Thoughts on Marriage

After discussing marriage and relationships the past two nights and those thoughts are still fresh in my mind, I'll attempt to describe my views on relationships and marriage.

Before I begin let me argue that both men and women are wonderful beings in their own right, equally. When I think of other animals I realize I have no strong preference for male over female or vice versa when it comes to pets and those animals I care about.

I think marriage is an inherently flawed institution (like so many others) in that it condones man and woman living together in what is quite often anything but harmonious, forget about loving.

Second, when I think about how many friends I have that are in "happy" relationships with their partner, I have a hard time thinking of more than just one, out of about ten couples or so that I feel I can comment on. My parents divorced, my friends' parents divorced, and of the parents that didn't divorce I knew plenty that were much less than happy.

Third, I consider myself (at least at this time, and for the past 2 years or so) "happy" right now, and I'm pretty sure that if I keep doing the things I've been doing for the past 2 years (work, yoga, hiking) that I can continue to be happy.

10,000 years ago (500 years ago in the United States) we raised our children in tribes, where there was a much greater sense of unity among most people (i.e. because children had multiple caretakers that were part of the tribe). These parents thus raised their kids in what I believe was the most natural state to raise a child in, and more children were both mentally healthy as well as physically healthy than those today I would venture to guess.
No doubt the newborn mortality rate was much higher then, but then a lower newborn mortality rate doesn't equal a more healthy society.

However I understand and fully appreciate there must be some system (if not an institution) in place to raise our children. Perhaps marriage is the best that we can do today and for the immediate future, regarding out children.

Also I understand and fully appreciate that the world we live in today is far from perfect, and that it is very possible that our way of living contributes to the broken relationships we have today.

It is too bad that divorce is often the best, if not only, solution for dealing with a partner who is delusional in his or her expectation of the other (or delusional in any other number of ways for that matter). I sense many delusional expectations on either side, including a man who expects his partner to not suspect or not find out that he cheats on her with regularity, or a woman who uses her reproductive organs to control her man.

Perhaps a solution to today's marriage would be to have marriages with 3-4 levels of commitment, including the right to have sex outside the marriage, maintain fully independent bank accounts, etc. But that would surely get killed by our status quo.