“WE ARE ASKING TOO MUCH OF MARRIAGE”

“WE ARE ASKING TOO MUCH OF MARRIAGE’* Byron F. Lindsleyl

Your Moderator asked this morning how many attending the conference were divorced, single, married, or how many had other arrangements. There is one further question: How many who are married are serenely happy and always comfortable with your relationship? -- Your laughing response suggests the answer.

The discussion with the college student panel and the type of statements and questions directed to them tel ls much about why you are here. Mmy seemed more interested in affirming their own beliefs than in the process of learning. Clapping for statements which were apparently more acceptable seems incongruous to the learning art. It is not con- sistent with the assimilation of ideas in a spirit of critical inquiry. That approach is not likely to shed light on concerns you may have about the s ta tus of marriage, including your own. It suggests one of marriages great problems - the failure.to l isten and hear with the mind what the other partner is trying to communicate and the failure to consider its possible validity. It demonstrates a marital tendency t o defend one’s positions rather than submit them t o scrutiny and a l i t t le critical introspection. You may be here in a n exercise of personal and intellectual futility if you hear only that which you want t o hear, and approve only that which a f f i rms your own points of view. I a sk you not to take that approach with what I have to say. I d o not expect you to fully agree with me. This is not important. Do not c lap in approval or groan in disapproval at what I may say. Listen, try t o assimilate, go home and consider, and then, if you feel you need t o give any expression of your feeling, go into your closet, shut the door, and clap or groan where only you can hear.

Someone asked the student panel members the question: “What do you feel makes a good marriage?” There were varying answers. From the con- ferees came various observations, often somewhat pious, several harshly and critically challenging some of the student’s points of view. We heard a few formula proposals, with the usual c l iches and platitudes, seasoned with more than a dash of puri- tanism, about t he ingredients of a successful marriage. The students have challenged the validity of al l the things we articulate about the institution of marriage when compared to what we do in it and about it, They see how we are struggling almost aimlessly with little success . They have much yet to learn, They sa id so. Your answers to them, how-

1 Presiding Judge, Conciliation Court of the Supctior Court, San Diego, California. Th i s paper was presented a t the University of California Ex- tendon Conference on t he Future of Marriage, October 12, 1968, in San Diego.

ever, tended t o be based more on spoken standards of morality and custom than actual experience. Listen t o the young. They have lived with our in- adequacies. They see us from a better vantage point than we can see ourselves. Hear what they have to say. They may have some valid perception t o share.

“What Do We Want From MarriaRe?” What usually motivates people into getting married, in the face of the plethora of evidence that whatever i t is people want, a large percentage of them must not be getting it? Is there a proper correlation between what people should expect from marriage realistically, based upon an empirical overview of what is likely and what, on the other hand, they may actually use as reasons or rationalizations of what they want and expect from marriage?

The institution of marriage & in trouble. It’s not difficult t o reach th i s conclusion. Rising divorce rates suggest that a high percentage of married persons must not be adequately satisfied with the experience of marriage a s an on-going relationship. In the United States it h a s risen from approximately 10% of the marriages to 30% and higher in many parts of the country during the l a s t fifty years. Approximately 40% of all brides today are between the ages of 15 and 18. Half of these very young marriages, many begun in a s t a t e of pregnancy, will break up within five years or less. Where there is pregnancy a t marriage, the failure rate is going to be much higher, with probably 75% ending i n divorce. Since population distribution is presently getting progressively younger, we may reasonably expect t he divorce rate, in the absence of some change to alter the trend,(consider the pill) t o continue to rise, perhaps at a n accelerated pace.

Divorce s ta t is t ics may be useful but they are highly interpretive and suspect. They can be used to support almost any theory. I mention statis- tics only to set the quantitative perspective of our topic. In stark numbers a high ratio of marriages come to an end before the death of one of the parties. Does t h i s fact have some relationship t o the nature of the marriage institution itself? Does it mean only that marriage as w e now conceive i t is in trouble?

Perhaps marital dissolution should be expected as a pad of the scheme of things in American cufture. Statistically speaking, at least as high if not a higher percentage of new businesses fail than do marriages, As in marriage, t he first business failure apparently does not prevent more tries, although it may serve t o dull the aura surrounding the venturer’s dream and hope. Marriage partners and business entrepreneurs with only a slight hesitation, though having failed once, often with great emotional

1

and economic trauma, aga in walk through the door and i n t u t h e same potentially fiery furnace. Perhaps more will make it in t h e success ion of tr ies, at least to a more endurable degree, in sp i t e of the heat. Others in considerable numbers will again b e consumed by their i l lusions. T h e dynamics of the illu- s ions are basically the same for both entrepreneur- sh ip and for matrimony. In bus iness the illusion that draws men in is tha t of a free and open competitive opportunity for everyone who tries. In marriage, it is the frequent illusion of e te rna l bliss and romance for everyone who rec i tes the vows.

