way you're using it.
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posted
That may be the root of this misunderstanding. Although I still can't think -- no matter my definition of "love" -- of Mack's decision as anything but boneheaded and disgraceful.
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quote:I think we're better off having moved away from arranged marriages
I think we would be better off with arranged marriages where both sides are committed to learning to love and serve each other than with marriages "for love" where they stay with each until they decide they don't want to anymore*.
*I do not think that this describes all modern "for love" marriages. But it sadly describes a lot of modern marriages.
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quote:I think we would be better off with arranged marriages where both sides are committed to learning to love and search each other than marriages "for love" where they stay with each until they decide they don't want to anymore.
Ah. See, our definitions of "love" are different, then.
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quote: Although I still can't think -- no matter my definition of "love" -- of Mack's decision as anything but boneheaded and disgraceful.
I can't speak for the author's intent, but we've seen other instances in the story of Oberon's instinct coming through (like his reaction to sex with her, very atypical for a "normal" mortal, I would think.) Perhaps the desire to marry has something to do with that?
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posted
Personally, I'm not a fan of the arranged marriage idea. I'd prefer to choose my spouse. But I think marrying solely for love is just as boneheaded and disgraceful—if not more so—than marrying for any other reason.
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posted
Yeah, Jon Boy, that's pretty much how I feel.
I remember how my dad would "pick out" guys for me. Not that he wanted to arrange a marriage for me, it was all in fun. But if he had, I would have no guarantee that that guy would be committed to love me. With Porter, I knew that he chose me, that he was committed to me. I knew the nature of that committment was self-sacrificing rather than self serving. Even though I wasn't sure about him, the strength of his committment to me was a major part of my decision.
I have been far more deeply "infatuated" with individuals than I've ever been with Porter. But considering our 7 years of marriage, I've never had the depth of relationship with anyone that I have with him. And I think the latter is worth far, far more.
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quote: Millions of people that have lived in cultures where arranged marriages were the norm.
I submit that arranged marriage is to modern marriage what slavery is to contract work. In other words, there are superficial similarities, but the contract is actually completely different.
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quote: And I disagree with your assessment of their marriages.
You are of course free to do that. My position, on the other hand, is that arranged marriage cheapens marriage far, far more than same-sex marriage ever could.
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posted
I mention it because some of the people on this thread who said they see no problem with arranged marriage have in fact argued against same-sex marriage, a position that strongly suggests that we hold very different opinions of the value of marriage.
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I see where you're coming from, and I agree with you on that point: we disagree because we have different notions about what makes marriage valuable. It seems that your most important criterion is the quality of the love involved, whereas for me, that's just one factor and not the most important one. To me it's about growing and building something together, and love is merely a part of that that makes it work.
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posted
I don't know many people who have had arranged marraiges. I'm going to trust Rivka's assesment of the situation a little more than my own.
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posted
I am a living breathing product of a marriage arranged by God. I know several other couples who had similar things happen. I was not sexually attracted to my husband at all, though I felt compatible to him in many other areas. So I prayed and felt that God wanted me to marry him. I said, okay, but you have to make him physically attractive to me or I can't do it. And if this isn't You telling me to marry him, then change his heart so he no longer is attracted to me. The next time I saw my future husband he looked kinda cute, and kept getting more and more attractive to me each time I saw him. I took this as confirmation, and married him.
A couple of people I know were complete strangers, and both felt God tell them to marry the other person. They did and have been happy for twenty-five years.
I also believe that any man and woman can be happy in marriage, no matter what clashes or differences they have, if each one makes a commitment each day to honor and love the other one (something that is much easier to do if you have an active relationship with God). Love is an action, not an emotion. It is a choice that you make. I know that my husband and I will remain married to each other until one of us dies, because both of us choose daily to commit to each other. Divorce is not an option.
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quote:*nod* Whereas I believe I can grow and build things with anyone, but only marry a single person.
The difference in feelings on this may not be unrelated to different feelings about sex. If you are someone who believes sex is only to be shared between those married, then marriage will *always* be extremely unique in that aspect. Because of sex, I share an intimacy with my husband that sets our relationship apart from any other.
Out of curiosity, what else would set it apart? I can have friends and family that I love a great deal. But no matter how much I love them, I will never have sex with them. The sexual relationship of any two married people, even in an arranged marriage, makes that relationship unique from all others those people have.
While I am not a raving fan of arranged marriage, (I greatly prefer to select my own spouse, thank you very much) I think that it is as good as the intentions that go into it. For instance, who is doing the arranging? What are their motivations? Let's say it is a parent. Are they doing it for economic gain, either for them or for their child? That may not make for the happiest relationship for the husband and wife.
