Marriage Part I

Anyone who doubts that we have culturally encouraged our current divorce rate is stupid. People divorce for only a handful of reasons, each of which can be addressed in some fairly simple ways. However, discussing the ins and outs of marriage, no pun intended, is impossible unless we consider how easily and how often marriages end.

First of all, we have to agree that divorce is undesirable, if only for the reason that people would improve their chances to be happy, if they could avoid the ugliness that usually cavorts with divorces. If we can agree that the world would be a better place if marriages didn’t fall apart, then the remedies to the high divorce rate can be discussed.

Prior to marriage, prospective spouses should be given the following warning: you will not be able to end this marriage unless you are fully prepared to end your spouse’s life. The day you file for divorce, a team of referees will come to your door. They will lock you in a rubber room with only a blunt penknife for a weapon. Your opponent/spouse may or may not be armed, but if s/he is armed, it will be with more firepower than you have. The great thing about the plan is that you won’t know if your prospective ex is armed before you file. If you come out of the room under your own power, your divorce has been granted. If not, then your spouse’s troubles with you are over, one way or another.

Sure, this sounds harsh, but what if we all conspired and told all potentially-betrothed that this was the case? It seems pretty obvious that one cause of divorce is that people marry without seriously contemplating the potential for marital trouble. Lord knows they should think of these things, but people in love are not entirely human. They live on a spiritual plane – temporarily – that will be defined in a later chapter. If couples honestly believed that the only alternative to staying married was to commit murder, how many would expect to manage the trouble that inevitably occurs in marriage?

Forethought is part of the problem. When people are in love, they are more than a little retarded. Despite the rational part of their brains telling them that their marriage will be like others they’ve seen; that is, fraught with difficulties, they seriously believe that their little romantic heaven is impervious to time and trial. A rule that makes divorce close to impossible could go a long way toward reducing the number of marriages that should never happen, and which are doomed to failure.

Be honest, how many of your friends have been married and divorced? Didn’t you suspect that the marriage was doomed from the start? Did you say anything to them?
No, of course not. It wasn’t any of your business, you thought. And when others intervened and tried to talk you out of the intervention with your friend’s doomed union, you should have said, “Don’t tell me it’s none of my business.” Anything that causes you heartache – your friend’s heartache, for instance – has to be considered your business.

The second way to reduce divorce rates is to re-think the division of property issue. How about this idea? If two people get divorced, they each get ---- NOTHING! All their property is sold and the proceeds given to an agency which takes care of kids. Or diseases. Or especially kids with diseases. How many people can afford to get divorced, because half of a lot is still enough?
Children of divorced parents aren’t biologically, physically, or intellectually worse off than children of married parents, yet children of divorce are more likely to have all kinds of emotional problems. Furthermore, kids whose parents divorce are much more likely to get divorced themselves. So let’s take all the money and property from divorcing people and give it to kids.

The prospect of starting over, with absolutely nothing, will encourage troubled married people to try harder. Of course, trying harder won’t solve all the marital difficulties, but those who survive divorce proceedings won’t be completely out of luck. They could re-marry, this time with a little forethought, and no prospect of improving their station in life by divorcing again. Moreover, if we take away the property fights, divorced people won’t be reinforced that they have made the right decision. Every time an ex-spouse makes the property issue ugly, the other spouse feels vindicated. “See,” he or she says, “I was right to end it. Look what a vindictive person s/he really is.”

All of the preceding comments have been precipitated by some serious philosophical views. The first one is simply that our society is more stable with two parent households in the majority. But I don’t think that most societies have developed an expectation of monogamous relationships, married or not, by accident. Belief in monogamy is inextricably linked with a fact: throughout history, those groups that prized two parent households or living arrangements fared better than those that didn’t. I think it’s reasonable to suspect that early societies which didn’t keep parents together were unable to sustain themselves, or they were over-run by hostile neighbors who were better organized. We haven’t publicized a great deal of information on how humans have come to try to practice monogamy, yet monogamy has had the upper hand. Why?

Sociologists and psychologists of different bents have contended that humans, men anyway, are not monogamous by nature. I don’t know the validity of this contention, but it does make some sense, given my own interactions with men. However, if men by nature want to frolic with as many women as possible, then why haven’t they done so more prolifically, and with society’s approval? A simple hypothesis is that those societies who have endorsed freedom to frolic, without repercussion, have been largely unsuccessful.

In fact, some of the men who have tested the waters of infidelity will tell you the same thing. Staying with the mother of one’s children is the most stable, most productive, least painful option in the long run. Maybe this isn’t true for any one person, but for the society as a whole it is most certainly true. Yet the knowledge that this is so hasn’t really reduced the number of husbands who stray. So it may be true that men are not monogamous by nature. They have to learn to be monogamous. Or they must be cowed into exclusivity.

But before this part about marriage has ended, we must acknowledge that some marriages, even those approached with significant forethought, will end in failure. So long as nobody wins, I suppose divorces have to be a rare option. Both parties get a fresh start, but no other stuff. Property is forfeited, and children are made as financially comfortable as possible. This is not a great situation, but it must be better than having former spouses fight over property, children, and responsibility.

The attitudes expressed so far are meant to be taken somewhat seriously; the illustrations somewhat less so. People should be encouraged to proceed with caution, to fight through the tough times, and to stay together. We can’t possibly hope to encourage these behaviors unless we make divorce an even more unpleasant condition. “Till death do us part” is an order, not a suggestion.