As t he continued survival of t h e entrepreneur system sugges ts , in s p i t e of the many individual failures, perhaps the system of marriage will also go on. Indeed, marriage a s a cultural institution ante- dated the present economic system by many centuries. This would sugges t tha t we should adjust our s igh t s on what to expect o r want of marriage a s a more real- i s t i c measure of its s u c c e s s rather than try to so lve it merely by new divorce l aws and procedures on the one hand or t he making of dras t ic changes in the system itself on the other, although clearly new divorce l aws are almost mandatory and modifications and changes in the marriage system will most l ikely occur.

In order to preserve our i l lusion of an open competitive free enterprise society, we have con- tinually modified the nature and structure of our economy and how it functions in serving people’s needs. Increasingly, we have considered it a matter of official public policy that t h e welfare of the general public must be perserved, not jus t the welfare of those who have t h e wisdom, ingenuity, strength, guile o r gall to survive as the economic fittest. Mar- riage a s a more v iab le institution may also reasonably be expected to continue in some acceptab le form well into t h e foreseeable future meeting human needs more broadly, not jus t for those who a r e pure in heart o r l i ve b y acceptab le puritan moral codes.

If we expec t marriage in some form, akin t o the institution we now know, to survive as an acceptable part of our culture, we will have to .g ive more consideration to dynamic needs of those who l ive together under various shades of marital pleasure, fulfillment, unrest, d i sassoc ia t ion and discomfort. The probabilities a r e tha t we willoverview the failure of t h e marriage w e know as a n acceptable, comfort- ab le and workable relationship if we assume an arbitrary, rigid either/or approach to changes in our culture and cultural p rac t ices relating to marriage and family.

Change in the structure of marriage a lone wil# not guarantee its continued validity. Without some modification in t h e expectations of those who kcep inexorably moving into t h e experience once, twice and often three o r more times, structural changes will be fruitless. T h e forms we create, whether by legal fiat, by contract between the parties, or b y any other external determination, wi l l

b e no better and bring no more acceptable stabil i ty than the validity of t he demands and expectations of those who marry.

We are part of an inherently puritan, moral- i s t ica l ly ordered culture. Some of the expectations of our spoken mores for marriage a re neither attain- able nor morally necessary in today’s world and the future we face. T h e fact is that universal lifelong monogamy does not ex i s t any longer and that a “ser ia l or consecutive polygamy,” to u s e the phrase of Mervyn Cadwallader in an article in t h e November, 1966, i s sue of Atlantic, is a statistical fact. Men and women in significant numbers now go through life with more than one husband or wife. T h i s will probably increase. It is not a new phenomenon. Succes- s i v e marriages were widely known to prior gener- ations. Death often removed a partner at an early enough age to allow for more than a late life short term remarriage. In th i s context perhaps an histori- ca l ly cons is ten t case might b e m d e for the position taken by some for a sys tem of success ive marriages as -a healthy, constructive and morally acceptable s t a t e of our culture to meet the changing dynamic demands of each of the marriage partners throughout their years. Certainly marriage t o the end of time will not b e universal. Where people, who are neither s a d i s t s nor masochists, endure misery, hostility, frustration and often pure ha te a s acceptable alter- na t ives to the disapprobation of relatives, of friends, of church assoc ia tes , of soc ie ty in general, or of even their own self concept, that choice of alter- na t ives is mutually destructive to the marriage partners and to children who a re dependent on parents for a large part of their acculturation. Continuing to perserve such a marriage because our m o r e s s a y we should, if moral judgments are in order, would certainly be the least des i rab le alternative in a con- structively moral as well as practical sense.

Many treat t h e terms “marriage” and “fam- i1y”as synonymous. I d o not see them a s being the same, though they may not b e mutually exclusive. It might help u s to ad jus t to some needed re-evaluations of marriage if w e could accept the premise that the future of one need not b e the same as the future of t h e other. Husband and wife may dissolve their marriage without a real dissolution of the family. T h e dissolution of t he marriage may in fac t be essent ia l to family preservation. Many husbands and wives, as fathers and mothers l iving with their children under the same roof, have no collective relationship with one another and the children that c a n be construc- t ively conceived a s anything l ike a family. Dissolu- t ion of the marriage may b e the s ing le external factor making possible the restructuring of a relationship between parents and children so t ha t there may be some elements of “family” stability. T h e evidence I have seen in ten years of judicial experience p lus fifteen prior years as a practicing attorney sugges t s tha t a good divorce or separation may be incalculably superior to a bad marriage, for t he children as well as t h e parties. Keeping a tense, hostile, husband and wife relationship going for the benefit of the

2

children is likely to defeat this noble purpose for sacrifice.

Let u s assume that the marriage relation- rrbip can be inherently constructive. Let u s assume that it is not necessary to move into a society of free love and unregulated marital musical chairs in order to overcome the present trend toward the mabidity of institutionalized marriage. Let us assume for the moment that no great structural change can be or will be m a d e in marriage - can’t it s t i l l b e made to work more effectively? This brings us back t o the original question: “What Do We Want From Marriage?”

