From: kendall@adobe.com (Janice Kendall)
Subject: Re: short marriages
Organization: Adobe Systems Incorporated
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 16:59:26 GMT

In article <1992Apr3.041130.10969@ccu.umanitoba.ca> kaarts@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Kenneth John Aarts) writes:
>In <1992Apr2.200144.16834@adobe.com> kendall@adobe.com (Janice Kendall) writes:
>
>
>In article <1992Apr2.040513.9533@ccu.umanitoba.ca>, kaarts@ccu.umanitoba.ca
>(Kenneth John Aarts) says:
>
>>Why is divorce necessarily irratioanal?  I can imagine deciding ahead of time
>>'Hey. lets try this marriage thing.  We can re-evaluate the relationship
>>five years from now.'  Have a wonderful five years, but still decide to move
>>on.
>
>> Evaluation period?  Why not just live together - or live apart and be engaged
>> for 5 years?  What if a child is born during this evaluation period?  Divorce
>> is very hard on children.
>
>Living together is a common-law marriage.  Why be engaged for 5 years with
>no plan of marrying?  Why have a child when you only plan to be together
>for a few years?  I know many happy couples who have decided to forego
>parenthood.

 Living together is common-law in only a few states (California and Texas
 come to mind).

 What does marriage actually do for the relationship?  The only benefit *for
 me* is the legal status.  Although I can establish legal status through other
 measures.

 If you don't have a sense of knowing that this is the right person for you,
 you definitely would not want to do something, like have a child, which will
 essentially bind that person to you for the rest of the child's life.

 I am involved in such a relationship where we are committed, not married,
 and have decided not to have our own children.  Later, we may adopt older
 children.  For now, we have 12 nieces and nephews to help out.

>
>> If we were totally rational, we would be sure of the person we were marrying.
>
>True.  I can imagine being absolutely positively sure that I want to spend
>the next 5 years with this partner, and be very happy for that period.
>
>> We would not marry out of lonliness avoidance.  
>
>They're is a difference between establishing a relationship for the
>companionship, and expecting the companionship to automatically be there.
>Marrying someone so that you will have a soul-mate is stupid.  Marrying
                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>someone because they are currently a soul-mate is an option.

 Did I say that?  No.

>
>> Love does not cure all..
>
>Yet you seem to be advocating that there exists that one true person who
>will be right for all time.  This would seem to be a romantic delusion.

 From my experience and what I have seen, this is not a romantic delusion.
 What IS a romantic delusion is that if you find the one person who is right
 for you, that you don't have to still work at the relationship.  You do.
 You also have to be open to accepting love - and I would bet that many
 people sabotage good relationships because they don't trust or believe
 that the other person really cares about them (because they don't like
 or care for themself).

>
>Ken
   
 Janice Kendall    kendall@adobe.com    ...!{decwrl|sun}!adobe!kendall

        "Giving power and money to the government is like giving 
         whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."  

		- P.J. O'Rourke, former gulf war correspondant, summing
		up what he learned during two years of research on how
		our government functions.


Newsgroups: soc.women