Are they motivated out of a desire to see their child and betrothed be happy? That is a lot more likely to succeed. Also, what are the intentions of the two being arranged? Are they determined to do their best and truly commit to each other? Or are the resentful of the arrangement and secretly withholding their hearts, reserving a hope to connect to someone else sometime in the future?
I figure people who are raised in a culture where arranged marriages are commonplace, the two to be married are far more likely to embrace it, even be joyful about it. With that attitude, they are far more likely to have a wonderful marriage.
I do find the idea of someone being forced to marry unwillingly repugnant. I'm sure that sort of thing has happened far too often in our history. I have nothing good to say about those situations.
On a side note: I reject the idea of "Shakespearian Love". The "love" portrayed in Shakespear plays may be a lot of things, but love ain't one of them. The people in the plays act as though they have no control over the feeling, that they are at the mercy of Cupid's arrow. I find this behavior repulsive and degrading. It is very animalistic, and in my opinion, ought to be considered sub-human.
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posted
Ann D, I have a lot of respect for the relationship you and your husband share. It is based on the commitment you made rather than a passion that drove you to that commitment. The beauty of such a relationship is that you are more likely to fall deeper and deeper in love as time goes on rather than looking back longingly on how "perfect" your relationship was when you were courting, and you can't seem to recapture the magic.
When a relationship is driven by commitment rather than a feeling, the foundation is more sure. Feelings come and go, but commitment remains. True commitment is not a grudging thing, it is given wilingly. It's not that feelings are bad, only that commitment is far more imporant. It is all about which of the two is in control.
I too feel sometimes that Porter and I had a relationship "arranged by God" rather than either of us, though we were completely willing participants. Being willing participants makes all the difference, IMO.
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quote: I am a living breathing product of a marriage arranged by God.
Please forgive me when I say that I am skeptical of this, not least because I lack your faith in God. I mention this only because I otherwise do agree with you. I believe the human mind is a powerful thing, and that love is at around 50% commitment and 40% frame of mind -- and, consequently, believe as you do that it's possible for anyone to eventually train themselves to feel warmly towards anyone else, provided they're willing to put in the time.
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posted
Recently finished reading Magic Street and while I liked it, it wasn't one of my favorites. In places, the darkness and the crude humor were just not to my tastes.
I did love the ending though. That might be one of my favorite endings. It was happy (for the most part) and well excuted. Very memorable.
Overall, a good novel. The Shakespeare fantasy stuff was a great twist. Fairyland was excellent too.
May have to read this again someday.
DF2506 " Next up as far as OSC, Enchantment."
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Then I made the mistake of reading some of this thread, where Tom basically destroys the pleasure I had in reading this book.
He just can't help but try to be logical all the time, even when the story is dealing with fantasy and with emotions, desires, drives and wants deeper than anyone in reality ever feels. So don't go screwing it all up by trying to make it logical or real.
posted
All my emotions are logical, thank you very much. And the thing about fantasy -- at least good fantasy -- is this: it's not about unrealistic emotions. It's about unrealistic things. If it's an emotion that no one in reality would ever feel, you shouldn't be having a teenager feel it in your book.
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posted
They are, they just aren't the same thing. Emotion first, then logic to try and explain why what happened did.
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I don't think Tom means that he sits around after something happens to him and thinks of a reasonable emotional response to produce (though of course I could be wrong *grin*). I think it's more along the lines of "there is a reasonable chain of causation leading from an event to my emotional response to it".
If he believes a particular action is a Bad Thing To Do, he'll logically have an emotional response of aversion or disdain. I don't see how logic or emotion are incompatible; they seem like two sides of the same coin to me. The logic provides the reason for the emotional response.
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posted
I disagree with you, Tom, that insisting on marrying someone you don't love just so you can have sex makes sex more important than marriage. I think in analogies a lot of the time, so I'm going to try to use one here to explain why.
Let's imagine Nancy decides that nutrition is important to her, even though she really has a sweet tooth. She decides that to maintain her nutrition, she will only eat sweet things (desserts) after dinner. That way, she will always be at least mostly full of nutritious food before she eats sweets, preventing her from filling up on chocolate and ice cream and never getting any "real" food. (Go with me here; I know you don't see it this way, but go with me here.)
This isn't to say Nancy doesn't like dinner. She absolutely loves Mexican food, for one, and she has a soft spot for Curry too. But sometimes she has to have spaghetti-o's or fish sticks (which she detests) because that's all that's in her kitchen to fix for dinner. But she sticks with her commitment because she believes that what she has chosen to do is right.