Marriage and the family grew out of another age. W e must look a t it starting from that premise. That does not m a k e i t irrelevant now, but it should assist u s in being intelligently critical of our present forms, practices and expectations. Marriage and the creation of the family in an historical sense developed in economies, civilizations and cultures totally unrelated to the life we live today. If i t s form, nature and function grew out of the culture which produced it we must be prepared to consider it today in the culture in which i t must survive. T h e fact that it has survived a s an institution through centuries of change suggests an inherent quality of permanence. It has not, however, always been the same during its centuries of survival. Permanence a d not mean unchangeability. It h a s survived as an institutional form, but its particular form has changed and varied greatly. In the course of future history we must expect that it will change further. If it were necessary today t o develop an entirely new institution to serve the desirable, useful and important functions which marriage can serve, and which we really want it to serve, it would probably bear scant resemblance to the institution of today.. Yet this is the institution with which we still seek to live without change or variation and about which we speak with much sophistry and reverent tones in public, in church, in legislative hal ls and in the courts as though it is an immutable icon that must not be altered in the least.

The #l.. . current concept of marriage,” according to Lederer and Jackson in their recent book, “The Mirages of Marriage,” ll. . . is anchored socially. legally and psycholoEically in anachronisms and therefore is widely unworkable. MarriaRe today is a disappointment. It is a relationship too frequent- fy not relished but endured.” Cadwallader is a li t t le more blunt. He says: ll. . . that contemporaw mar- riaee is a wretched institution.”

Returning to Lederer and Jackson: ‘lOn their wedding day, a young men and a young woman. . . usually have a high opinion of one another. They overflow with joyous thoughts, Each h a s a firm in- tention of pleasing and nourishing the . . . other . . . Some years later (the highest incidence of divorce, excluding teenagers, is after ten years or so), these erne two people may be living in a chronic situation of hirte, fear d confusion.”

What went wrong?

We are asking too much of marriage! People have been taught to accept on faith, s a n s logic, and and as infinite truth, that marriage is sacred, etemal- ly beautiful, always loving, totally fulfilling, thor- oughly pleasurable, wannly romantic, gloriously erotic, permanent, enduring and immutable. Two people with divergent and independent personalities are expected to merge and become one. People cannot be individualistic or separate personalities and m e e t these demanding expectations of marriage,. Yet personal individualism is the hallmark of the present and the future. The loving young bride and groom in a haze of sentiment expect that those few differences which they have been told may arise can be resolved with a s m i l e , a kiss and a little loving kindness. All that is needed, we tell them is commitment. It is a shimmering bubble dream for life. Neither logic, experience, nor statist ical evidence will support it.

People who have had the capacity to be hostile a t various times throughout all of the rest of the interpersonal experiences of their lives, to brothers, to sisters, to teachers, t o parents, to friends and acquaintances, to political leaders, t o neighbors, to other peoples of other cultures, of other colors and other lands, frequently striking out or responding in anger, on occasion acting out actual hate, a t times even cruelly and venomously,’ are now expected, by the catalytic action of wedlock, somehow to change chemically solely because of that “holy” bond. There is no natural law in the structure and function of the universe or i ts inhabitants that has ever been demonstrated which produces such total harmony in either human or cosmic relationship under circumstances which would otherwise be characterized universally by opportunities for abrasive action and reaction. I can hear it said that the universe is indeed orderly and harmonious. It may be orderly -- but it is not totally harmonious. There are tremendous explosions going on constantly in space, and they have been occuring since the beginning of time. Indeed we may be one result of such an environmental cataclysm.

The volatile character of action - reaction - and response, which we observe in dealing with the physical and chemical properties of nature, we know may at t i m e s be modified by a careful matching of those properties as they are brought together in chemical and other scientific experiments. It is un- doubtedly true that a like careful scientific approach to the matching of human males and females, who would otherwise be thrown together into close and lengthy personal contact almost always by chance, might a lso result in a substantial lessening of the subsequent volatility in their personal reactions to each other, In a totally planned and eugenic society we could probably approximate greater comfort and stability with man and woman. I am an individualist and an ardent advocate of the rights of people t o determine their own personal destiny. Perhaps I am a

3

cultural captive, I would not propose such an anti- septic, ordered state where mating would be all mechanized and computerized. We all, even after t h e years move pas t us, still dream. I still retain a cer- ta in s e n s e of the romantic, even in the face of t h e tealism of time. But individualism and freedom of choice to be real and acceptable d o not have to b e predicated on misinformation, upon myths, upon superstitions, upon cultural dishonesty nor upon ignorance. We don’t need to become computerized in order to become aware of t he truth about u s and what makes the human t ick as h e does. We might, however, offer more exposure to extant knowledge and mom opportunity for intelligent and carefully considered personal choice tha t in turn might lead to less abrasive prospects for the personal relationship of marriage. We need not plan other people’s marriages in the fashion of royalty (although some cul tures have and d o with s u c c e s s in their own terms), but we might make it ea s i e r for those who choose to get married to understand more about t he b a s e s for t he choice they will make of a mate. The re is no such thing as a standard normal marriage to which all should b e expected t o conform. What may be the ingredients for s u c c e s s in the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Adams may be entirely irrelevant t o the needs of the relationship of Mr. and Mrs. Brown living in the next block. Being ab le to pair with a mate with whom life’s adjustments a r e minimized o n whatever basis they may choose t o live it is likely to be considerably more realist ic than taking two people into marriage and expecting them to conform to some external normal standard.

