posted
I just watched a segment about Amy Grant and Vince Gill on tonight's Primetime. I don't usually watch this kind of show.
I shouldn't have watched tonight.
I can't believe this. A relationship that broke up two marriages is being touted as "love overcoming all odds."
The interviewer asked Grant what one does when someone meets their soulmate, and it's not their spouse. She gave a waffling kind of answer.
She gave, IMO, the WRONG answer.
I realize the irony of this coming from a divorcée. But I believe that love/soulmate/whatever you want to call it NEVER trumps marriage. Never.
When I was married and found myself attracted to someone, I was very careful to spend as little time with them as I could manage. It wasn't easy. But it was necessary. I also took it as a sign that I needed to work on my relationship with my spouse.
And I believe them when they say they didn't have an affair while either was married. But they WERE spending time together. WERE being photographed together, recording songs together. The tabloids said they were having an affair because it was believable, based on their public behavior.
I really try hard not to judge other people, celebrities included. But to have this portrayed as something to aspire to, a sweet story about taking risks for love, just makes me ill.
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posted
I completely agree, these types of things always remind me of Wyrms. Love is important sure, but sometimes Love must be givin up so that more people than just those two can be happy. I just got lucky and found true love without that problem.
posted
I'm reading this great book on infidelity by a sociologist, and she said that when people break up one marriage to be with someone else, that their second marriage is statistically much less likely to succeed than first marriages in general. Apparently once you've jumped ship once, it becomes easier each time from then on.
Also it pointed out that infidelity didn't have to be physical, it could be just emotional and intellectual and so on. That sharing more of your true self with someone besides your spouse is already eroding your marriage, and can just as easily split it up as physical infidelity.
It's a really interesting book. It said that being attracted to other people means only that you are still alive and breathing and a human being. It said that most people who become unfaithful thought they were immune, that it couldn't happen to them, and so weren't on the lookout for the signs that it was starting to happen.
The biggest red flag is if you quit telling your spouse about things you are doing with that person. Like if you say "I went to lunch with so and so today.." to your spouse, and then there comes a time when you quit telling your spouse about the things you do with that person or the things they say to you and so on, that is the big red flag. Once that wall of secrecy comes down, then you are making a wall between yourself and your spouse, and making a window between yourself and that person. And that is how the process starts. It is really an interesting book. Called "Not Just Friends" by I think Shirley Glass. It told a lot about the damage caused by infidelity, how marriages are destroyed by it, and also told how to repair the damage if it had already happened to you, and how to protect yourself against it.
I agree with you, Rivka, that this was not an inspirational story. I can't judge the rights or wrongs of anyone's marriage situations, but when a marriage breaks up it's a tragedy and not a happy thing.
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posted
Exactly my point, ak. I don't want to say their choices were wrong. (Ok, I do want to say it, but I'm reeeeally trying not to. ) But whatever those choices were, to hold them up as an inspiration?
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posted
Amy Grant... and there goes one of Christianity's biggest celebrities. Sure, there's other celebrities that are also Christians, but not many that became famous as Christians.
There is absolutely no way that this will help her career beyond anything than the immediate sensationalism.
Those who aren't horrified by her actions will just view it as another Hollywood relationship. Those that are horrified will probably not buy any more of her albums.
She might as well have just divorced her career at the same time she did her ex-husband.
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It seems like things like this are being touted as inspiring and glamorous more and more these days. I get depressed sometimes because I feel like there are so few people left that actually have MORALS anymore. Then I read your thread, feel a little better and realize that the immoral and those that glorify immoral acts are probably still the minority. They're just a very LOUD and VISIBLE minority.
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posted
Call me loud, visible, and immoral, but I still believe that love should trump all.
It's a shame that society puts so much weight and pressure on marriage, but it deserves what it gets when it forces people to do so for the wrong reasons.
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posted
Just before I was going to enter college, I was living with my grandparents. Two weeks before I was to go, I had headed down to see some friends in my old hometown for the weekend. When I returned back home, I found out that my grandfather on that Friday had quietly packed his stuff and left my grandmother after 45 years of marriage.