Let's imagine for a minute that one day she finds a magical candy bar that has a note on it. She knows that if she eats this candy bar, all the suffering in the world will end. It is immensely important that she eat this candy bar. But because Nancy has committed to always eat dinner first, she puts some quick fish sticks in the oven and eats them before unwrapping the candy bar.
Now, this situation is very silly, and I admit that. But there are three ways it can be interpreted:
1. Nancy values eating dinner before eating dessert so much that she will always do so, even if dinner is unpleasant. To her, dinner is more important than any dessert could ever be.
2. Eating dessert is so important to Nancy that she will do even unpleasant things to get to that part of the meal. Therefore, dessert is more important to her than dinner.
3. Nancy puts immense importance on both dinner and dessert, but before either, she values her committment to her health.
I think you are saying that anyone who insists on eating dinner before dessert comes from conclusion 2, when I think most of us are at 1 or 3. Your problem in understanding that is that you don't understand why we would always insist on something so silly as always eating dinner first when sometimes (as you see it) there are obvious reasons to abandon that rule.
In the case of Mack Street, his insistence on marriage didn't work for me. As a Mormon, I have a very strong reason to stay committed to no extramarital sex. He didn't. It was just his opinion that sex should be saved for marriage. He didn't have a why. Thus, when a situation came up that seemed like a good reason to bend the rules a little, he maybe should have. I don't know.
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quote:In the case of Mack Street, his insistence on marriage didn't work for me. As a Mormon, I have a very strong reason to stay committed to no extramarital sex. He didn't. It was just his opinion that sex should be saved for marriage. He didn't have a why. Thus, when a situation came up that seemed like a good reason to bend the rules a little, he maybe should have. I don't know.
This is exactly how I felt about it! *I* would probably insist on being married, but that's because I have very strong beliefs on the subject. Of course, I can't see this situation or anything remotely like it coming up in real life.
What if Mack was married to another woman already? What then? I really do hate books/movies/storytelling where sex *has* to happen for some desperate reason.
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posted
Here's the problem I have with your analogy, Brinestone: marriage is not just "dinner." It's something that, to most religious people, happens once. To Mormons in particular, it is often considered literally the whole point of mortal existence.
If Nancy has fish sticks today so she can eat this world-saving candy bar later, that's one thing; she can always eat her favorite food at the next meal.
But in this scenario, Mack is metaphorically resigning himself to eat fish sticks for the rest of his life, at every meal because eating dessert first would violate a principle he made to protect his own health. And this analogy is perfect for this example, because fish sticks at every meal, especially without any kind of vegetable side dish, would in fact be remarkably unhealthy. In other words, Mack has sentenced himself for life to an unhappy, unhealthy marriage because he doesn't want to have sex first, something which in the long run is likely to be far less healthy than just getting the sex over with and, metaphorically, taking the time to make a decent dinner a bit later in the evening.
Except of course that he really hasn't. OSC makes clear that while Mack takes this whole marriage thing "seriously," he isn't taking it seriously enough to have family or friends over, involve the state in anything formal, or even use an ordained minister. Mack is, in other words, paying lip service to the idea that you should marry before having sex by engaging in a half-assed, unrecognized ceremony that only loosely "binds" him to a wife he does not love -- and who spends the "ceremony" making fun of him for even bothering.
The impression I get from this is that it's okay to make a mockery of marriage as long as one does not make a mockery of sex. The sex is treated in this instance as something far more sacramental.
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posted
But you're ignoring that fact that he(Mack) knows, as much as he doesn't want to admit it, that he IS her husband already, in that Oberon lives kinda through him.
That is how I reconciled it -- he really is already married to her -- it is like he is fighting with himself. That part of him which is controlled by Oberon knows her already and claims her and is stronger than the "Mack" part at this point.
posted
Oh, I agree with you about Mack Street, Tom. His insistence was silly and juvenile, I think.
But like a lot of people have said, just because you're not enjoying the marriage now doesn't mean it can't be better later. I think it's pretty common for there to be extreme highs and lows in every marriage.
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posted
I didn't read the book yet, but I had to comment: Tom Wrote
quote: sex is somehow considerably more "sacred" than marriage
What is wrong with this idea?
Sex and marriage are different but equally important just as men and women are different but equally important.
P.S. Tom, you live in a different reality from what most of the people you argue with live in . In your reality, you should love your spouse more than anything else. In our reality, we should love God more than anything. So we are going to espouse ideas that seem pagan and barbaric to one another.
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My position, on the other hand, is that arranged marriage cheapens marriage far, far more than same-sex marriage ever could.
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