People in love have a sort of s e n s e of romantic immortality as they move into their relation- sh ip of marriage. Most people believe in the inevi- tability of death and are quite aware of the pos- sibil i ty of violent death. Yet t hese same people never quite accept t h e s e as applicable to their own personal lives. Tragedy awaits others -- “not me,” Almost everyone h a s an intangible s e n s e of personal infinity. In a comparable sense , in t he face of hostility, tensions, conflicts and even hate, probably present to some degree in their own families as chi ldren a n d wh ich h a v e b e e n very p reva len t i n the soc ie ty in which they were acculturated, and in the face of a universal awareness of a high d ivo rce rate throughout the country, virtually every couple getting married today for pure romance and sen t i - mental love, expecting it to continue to the end of time, must have achieved a remarkable s t a t e of in- sulation. They have failed to relate the obvious f a c t s of their daily environmental l ife to their own future marital relationship. In some way they expec t their marriage to function out of t h i s context. When the inevitable discord comes to sha t te r t h i s sacred image, they a re not prepared to handle it. It was never rupposecl to happen to them.. The i r s was to be the perfect love. They got married under the Elizabeth Barrett-Robert Browning poetic syndrome.

In our cultural practices, at what d o we point the finger for this phenomenon? Virtually

every aspec t is involved. T h e educational process - whether it be through parents and family, through teachers, through churches, through the communi- ca t ion media, or through general exposure to the overall culture, keeps feeding young people, most of whom will become married, a lie about life. Making marriage appear to b e something it seldom is does not become the truth merely because it describes a hopeful moral goal.

Education does little or nothing in t h e ear ly years of learning, when education is most meaningful, to help children effectively to understand those dynamic face ts of life which may b e more important to them than most of their other curricular courses of ladled information. Nowhere do we ever really leve l with young minds about the problems, the anxieties, t h e tensions, t h e conflicts and other rea l i t i es of marriage which must be expected along with its many p leasures and joys.

Marriage courses and cour ses in family planning in our schools seldom r i se above senti- mental vacuities until t he co l lege leve l , if even then. By then it may b e too late. We spend too much of the educational process in college overcoming the failures of elementary and secondary education in all of its aspects, not jus t family l ife education. As with t h e racist injustices of America, we need to start te l l ing about all of l ife l ike it is, including the intimate nature, function and reali t ies of marriage. Until we do we’ll never b e able to dea l with, much less so lve its failures. L i f e is not all bad and marriage is not all discord. But there is bad in life and and there is disharmony in marriage. Education which ignores or hushes t h e s e total a spec t s of truth is teaching those who are going to become married a collection of falsehoods.

There a re too many irrelevant reasons im- pell ing people into marriage. Out of these comes predictable discord. What are some of the more fre- guent dreams for marriage that point t he course to failure: One common dream of those who marry is that children will mean t h e building of a happy home. There is a broad assumption that children will help knit husband and wife more c lose ly together. Couples who marry for t h i s reason or who try to avoid divorce by th i s means have an expectant hope of creating a great oneness of many. T h e s e confident hopes as a

eneral expectation for marriage must have arisen

It is true that some marriages may be solidified by the addition of children. Children may and often do bring happiness to a marriage. Many marriages, however, are indeed destroyed by their advent on the scene. I t doesn’t have to t ake evil , irresponsible and unconcerned people as parents for t h i s to happen. Fa thers c a n be good fathers and mothers good mothers, each loving their children dearly, and s t i l l have the husband and wife relationship crack under t h e burdens, t h e responsibil i t ies and the intrusions of children on it.

out 5- o a so r t of inherent human capacity for mysticism.

4

In t h e early historical development of family life, children were not produced by parents pri- marily because they were expected to b e loving entities. In addition to serving t h e function of Nature to procreate and preserve the spec ie s , it is probable that children served principally a functional purpose for the group in its sus tenance and preservation. Love and affection were by-products of the child 's existence, not causes . It w a s Nature's infinitely wi se mechanism for preserving the species through the protective dynamics of the emotion we call parental love. Pa ren t s did not have children because they loved them, they loved them because they had tbem.