My grandmother found out when the banker friend they had called her that afternoon to say my grandfather had withdrawn half their savings and all of the funds he had made by selling his horse farm. My grandfather's partner in the farm left her husband just a few days later and headed to meet him in Mississippi.
(On a personal note, this was my dad's father and the woman he left with happened to be married to a second cousin of mine on my Mom's side. I got hit with this from both sides of my family.)
The two had apparently been having an affair for a few years and they were soulmates. My grandfather was 70, the woman was maybe 40. They married a year later and they are still married and very happy to this day.
My grandmother, however, was devastated. She had spent all of her life as a housewife and was now entering her 70s alone and with no job skills. She went through a year of mourning and the ensuing divorce and division of property. She did get their house and her car and half interest in the farm property, which included a rental farmhouse. She was able to rent the house and the farm and that provided her with enough income to make it. My grandfather signed over his half interest in the properties to my father (who was equally devastated and still has some problems with the situation 15 years later).
That was the toughest year I can imagine my grandmother ever had. We honestly didn't know if she was going to make it -- she had never been very healthy and this was the first time she had been alone since she was in her teens and my grandfather was overseas during WWII. It was so hard for me to pack up and head off to college after that, but I did with her blessings. I did come home every weekend, though, just to do what I could for her.
She went for that year with more tears shed than I would think a person could ever generate in a lifetime. But as the year closed out, she blossomed. I came home one weekend to find out she had gotten a job with the Green Thumb program helping two elderly blind ladies with their daily chores. In her distress, she found a chance to help to others and in so doing, found strength, healing and hope for herself.
A couple of weeks later, I got a call from her saying, "I won't be home when you come in Friday... Some girlfriends of mine and I are going out to eat and we're going up to the Barter Theatre to see a play." I heard a new woman's voice that day, a woman who amazed me with her strength and resilience.
She hasn't looked back since. She has a bitter moment now and then, but she has grown so much. What a beautiful lady in all meanings of the words. She still works, now as a helper at the local high school, and she gets out with her friends (many of whom are widows, some who had packed away their lives and were waiting to join their spouses in the hereafter. She's enjoying herself and so are they now.)
She's doing fine now, better than she possibly ever has in her life. She spent a week in the hospital for pneumonia last year, but that was the first time in 15 years. Prior to that, it wasn't a year if she hadn't been in the hospital for one surgery or another.
My grandfather, well, he's doing well and is happily married. He and his wife still build a house each year to sell and they are genuinely happy. I've made my peace with the situation and show them heartfelt love. My Dad's getting better with the situation (his step-mother is younger than he or his wife are...) and things have settled down quite a bit.
I guess in a roundabout way, I'd like to say that divorce is a terrible thing, very painful, especially when someone is "left behind" in the finding of a different soulmate. Sometimes, though, the one left behind finds themself in the process. And darnit, I'm proud of my grandmother and just needed to let it be known.
Sorry for the ramble.
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In the age of chivalry love and marraige were not usually combined. Love was for the heart, marraige for the family. The Troubadors reflected on this at length, in metaphor (you couldn't actually tell the lady in public that you had a thing for her.). Often in their Arthurian cycles they set it up this way:
Marraige equals Court. Love does not equal Marraige. The knight in question must find a balance between love and court. Between the two--the right thing to choose is court!
But the knights don't always choose court in these cycles. The stories are depictions of the knights struggle in this difficult situation. Love often wins, and many of these stories are tragedies.
I offer no solutions for an ancient problem, but today the situation is supposed to be different, as we marry for love.
What gets me is how did that love turn in to mere court?
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posted
Thanks, Narn. I need to keep telling myself that.
SS, I would say that each couple is different. I could see a situation where it was moral (IMO, of course -- other people would likely have different views), IF and only if: it was a mutual decision; there are no young children involved; both partners have tried (REALLY tried, over a significant period of time) to repair the marriage, probably with the help of a therapist or clergy-person or both. But breaking up a marriage (ESPECIALLY one with young children) to be with someone else is rather unlikely to be anything but a selfish act.
