Maggie's Farm

I'm old fashioned. You marry for one of two reasons (ideally for both at once): either because you are hopelessly, passionately, romantically in love with someone and can't live without them (the best reason) or you have made an honest and lifelong commitment to someone you hope to raise good children with, and give a stable home to. Beyond enough money for food and shelter, and some minimal independence from interfering inlaws, the only issue is can you both commit forever.

I still can't understand women like this one, even though I live amidst them in my glitzy suburban ghetto. They find me just as alien, I am sure.

As for the guy, he might want to remember that decent women do not care a hoot how much money a guy makes beyond minimal self-sufficiency and the ability to feed and educate a family. They are not impressed by more. It is usually about impressing other guys. Also, to be fair, men are wasting assets too. There are those of us who prefer to marry for love, sex and the good stuff, and definitely men fade with age, just as women do, and all that's then left are the tamer things like loyalty, companionship, memories....Also, no man these days can be sure of continuing to make more and more money or even of staying employed, so the hubris of the man replying is amusing!

They should probably get married to each other (keep all the rotten apples in the same barrel).

But what do I know!? My idea of a good time is coaching a kid to try and pass a service fitness test. Wonderfuly distracts from selfish and materialistic preoccupations...

BL, you are so right. Pre-nups are an expression of lack of faith in the relationship enduring. They are only a good idea for older people who already have kids and who are re-marrying, to preserve the inheritance from a former spouse. Then it may help soothe suspicious kids who fear that dad has fallen into the clutches of a golddigging bimbo, even if she is actually sweet as pie...

Re: #17. I agree sort of, if one thinks of marriage solely as a contract. However binding. Personally, I consider marriage a covenant, a commitment entered into not merely legally but also spiritually, under God, etc. I can't find any good links on this, most of them are kind of icky fundy ones that would have had me running screaming for the hills as a newly engaged person....But I still believe that the important part of the relationship is not the exchange of promises and penalties for breaking them legally, but the huge leap of faith it takes to make those marriage vows, how truly impossible they are in our own strength, how only with God's help can we approach it...

On a more mundane note, it is a very bad sign if a person enters a marriage having looked more carefully for the EXIT sign than deciding whether to go in at all. I endeavoured unsuccessfully to explain this to my sneering agnostic first born this weekend who was playing devil's advocate arguing the "If it isn't fun, why do it..." point of view. But it's a fairly common approach. I remember during our own fairly useless premarital counselling with a PC Congregationalist female minister recommended to us by a long married relative she asked us no hard questions about why we were marrying each other, or how we imagined coping with potential disasters in future together, but instead merely grilled us on would we each feel free to remarry in the event that one spouse died first....Huh?

In subsequent years as we contended with floods, unemployement, disabled kid, career failures, political and religious differences, financial reverses, middle age, etc. we used to laugh sometimes about the cluelessness of that unmarried minister, and at our naivete in thinking that marriage would be an easier life than life alone. As my best friend tiresomely reminds me, marriage is for grownups. When most of us would rather remain forever young, irresponsible and selfish. I suspect that any virtues or strengths of character that I possess have been developed in the effort to live out part of those marital vows and/or to be a good parent despite my own natural selfishness and sloth.

I have neve understood why people who lust after gorgeous gold diggers bother marrying them. I can see why the golddigger wants marriage, as she hopes to extract a huge divorce settlement and is planning on it while choosing the wedding menu...But from the man's perspective, in an age when you can always find some female willing to sleep with (why buy the cow, etc.) why marry them? Surely you want someone with a good character to be choosing your nursing home after raising after your children and being your daily companion (hopefully able to make you laugh) thru the stresses and travails of life? If you long for someone mercenary who is gorgeous (nothing wrong with that) go out with her, sleep with her if you must, but for God's sake don't begin a relationship that will likely bring children into the world whose life will be messed up by parents whose interest in each other was a commercial exchange.

I say this, knowing that I am no shining example of blissful Christian marriage. My spouse and I in youth fell into the reasonably attractive, healthy category, both highly educated, husband initially a high earner, myself more the humanitarian making very little wages in a vocation with long hours and great satisfactions. I was a sure bet for someone who wanted a spouse who would nurture his children and be uninterested in walking away in a divorce with half his money. What I hope we have taught our children, despite some horrendous troubles, and more than our fair share of sickness, plus predictable job stresses,etc is that keeping one's promises matters. You don't have to be religious fundy or a barnacle to believe that (barring physical abuse, other criminal behavior, chronical infidelity, or unremitted substance abuse) sticking together is A Good Thing. Both of us grew up in families where multiple generations of children had been scarred by the narcissism of parental divorces that literally blew the children's worlds apart. My parents stuck together (partly in horrified reaction) for 52 difficult but loving years until death. Both people were improved, if not always thrilled by the experience. It was certainly better for us kids.

We could never understand why Elizabeth Taylor kept marrying her paramours. Trivializing marriage.

Off to work, aware that I am no poster child.