Each child was an added mouth to feed and an added life to protect; each was also, however, a producer, hopefully, of more than he consumed, end each added member to t h e family added another force for protection and defense against the encroach- ing forces of man and nature from without. Each also served as a member of the social group from which came m o s t of t h e a spec t s for t h e enjoyment of life, its entertainment and i t s education. Children, at s o m e time in the development of the family, had a neces- sa ry and occasionally an enjoyable function t o perform. T h e functions were real for them, for their patents and for the family. They had dignity, respect and s t a t u s because they were needed and the need was very real. Thei r functions were not artificially created as are most of the dut ies , chores and par- ticipation, if any, of today. Within a family, c lan , tribe, or community sett ing, t h e s e responsibil i t ies served to make the ch i ld a useful, needed and therefore acceptable part of the complex, a fact which rarely e x i s t s any longer.

T h e s e n s e of personal worth that comes from being needed and therefore respected h a s been lost to children, whether as a part of t h e family or of t he community, in the growth of an industrial soc ie ty that h a s become increasingly technological, automated a id almost totally impersonal. Today, children a re generally a n economic and a social liability. As a result they tend also to become per- sona l l iabil i t ies. They are by and large ves t ig ia l appendages of the family and of the community. They feel this fact of life. They consume and do not produce. They occupy but seldom contribute in any meaningful material s ense . There a re no adequate outlets within the family for their minds, their ambitions, their energies or their s e n s e of inquiry and adventure. Consequently, they may b e a most disruptive force in the home serving as a real threat to the husband and wife's relationship with e a c h other. Neither c a n children realist ically re lease their spiri t of inquiry, of adventure, and energies outs ide the home. Society wants them to conform peacefully abd quietly to the tired needs of t h e adult world for comfort and as little change as possible. T h e child's one function still l e f t to serve h i s soc ie ty is to fight its wars. T h i s no longer serves the glorious purpose it may have in the romantic past . Pa ren t s

and adult authority in the community are, in effect, say ing to the children, put your l i ves on t h e l ine but p l ease don't challenge our c i tade ls and standards of morality. W e now know the young are buying t h i s less and less.

Children alone a re not, therefore, enough to make every marriage a workable relationship. They a r e a a secure goal for contentment, and may indeed be a dynamic force toward marital collapse.

American culture is almost totally schizo- phrenic when it ge t s into the area of life's sexual aspec t . Stimulation of libido is implicit in our entire consumer economy and culture. It is blatantly, subt ly and subliminally before our e y e s and ears in virtually everything we wear, read, ea t , smoke, drink and much of what we are stimulated t o think. Virtually all advertising and public incitement to consume the p roduc t s of a d i v e r s e economy fall in t h i s category. Cigarette ads , the .glories of the laundress, commercials for new cars , most billboards defacing nature, and every avenue of entertainment invite US to fan tas ize upon the intimate p leasures of sexual assoc ia t ions and ergo its expression and gratification. Of course they may not quite s a y as much -- but that 's what it a l l comes down to. Commercially American soc ie ty is collectively spreading its tail fea thers l ike a flock of peacocks vending their wares. Then , when ttie feathers attract what they're sup- pose to, we become fearful and frantic. Because of t h i s constant commercial glorification of and pre- occupation with the physical t i t i l lat ing a spec t s o f sex, it should not be surprising that, in t he e y e s of many who go into marriage, sexual gratification becomes the anticipation, t& expression and the glue of holy matrimony. Erotic love and romance become the measure of the s u c c e s s of t h e marriage.

Somewhere along t h e l i ne of our culture, while we construct our consumer economy on the glories and anticipation of c81e difference," we also surround it with taboos tha t make it forbidding and forbidden. Young people a re being whipped into libidinous anticipation by everything they see and hear and even by what is expected of them by their parents, their church, their school and their soc ie ty in t h e culture of personal popularity and acceptance. They are then expected to restrain theniselves until some later undefined time when, it is hoped, they will b e ready to handle t h e drive maturely. No one, however, is q u i t e able to explain what t h i s maturity is and when i t occurs. They won't wait. Sex i s an expression of natural energy that will not be stimulated in t h e young only to have them exerc ise infinite patience and restraint. They hear, they see, and they observe. They try to b e popular and accepted as their adult culture seems to want. They play, they explore, they inquire, they act out their roles, they find and they experience. When the l ikely resu l t s of inquiry, experimentation, experien ce and release develop, mama and papa, in righteous indignation and hypocritical shock, rush them through a marriage,

5

should b e acceptable to m e e t their own needs during the passing years of their marriage. The plethora of literature on the subject does l i t t le to help. They vary so greatly couples may find themselves in a constant on-going process of laboratory analysis as they try the various formulas as a result of which their uncertainty becomes compounded.

Physical s e x even at i t s best will carry two people only so far. They had better have other qualities of love experience and expression as well. Bedtime is only a part of married time.. Adequate sexual expression is a broader concept and means more than the exhilaration of horizontal intercourse. Our taboos about s e x make i t difficult to develop these concepts and lift the burdens of guilt, however. Taboos lead t o ignorance and ignorance in turn leads t o marital frustration and misery. It is probable that the blueprint for this frustration and misery began while the child was s t i l l stacking h i s blocks and learning his alphabetical A B C’s. That’s where we’ll have to start to redraw the blueprints with life’s A B C’s as a part of the earliest learning processes.