Frisco, really? Should trump responsibilities to children and community? Should trump pledges to the spouse (you know, that person you USED to love)?
A love that sacrifices little isn't worth a whole lot.
Sopwith, thank you for sharing that story. I don't think it was a ramble, but very on-point. When I grow up I want to be like your grandmother.
Erik, not everyone marries (primarily, solely, or even at all) for love, or thinks you should. And I question your claim that love is somehow greater or better than "mere" marriage.
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posted
First of all, I think it's a sad, sad thing that there are people who don't marry for love. Because love is better than anything...and when it comes along, you are going to want to drop everything for it.
And the worth of love should not be based on sacrifice.
And while every situation is different, I can't see why a child would be any better off with a pair of parents who are unhappy and want to be in other relationships. I can't tell you how glad I am that my parents divorced. It made them happy, and my sister and I took it fine (at 2 and 3). I don't think a marriage should be thrown away lightly, by any means, but neither should it be clung to because of a "responsibility to community".
Sopwith, I liked your story. Sometimes, divorce can be the best option for all parties involved. Long live love! It makes life infinitely more liveable!
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posted
I think it's a sad, sad thing that people marry ONLY for love, without considering the fact that a love unnurtured, or built on an unstable foundation, will be very difficult to sustain.
What is wrong with marrying not because two people are "in love," but because they have common interests and goals and believe that building a life together will LEAD to love?
Why is the "magic" of "falling in love" so much more prized than the love that comes of hard work? As Scott said, love can be relearned.
The two choices many people in an unhappy marriage see are living unhappily or getting a divorce.
But there is a third choice. The hard choice. The one where both parties work at rekindling the love that they once had -- or building one they may never have had. There is far more magic, it seems to me, in a love that is worked for. Rather than one that, like pixie dust, is sprinkled upon the lovers through no effort of their own.
But then again, hard work and perseverance are sadly out of fashion in our microwave-instant-gratification-isn't-FAST-enough age.
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posted
Yes Scott, love can be relearned. I hope my wife relearns it about me.
AK, thanks for that book title. Just bought it from Amazon. I should get it sometime next week. After I read it, I'll send it to my wife and pray she reads it too.
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quote:What is wrong with marrying not because two people are "in love," but because they have common interests and goals and believe that building a life together will LEAD to love?
What's wrong with those two people trying to fall in love first, therefore removing the risk that no love will appear? Marriage seems to me a bit too important to gamble like that.
quote:But there is a third choice. The hard choice. The one where both parties work at rekindling the love that they once had -- or building one they may never have had. There is far more magic, it seems to me, in a love that is worked for. Rather than one that, like pixie dust, is sprinkled upon the lovers through no effort of their own.
Nowhere have I advocated throwing away a marriage at the first sign of discontent.
I, personally, don't see any more magic in a marriage that requires a constant struggle to maintain than in that of a couple who just loves each other.
Heh...this reminds me of when a friend of mine tried to convince me that Eddie Van Halen was a better guitarist than David Gilmour based on the fact that Eddie could play faster, more complicated riffs.
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quote: I, personally, don't see any more magic in a marriage that requires a constant struggle to maintain than in that of a couple who just loves each other.
I really doubt there are many happy marriages that make it to, say, 25 years without some serious work by both parties. "Just loving each other" is a great theory. And I'm not talking constant struggle, either. I'm talking about a consistent attempt to work on the relationship. That likely translates into some struggle -- and a lot of bliss, too. But I don't think the bliss without the effort is sustainable in the face of real-life pressures.
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quote:Call me loud, visible, and immoral, but I still believe that love should trump all.
It's a shame that society puts so much weight and pressure on marriage, but it deserves what it gets when it forces people to do so for the wrong reasons.
I'm sorry, but I disagree. Is there no sense of personal responsibility involved in the decision to marry? I don't think it's society's fault when people marry for the wrong reasons - it's the fault of the individuals who were too weak to resist the pressure.
