LL":irl4tkgt said:
Marriage is a legal construct created for financial reasons ...It has nothing to do "love" or "passion"...our attempts to combine business with pleasure as laughable.
I have to take a rare opposing position with you LL, on this one I think you're all wrong. I feel that the legal construct is a bi product of the culture we live in and not necessarily a result of union or even human DNA. If people didn't 1) get married when they had no business getting married or 2) act so selfishly within that marriage and put themselves first, there wouldn't be a need for the business or legal end. Marriage is not about 2 individuals, it's about a union and family and dedicated ties that are not to be undone. But, I guess it's a matter of how you look at marriage going into it. If it's a matter of convenience and of not wanting to be alone - with the basest, most underlying motivators being self importance and personal satisfaction, then you'd better put an attorney on retainer when you buy that ring because your mindset and approach is guaranteeing an eventual end to your union. Too many people get married in the first place, people who are not honestly intending to commit and to dedicate and to put the others in their family first. The ridiculously high divorce rate and number of children living without both parents to nurture and raise them is an indicator of a society that lacks concern for others, a show of a self centered apathetic community. A society like ours that seems to demand dedication and honesty and integrity from the superficial aspects of society - like our elected officials and social leaders - yet takes the most important personal commitment so lightly that we have a 50% divorce rate is a society of self centered indulgent fools and it's no wonder we are tumbling down the path we are on. We are socially oriented to make sure we are happy as individuals, if not, quit. Don't wait it out, don't try to give more of yourself to make the thing stronger and more productive in the end, get out cuz it's not working for me right now.
I believe it was Plato who inferred that the only difference between us and the animals was our ability to rationalize our existence and rise above it, that we were both animal being and rational being and our purpose was to let the rational lead the animal. If we can rise above our basest animal instincts then we can, period. Whether we feel justified in relenting to them or rising above them is a matter of social acceptance and motivation, not a matter of DNA. The drive is in the grey matter. We're not talking about chromosomes, we're talking about a psychological manifestation of introverted selfishness and apathy towards those we proclaimed we would love and nurture and dedicate our lives to, or not. We choose to do one or the other, it doesn't choose us. Marriage isn't a disaster, it's just too easy and socially acceptable to jump in and out of and ignore the root purposes of marriage. Half of the people going into it are either too self concerned or simply liars.
Love and passion are the drivers of marriage, and I think these are too often confused with lust. Lust won't drive you any farther than the drug store for some more penicillin, but those same base desires focused towards a single individual and rationalized into a life long union produce the bedrock for a sound, emotionally stable society with psychologically sound foundations pulling the moral compass to true north. When passion allies with love (which is learned over time) it creates the bond that makes marriage work. But, you have to defer to it, you have to set aside certain things within yourself that are centered on you as an individual and let that love and passion be the true north of your compass, let it guide your motivation rather than following a self serving bearing. It has everything to do with love and passion, and if it doesn't, the individual has no reason entering into marriage. A domestic partnership, a contract, maybe, but not marriage. Marriage is about a union, about family, not a temporary mutually beneficial partnership.
But, you are right about the last part, combining marriage with business as a principle for a union is laughable. Laughable because of the underlying tear it makes in the basic fabric of marriage. In marriage there is only ours and there is no concern over "Mine" or "My assets" or "My future security". Those concerns are the foundation for your impending divorce. There is only "ours, til death..."
My advice? If what I've said here doesn't ring true 100% with both of you, do not get married, period.