T h e marriage counselors of the Conciliation Court tell m e the most usual needs articulated by couples seeking to avoid marital disintegration are, according to wives, adequate “expression of love” by the husband, and “fulfillment” of life, according to husbands. What should be expected by the wife as the “expression of love” and what does the husband mean by “fulfillment?’s A spouse who seeks the constant “expression of love” from the other spouse as a normal experience of marriage may be making an unmeetable demand. A husband will not always be loving. Th i s does not mean that h e does not love. The sensit ive wife may, however, take i t t o mean that h e no longer loves her. No man or woman can always be loving. If people are led t o expect this and therefore insist upon such constancy, their marriage will not succeed a s they wish, although they may s tay together. Th i s is one of the unreali- t i e s which we build into our preparation for marriage. It is not life as it is. Each spouse will have to ex- press opposite emotions from t i m e t o time. People would be marital automatons or catatonic if they didn’t. There may well be occasions when the husband will make it abundantly clear he doesn’t feel loving and may even have feelings akin t o hate for his wife. So also will the wife. The expression of the emotion of hostility need not be destructive nor mean the absence of love. T h e inability to ex- press it may well be, If the spouse is conditioned by training and culture to think it is, however, so it will be!.

often with the support of church, school and state, in order to give the baby a name, or to protect their darling’s honor or to do what is morally right. If it b e argued that parents and society don’t always do this, the fact is they do allow it. They do l i t t le t o Intelligently discourage it and still less to protect the groping young, through realist ic preparation and awareness of the facts a s they really ere, from the tragedies of immature marriage. Most of these marriages wi l l become divorce statist ics, Their failure is sealed with the “I do,’’ The failure is a cultural product.

I am not an expert on the psychological effect of the 88pill.’’ It’s much too la te for that. What the ultimate effect of the “pill” may be upon the institution of marriage is st i l l to be learned. It is apparent, however, that i t h a s made its impact in in many ways and will make s t i l l more impact on the whole structure of marriage in the future. A s far as the stability of marriage is concerned, I suspect it may have many positive potentialities. It may wel l reduce the number of early divorces of the young. I worry less about i ts potential indiscriminate use than I do about what happens to children, many of whom come before the courts in various ways, who are led into pregnancy because our culture keeps pushing t h e m into bed inadequately informed and inadequately ptepared for its consequences. A t least it can sup- ply youngsters, who have i n the past and will in the future continue to experiment with life’s processes, some protection against the failure of parents, the churches and the educational system, in an equivocal society, t o properly prepare them. Before we get excessively excited about what the pill may do t o the mpral conduct of the young, w e should first consider the moral effects of our own variable standards and practices.

At least “love” should b e enough to insure a h q p y marriage! Is it? It may depend on what love really is. I know of no singularly adequate definition. In our culture when we speak or think of love we usually mean romance. Those going into marriage who think in terms of romantic love as the adhesive for marriage and who expect such love t o remain a s glorious as its anticipation are not quite ready for what they may ultimately face, no matter how great their “commitment.” Ardor generally cools. The cool- ing process is legitimate. That does not mean that warm love is less valid than hot or romantic love -- but we tend t o believe it is. Guilt, recrimination, lack of self-respect and doubt may s e t in a s people’s drives and desires, affected by many impinging forces, do not measure t o what they think they should ht quantity and quality a s an expression of g810ve.” The truth is that there is no standard for normality that all couples should expect for their life from the Godess Eros.

Mast marriages need adequate sexual expression to endure. Few really know, however, t he kind, quality or frequency of that expression which

“Fulfillment” in life, including marriage, must be the basic longing of all; man, woman or child. The chances, in any specific marital situation, however, when the husband s a y s he lacks fulfillment, a r e that he is really saying: “the marriage, wife and the kids have somehow gotten in my way, I feel tied

6

down, and I can’t be what destiny expected of me.” He hasn’t made h i s nebulous mark in life. H e really has not been fulfilled so h e blames it on the marriage and family relationships. Rather than shoulder a proper share of the responsibility h e tends to pro- jec t blame on those around him. It’s a challenge to h i s w i fe and children not to depend too much, nor expect too much of him. H e h a s m i s s e d the point as widely as the wife who demands t h e expression of unceasing “love.” He’s probably struggling with a chronological si tuational r e s t l e s sness he doesn’t understand. T h e s e two expectations -- “love” and “fulfillment,” when properly understood for what they really a re in a particular marriage -- c a n b e helped by insightful counseling. They are under- stendable and modifiable. Given the interpretation of moral absolu tes they become barriers that will defeat the marriage.