Also, I think that love can be learned and relearned. I have seen arranged marriages where the husband and wife (who went into them willingly) did in fact learn to love each other. They are happy and they have happy, stable families.
I think that examples of amicable divorces where the children are unscarred are very rare. My best friend's parents divorced and it really messed up 6 kids. One is on her 3rd marriage at 32 years old, one just got out of jail, and my best friend is determined never to marry.
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posted
When people think of love as a feeling that just happens to you, they sell love short. Love is so much more than a feeling. Love is about doing. Not so much the grand gestures, although those are nice too. The little day-to-day things that make up a loving marriage.
quote: GOLDE Do I love him?
TEVYE Well?
GOLDE For twenty-five years I've lived with him Fought with him, starved with him Twenty-five years my bed is his If that's not love, what is?
quote: Probably comes from playing 3 of the 5 daughters, but what Jewish girl hasn't played at least one?
Um, me? But I have: read the play, played three different (audio) recordings overandoverandover, seen the movie more times than I care to count, read the original Shalom Aleichem stories the play is based on . . .
And then there was the time I attended a performance of the play by my students. One of the parents, who had spoken to me on the phone but never in person, correctly picked me out of the crowd during intermission. I made a joke about being the one person in the audience who looked like the people on stage. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
I do believe in true love. I would never marry without it, and I do think that people who marry for reasons to do with money or status or looks are doing themselves and their spouse a big disservice.
I don't think there's a replacement for that, just choosing the person you cherish and value above anyone, the one that you are awed and humbled to know, the one you are incredibly lucky to have attracted, the one that you can't imagine ever being without, that you are constantly amazed could possibly love you too.
But once you have found this person, and you have decided to build a life together, don't expect that feeling to be sustained for the rest of your life. Because it's hard to do, to make an equal partnership that works. It's the hardest thing you've done up to that time. Raising children, handling the difficulties and logistics, and keeping your sense of humor, your caring, your love. Keeping the partnership thriving when so many demands are made upon it. When life is so hard sometimes. When you find out that you have different expectations in some areas, when you don't know how to meet all of each other's needs, or even know what they all are. When the little quirks of personality that once were so charming and unique start to grate. When it becomes easier to attribute them to some less than selfless motives on the part of your partner.
That's when the work part comes in. If you are committed and mature and strong (and also there is a component of luck involved), then you will school your hearts toward one another and you will relearn, over and over again, what it means to be in love. Each time with more and more depth and meaning and reality. You will turn your ideals of love and marriage and parenthood into reality, the way a recipe is turned into a meal, with different degrees of success, always falling short in some ways to your own image, yet in truth so much more than you ever imagined.
If you find yourself attracted to other people from time to time along the way, well, that just means you are alive still, and breathing, and human. It doesn't mean you have made a mistake in your original choice, or that the new person, no matter how must less baggage you are carrying about them, would be any easier to build this house with, this life, this work of art which is your life's partnership, than the person you originally chose.
My ideal is to choose well the one who makes your heart soar, let no obstacle stop you from marrying if you love one another, and then be committed to stay together through thick and thin, and remake yourselves, grow and change together, or do whatever it takes to make it work and make it last. You have become one person, one flesh. To split up is like amputating the best part of yourself.
I know there are many marriages that simply can't be made to work. There is abuse, infidelity, addiction, and so on, that makes it impossible to continue trying, and BOTH people have to be trying. It's not enough to save a marriage that one person does everything to nurture it. Both must work to maintain it. So I would not want to judge the rights and wrongs of anyone's marriage or divorce. Only the couple themselves can do that, if anyone. The courts must too, but they do that job quite badly, I think. But when it must be dissolved, it is like a violent death in the family. The destruction is immense. It's always a terrible tragedy.
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posted
I should say in the interest of full disclosure that I have never been married, much as I would wish to be and always thought I would. So take my ideas for what they are worth: a plan which so far at least has not succeeded. Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
It'll succeed my dear. I'm positive that it will. Your plan sounds like something we should all strive for.
