tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post9064190609535154657..comments2024-03-25T19:48:24.624+11:00Comments on Oz Conservative: So marriage is a bit of paper?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-50527222522830161242012-04-10T11:04:09.440+10:002012-04-10T11:04:09.440+10:00We appear to be looking at a mindset I call "...We appear to be looking at a mindset I call "I am not a role, nobody wrote me!"<br /><br />It is notable that the times when women played an assigned role in society was also the time when everybody had such an assigned role. And when that role was determined by a matrix of a number of variables each of which came with advantages and disadvantages and none of which was completely to be envied. A male peasant was superior to a female peasant but a princess was superior to both. Yet a princess could get assassinated whereas, though a peasant might get murdered randomly no one would bother to assassinate a peasant. It was not pretty but emphasizing only the gender role is seeing past societies out of context.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-90980727357045145842007-04-16T06:54:00.000+10:002007-04-16T06:54:00.000+10:00Sage, your comment puts the findings of the resear...Sage, your comment puts the findings of the research in the clearest of terms.Mark Richardsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15961688379656119701noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-81681222809574678932007-04-15T12:19:00.000+10:002007-04-15T12:19:00.000+10:00Because the modern view of marriage is that it is ...Because the modern view of marriage is that it is a "50-50" affair, of course the entire relationship devolves into a vast accounting exercise. If a good marriage is one in which the two spouses divide all work and all roles in equal fashion, then the couple will work as individuals to constantly monitor the performance of the other, to be sure that they are not being cheated on the deal. After all, nobody wants to be on the wrong end of a 60-40 marriage, do they?<BR/><BR/>The traditional arrangement, because it seeks to achieve harmony based on distinctive qualities of "husband" and "wife," rather than sameness and unison of "Partner A" and "Partner B" (and who gets to be "A", anyway?), allows instead for an equation of 100-100. I will devote 100% of myself to fulfilling my special role, and you in return will do the same. It is not expected that we will do the exact same things in exactly equal measure, since as a practical matter this is impossible and we are not in any case designed to gain fulfillment by doing so.<BR/><BR/>I speak from experience, here. In my misspent you, I was a liberal, and married a liberal woman who was adamantine in her devoting to the prospect of a "50-50" marriage. This seemed so imminently sensible and fair that I could never imagine why anyone would question it.<BR/><BR/>Well, all it did was to make a traditionalist of me, albeit by slow and painful degrees. I realized that most of our most bitter arguments were founded in a sense that one or the other of us was bearing too much of one particular sort of burden--in my case, I resented that I was expected to cook more often, and that when I did so that I was willing to invest more effort in the task. <BR/><BR/>I could give numerous examples, but the point is that over time I began to feel that what I longed for so desperately was not someone who was basically like myself and whose job it was to reduce my labors by half. I needed someone quite different from me, who was eager to fulfill a role I was not emotionally suited to. When nature intruded, and we began to expect things from one another that didn't fit the "equality" model, incredibly bitter recriminations and accusations of double-dealing followed.<BR/><BR/>If I have any advice for a young man, it is to ask his fiancee-to-be two questions:<BR/><BR/>1) What is a wife?<BR/>2) What is a husband?<BR/><BR/>The answers she gives will tell you an incredible amount of information about what she expects from you, and you might be shocked to find that she has never even considered the matter consciously. Until you can enter into a marriage with these questions concretely answered, in ways that make sense at a gut as well as an intellectual level, you need to wait until you've figured out just what it is you and she think you are agreeing to. It is astonishing that most couples today never ask themselves these things, but then, perhaps that's one reason tradition is so important--it addresses questions for us that we are not especially likely to ask stop and ourselves without serious prodding.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-48017970200246739762007-04-07T08:26:00.000+10:002007-04-07T08:26:00.000+10:00Nice writeup, Mr. Richardson. When I read the wor...Nice writeup, Mr. Richardson. When I read the words of such feminists I feel like I'm staring into darkness and chaos, into the gaping maw of hell itself. It really does make me thank God for my gracious Southern American wife.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-4654757637746909462007-04-07T02:36:00.000+10:002007-04-07T02:36:00.000+10:00There also seems to be another obvious consequence...There also seems to be another obvious consequence for those women that choose a competitive/accounting based relationship and why it leads to their greater unhappiness. <BR/><BR/>It seems that such a competition appeals to many men's nature while it is unappealing to most women's nature. Women want more "emotional work" from their men, yet, competition does not bring about emotion as much as cold hard calculation. <BR/><BR/>This, in turn, requires many women to do that which will win out against cold reasoned persuasion... Rage and hate... It can paralyze many men who enjoy the competition within a relationship, but are unable to counter extreme emotion. These men see the futility of such a situation and simply quit altogether.<BR/><BR/>And even a man who gives little is better than no man who gives nothing.Thordaddyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15887901925655428541noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-90989725122947505122007-04-07T02:01:00.000+10:002007-04-07T02:01:00.000+10:00We appear to be looking at a mindset I call "I am ...We appear to be looking at a mindset I call "I am not a role, nobody wrote me!"<BR/><BR/>Marriage, being a venerable institution strongly associated with specific and well defined gender roles, offends those who are offended by the roles themselves. Such persons are normally inclined to blur or efface sex differences, consider their bond to their gender the most important of their affiliations, and are more than typically inclined to interpret conventional inter-gender gestures -- e.g., a gentleman holds the door for a lady, gives up his seat on the bus for her, and interposes himself between her and potential threats -- as somehow insulting.<BR/><BR/>Reality, of course, is indifferent to our opinions, and sex differences are quite real. Quite a number of American women have discovered, in recent years, that they've been conned about the "fulfillment" available in the world of business and commerce. Retrospectively, they'd have preferred a conventional wife/mother/homemaker script to the one they chose to follow, but of course, there are some choices one cannot unmake.<BR/><BR/>There are many ironies here, not the least of them the pseudo-individualism of eschewing marriage and children because a gaggle of feminist harridans have told you to do so.Francis W. Porrettohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05862584203772592282noreply@blogger.com