How often h a s marriage been used to sat- isfy the des i r e t o escape? More people than we know go into marriage to e scape something or someone. It may be home or mother or father or school o r church o r a c lose friend who’s pressing too much or the pressures of society or just t o escape personal Ioneliness. In th i s war-torn and widely unjust world, there is l i t t l e t he young can grasp and hold on t o that seems valid and real to them. There is little the adult culture h a s offered that gives real meaning. They are adrift upon a sea of their own uncertainty and the adult world’s hypocrisy or at bes t lack of understanding. Marriage may seem the only meaningful relationship to offer subs tance for their l ives. They u s e marriage a s an escape . T h e reali t ies are tha t t hese things they seek from marriage c a n seldom be realized. T h e moment the s t e p is taken the young have joined tha t very world from which they s e e k escape. Those who seek to e scape loneliness may find that it is possible t o b e lonely in marriageas we!!, for the personal cause of loneliness will probably remain. I t is a los t cause for most marriages entered for reasons of escape. An uncom- fortably high percentage of marriages fa l l i n t h i s category. They may find the substi tution of a different s e t of pressures and anxieties for the. ones from which escape is sought. Because it is a legally defined relationship from which further escape is inhibited by lega l requirements, t he pressures taken on in marriage for that kind of person may be even more difficult to cope with than those h e thought h e left behind. He will find e scape into marriage a simpler ptocess than e s c a p e from it.

Marriage seldom brings realization of t h e s e special dreams of young first-time love, in a penna- nent and stable sense . Nor will it meet the dreams of frustrated second- and third-time love if t he parties have not absorbed the significance of the i r prior experiences. Adults too are ens laved by the unreality and all too often fa l se concepts built iilto our thought processes while still young enough to absorb truth had it been made available. T h e reasons for failure are bas i c to the culture itself.

Those who marry too often fail t o recognize the essent ia l individuality of each party and the necess i ty for constant accommodation and reaccom- modation to that individuality. At the same time each party should b e ab le to a s k the expectation of one’s own expression of life.. Marriage need not, indeed must not be considered solely a oneness of two people. A s the poet Cibran sa id so beautifully, “Let there be s p a c e in your togetherness.” Yet there must not b e s p a c e alone. For the s p a c e to be significant and not m e r e loneliness, there must also be togetherness. John Donne, three centuries ago, said, “ N o man is an island, entire of itself.” N o man, in an organized, economic, politically and functionally interdependent society, can function as an island independently of everyone e l se . W e accept that. Tha t soc ie ty would be social , political and economic anarchy. Man is essent ia l ly a soc ia l interdependent, independant being.. If so, it is not asking something unique in the maniage t o s a y that e a c h needs to be mutually interdependent as well as individually independent.

At the heart of the many problems of marriage as a viable institution is the fact that we have removed marriage from the stream of man’s natural instincts, inclinations and practices. We have placed it upon an idealized mountain, expecting it to be separate, apart and entirely different from other human associations. Of course marriage is different. It is different, however, only in kind and function. It is not really different with respect to most of the human needs of i t s members. T h e same people enter into and l ive in marriage who live in the rest of the world of wh ich marr iage is but a part . T h e i r basic wishes and des i r e s are substantially the same here as in the rest of their lives. Marriage is a product of man’s needqno t i t s end. Marriage, as other a spec t s of life, will b e faced with inevitable con- fl icts, t ens ions and angers, with possible cruelt ies and mistrust. It can also be filled with i t s peculiar opportunities and capacity for unique pleasure, warmth, love, concern, contentment, excitement and fulfillment. All of t h e s e opposites may b e experienc- e d in the same marriage, jointly by both parties and individually by each. T h e negative experiences must also be anticipated. T h e successfu l marriage is the one in which the posit ive experiences though not exc lus ive will clearly predominate. Our problem is how do we get there.

What we think we want out of marriage, which it cannot produce because we set it a s ide as somehow strangely and totally unique, a re not the e s sen t i a l wants and needs of t h e human as a rational feeling being. What we think we want when we speak of romantic love, about unspoiled, beautiful “love till death d o u s pact,” about marriages made in heaven, about constant and warm affection, about relationships untainted by thoughts and expressions of other relationships, and about the pure joy of having children to further cement the union, a re largely erroneous, unfounded, and cruelly irrelevant

7

platitudes. T h e s e hopes for marriage too often lead people into a tunnel of despair without any concept pad understanding of what they may find after they enter. They are left to grope their way to a light they hope must be there somewhere but which too many cannot find and few c a n find without highly perceptive help.

Much h a s been sa id and written about changes that might b e accomplished in the structure and form of marriage to make it a more workable and comfortable institution. We may talk all we want about different forms of marriage, about five-year terminable or renewable marriage contracts, about premarital tr ial experiences and about a s e r i e s or ruccess ion of marriages throughout life, with marriages for the young years and their more physical romantic drives, other marriages for the middle years when Children and the world of economic survival occupy a dominant role, or for t h e middle-aged years when the children are gone and t i m e is available to expand l i fe into new areas, or for t he elderly and a life of quiet companionship without answering the basic problems. It is doubtful that the answers to the problems of marriage are to b e found in any of these.