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posted
It's always nice to have a conversation with 'the sisters'.
What is the difference between learning to love and forcing love? If love can be learned or forced with anyone, which is virtually what 'learning to love' says to me, then why not just marry the first person that comes along?
Saying that two people have to work on a marriage so they can be in love also seems to be virtually synonymous to saying, each person must live for the other's goals to as great a degree as possible. Since each person is an individual, there is going to be some element of misery with this philosophy. Happiness is selfish. Neither person says or does anything the other finds offensive, only things the other approves of--at least, this would seem to be the ideal.
I posit that there are some people who are passionate about themselves and their own interests. I posit that these people will not do well in a marriage that uses the ideal of lowest common denominator, or working together. I further posit that it is quite possible to marry someone who is completely different than the person you thought they were and, further, that the person they are has interests and desires so different from your own, that working through them is going to make you miserable. Thus, I believe that the ideal of all people can be happy in any marriage if they just work at it is false. As a matter of fact, I believe it is not even generally true outside of cultures that do not jam certain roles and beliefs down their members' throats. Obviously, inside these cultures, the participants of that marriage are known quantities because of being in that culture.
It is impossible to know someone well enough before you marry them that you can say with ANY degree of certainty that you can change for them such that you will even be moderately happy. I think a lot of marriages circumvent this fact by having children. Each spouse throws themself entirely into the role of mother/caretaker and father/provider and ignores what they, themselves, want. So, what the other person wants for themselves ceases to be an issue and confrontation is avoided. Children are a time consuming activity that requires both people to virtually give up *their* free time. Where it would be almost impossible to find common ground between two people, two people can much more readilly decide what the common ground should be for someone else, the child in this case, who gets little say in the matter.
I believe that these kinds of marriages are absolutely best for children, but suck for a lot of husbands and wives for whom being a husband and wife, motherhood and fatherhood aren't something that they have a particular affinity for.
Happiness is egotistical and selfish for everyone, but more for some people than others. For some people, the goal shouldn't be to live two lives as one, but to live two lives as two lives together. Love should require as little effort on another person's part as possible in order that that person may pursue their own dreams and desires to the best of their ability. Of course, there have to be certain rules that are followed by each person in that marriage such that it won't fall apart--don't cheat, don't leave the toothpaste cap off, put the toilet seat down. The difference, though, is that the ideal that is worked towards is one of looseness and flexibility rather than a 'leave yourself at the door attitude'.
These marriages are not optimal for children, but are optimal for the husband and wife.
Finally, I am going to say that the attitude of living for other people is culturally expected of, and accepted by, women much more than men. Obviously, this isn't a universal truth. My point is that your sex may play a role in how easilly it is to adhere to the ideal of living for another person.
That's how you ramble, Sopwith, you n00b. Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote: What is the difference between learning to love and forcing love?
Attitude, mostly. You learn to love when you really want to. Force implies it being against your will. I would also debate the "with anyone" part. It doesn't have to be a question of living for someone else. It's a question of learning to live in harmony with someone else.
One hopes that a couple contemplating marriage has a great deal of overlap in their goals, so sacrificing what one wants for the other is not the main mode of interaction.
Why does happiness have to be selfish? When I manage to do something that is against my nature, but which I consider to be a good thing (hold my tongue, for example), I get a great deal of joy and satisfaction from that. Knowing that doing so makes someone else happy as well only enhances my joy, neh?
quote: I posit that there are some people who are passionate about themselves and their own interests.
Then they ought to marry someone who either SHARES their passions -- which seems to me to be an ideal basis for a marriage -- or is happy (REALLY happy, not just thinks they should be happy) supporting someone with such a passion.
OTOH, sometimes "passionate about themselves and their own interests" is code for unwilling/unable to work well with other people, to accommodate the desires of others. That hardly seems to me like something that should be encouraged. Rather, it sounds like something that a person might do well to examine about themselves.
I also disagree with your theory that a couple must choose between focusing on their relationship or the good of the children. I know many people who manage to do both.
Like a beautiful symphony, the goal is not to drown out anyone, but to create together what cannot be created alone.
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posted
I would say that, if anything, happiness is the opposite of selfishness. Everyone I know whose most important goal in their lives is their own satisfaction is fairly miserable. The thing is, once achieved it always seems to turn up empty. Whether it's bucketloads of money that will make you happy, or total free time, or power, or beauty, or fame, once achieved these goals fail to satisfy.
The person with total free time is bored because there's nothing interesting enough to do or nobody fun enough to spend it with. The person with fame finds out that people adulate them, but not really for themselves, but for some reasons of their own. They realize the lie that is their own public face. Kurt Cobain comes to mind here, or Marilyn Monroe, Hank Williams Sr., or countless other stars who sought fame and celebrity only to find it was a desperately empty goal, once achieved. The person who lives for money never has enough. Someone like President Kennedy can be young, rich, powerful, and have a beautiful wife, and the next day be shot down in the street.
When I look at the people who seem truly happy and fulfilled, who are the most admirable to me, whose lives really mattered to the world and to those around them, they always have lived for something larger and better than themselves. They have had a perspective far higher than their own pleasure or satisfaction. I would suggest that living for one's own pleasure is the surest recipe for misery.
[ November 28, 2003, 06:48 PM: Message edited by: ana kata ]
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posted
'Altruism' is just another way of saying, doing some things for some other people makes me happy. It is not another way of saying, doing what makes other people happy makes me happy. It is not a negation of yourself, but an expression of yourself.
There is no such thing as living for something outside of yourself, or 'larger' than yourself. You are the sum total of your universe. You either do things because you believe them necessary, or you don't do them. Adding someone's welfare to your own does not erase your own wants and desires.
Egotism, or selfishness, is not the same thing as cruelty, or a hatred of things outside of yourself. The determinate factor is the pleasure/pain yardstick, external to yourself, and the subjective emotion of hate inside yourself, respectively. If you do not cause pain or hurt, a 'zero' on the yardstick, you have not committed a cruel act.
Living more for yourself is no worse than living more for other people. Each paradigm has its pitfalls. Living for others, you risk hurting yourself because you ignore yourself ('everyone else is doing it'). You risk becoming a non-person as you lose yourself in your social role or in the desires of pleasing others. You risk being miserable.
You guys have already detailed the pitfalls of living for yourself--casual disregard of the feelings of others, shallowness, etc.
Humans are social animals. No person will willingly be alone for long lengths of time. There is no such thing as a purely self-involved person.
Likewise, people need time for themselves. There is no such thing as a totally other-involved person.
Each person must find their own level in these matters. People are not infinitely flexible. While *some* change is possible, and that change is very dependant on necessity and the environment and the person's will, I think there is a 'bottom line', so to speak that people are not capable of going beyond. Some people will never have the mental attitude to be fighters, no matter how many martial arts classes they take. Likewise, some people will never be the kind of nurturers others are, no matter how many years they spend in medical school.
Given these, what I believe are facts and somewhat axiomatic, it is ridiculous to say that everyone can lose themselves to the same degree in marriage, or can do so in a predefined way such that they are happy and capable of doing their roles well.
Trying to figure out which way shows more 'character' or is more 'moral' is foolish and self defeating and invites people to get irritated. Ultimately, people consider what is moral to be what they themselves would do. Calling something 'immoral' is no better than calling something 'evil' or 'bad'. In each case they are just words that say, you are not me.
I think the world would be a much better place if marriage was an option, rather than a necessity. This has been said over and over on this forum. *I* think one of the reasons divorce is so high is because many people get married who have no business being in a traditional marriage. And let's not even talk about children.
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quote:Adding someone's welfare to your own does not erase your own wants and desires.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'wants and desires.' I know that by serving others my heart is opened to them-- I learn to love them, in other words. And as my love and concern for others is increased, my SELFISH desires are decreased.
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) But whatever those choices were, to hold them up as an inspiration?
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