A consecutive continuum of polygamous relationships to meet current needs of l i fe at different ages and to avoid conflicts of frustration may indeed be realistic. Arguing t h e validity or invalidity of some of these philosophies is irrelevant t o the real heart of the problem. A culture with success ive marriages is not new to American life. T h e main difference is tha t now we move from one living spouse to another. Marital change no longer depends upon t h e misfortune of an early death. Yesterday t h e survivor who wished to remarry w a s ab le to do so with society’s approval, provided he was not too eager to start anew. Today th i s re lease m u s t generally come by divorce, not death. In reality, however, the l i fe that h a s a success ion of marriages is basi- ca l ly the same whether it be the g ras s widow or t h e sod widow.

None of the many concepts about t he forms of marriage, including support of its present s t a tus , c a n be as constructive as they might, and m o s t changes in the form of marriage would b e largely unnecessary if we could ever exc i se from our mores about the institution of marriage the pretty sounding moralisms, the ignorant c l iches , the pious proverbs, the beauteous poeticisms, and the unsupportable sentimentalisms that follow l i t t l e boys and girls through their l ives, to the wedding altar, to the thril l and excitement of marriage’s early days, to the shock of marriage’s often harsh reality when its romance has diminished, and iinally, all too often, to t h e trauma of the broken home and the divorce court. These fa l lac ies have been foisted upon children at everyturnof their learning process. All of the culture t akes part. It’s being done by hypocritical parents, b y the prevalent irrelevancies and vacui t ies of t he

educational system’s approach to learning for life, by mystical credos about marriage which thread through t h e teachings in much of organized religion, b y the unconcerned greed of the hucksters of the great American system of affluent consumption, by the bus iness community and b y government itself. It is one of the e f fec ts of the peculiarly moralistic approach of organized soc ie ty through so many of its customs and mores; by its ostracism of those who d issent and rebel against the s t a t u s quo whether of marriage or otherwise; through society’s rules, regulations and laws relating to the creation of marriage, to t h e private l ives and conduct expected of parties during marriage; to the legal reasons and causes for which an unsuccessful marriage may b e dissolved; and to the destructive judgmental and adversary lega l processes based on fault which soc ie ty generally offers for dealing with human pleas for humane help with the marriage and i t s problems or the need for humane dissolution in those cases where t h e par t ies have become dissa t i s f ied or dis- illusioned beyond repair and need resources beyond themselves to be able to proceed through life apart without consuming hostility.

Changes needed to meet t h e weakening s t a tuso f t he institution of marriage may b e more than one can hope for out of a culture tha t continues to l ike to kid i t se l f in so many ways. W e may therefore be fgrced to the non-substantive structural approach where people s e e k solutions through changes in its very form. W e may have to accept new concepts about the shape of marriage to soften the effects of our failure t o properly prepare ourselves for the a17 m o s t inevitable reali t ies of the relationship. T h e most urgent change that needs to b e made i n o u r philosophy of marriage, however, is not deliberate change in its structure but t o bring it down from t h e mountain, out of the clouds of a world of dreams and into the stream of life’s realities. Until we c a n d o t h i s we will succeed in nothing we may try to do. We will b e forever treating the symptoms of marital unrest after they occur when it may already be too late rather than considering what may be done to make marriage t h e m ore comfortable, w orkable, acceptable and stabil izing institution of our culture tha t it c a n and should be.

Marriage is probably the oldest of all man‘s institutions. Though there is much talk to the con- trary, it will probably continue in some form throughout t he remainder of humanity’s years upon the earth. Most married couples cling tenaciously to their marriage even when it is very uncomfortable. It is not l ikely that man’s answer will be to do away with marriage i tself as an institution. Man may find some way to eliminate the human race before h e so lves the social problems which plague him.

On t h e outside chance that t he race does survive, c a n we not turn to making th i s institution which in some way affects man’s life from the cradle to the grave, one tha t is based upon a n awareness

a

and understanding that comes f rom intelligent informed realism? Marriage ought to be more than a trap by nature to preserve the species. It has more potential than that. It should be more than a titillating dream of anticipation for the young lover. It should be comfortable, satisfying and stimulating to the personal

and joint dignity of each of i t s members. It can only do this if those who marry have been emotionally prepared for and made intellectually aware of all of its potentialities, negative and positive, so that they may be able to meet i ts demands a s well a s enjoy its pleasures, knowing that both wi l l occur.

I KNOW YOU BELIEVE YOU UNDERSTOOD WHAT YOU THINK I SAID,

BUT I A M NOT SURE YOU REALIZE THAT WHAT YOU HEARD IS NOT WHAT I MEANT.

9

Documents

“WE ARE ASKING TOO MUCH OF MARRIAGE”