Wednesday Witterings
The State of the Union
The other day someone was telling me about how they are in a band - four guys, one girl, & how the girl has "gone out" with the other three & is now (living) with him, & he seemed to think it was ok, & normal*. Then, while on holiday, the Pastor of the church we visited said that a while after he'd moved into their present home he heard that some of the locals were making a book (betting) on how long his marriage would last. Apparently they were the only couple in the village who hadn't been married before.
I was horrified but not surprised, guess he was too! I have friends who, while only in their thirties, or only just thirty, are divorced, for several years! Some of them are planning to remarry, which is evidently the triumph of hope over experience. Just hope they've chosen better this time - & that they realise that love is something you have to work at. Then again, came across a question the other day, "Should I sleep with him or not?" So I said, "Not, unless you're married to him." Other replies were variants on, "I don't know how to advise you", "it's up to you, be careful". What really bothered me here was the girl says she's a Christian. OK, so when you're in love things can get a bit confused, but it sounds more like she didn't know beforehand, if she felt the need to ask. Of course, it could just have been a rhetorical question (& pigs fly, unfortunately).
It's not just a generational thing, people my age, & older, are busy partner swapping (heck, my generation invented wife-swapping parites); looking for excitement, change, their lost youth (?), love even. Maybe they've been married for years, then one morning one wakes up & suddenly thinks (realises) "I don't love him/her any more" whatever that means. So do they try to work out what's happened? Even start to do something constructive about it? Actually some of them do, & sometimes it 'works'! Meanwhile there's a lot to be said for having a faithful partner, a settled life & a home, & passion can always be rekindled.
Then there are the teenagers who, having been brought up on a diet of soap operas (where the main plot seems to be who likes whom, who's going out with whom, who's sleeping with whom, who's now actually becoming interested in someone else while still being with whom, oh, & the occasional wedding to add glitz to it all, followed, eventually, by who's divorcing whom) etc, & picking up the idea that sex is everything (& they're teenagers) are 'experimenting' ever earlier. OK, so when the newspapers publish stories about 12 year olds having babies they do so because it is still, fortunately, a fairly rare occurrence. These days, it seems, to be 'normal'* you have to have sex with someone, or several someones - gender optional. *We all know - "Normal" is a statistical distribution.
Meanwhile marriage is regarded as 'just a bit of paper', a personal thing, an outmoded convention, even a Bad Thing, & the focus turns to weddings - an excuse to really splurge on a party with all the trimmings, or maybe to get away from it all to some exotic location (that way you can get married without the embarrassing relatives). With all the emphasis on the Wedding, the party, Getting it Right (whatever that means) the real reason for the wedding, the marriage, gets lost among the flowers, cake, invites, balloons, doves, etc. Maybe pre-nuptial agreements aren't such a bad idea - at least it means people have put some thought into things, even if it also contains the thought that the marriage may well fail.
So the incidence of sexually shared diseases (thrush/Chlamidia, Gonnorrhoea, Syphilis, Herpes) increases, not to mention 'unwanted pregnancies', as does the number of women who have difficulty conceiving in later life, ie: when they want to. Also on the increase are the 'emotional casualties' this kind of lifestyle generates: - men & women who, having been hurt once, are reluctant to commit themselves to anyone ever again. People who, having been 'used' by so many, have really low self-esteem, after all, noone else has really valued them so perhaps, they think, they really are worthless. The 'users' - they continue, becoming ever more self-centred. As for any children . . . always assuming they survive conception! NOT a good way to develop society.
Brad Pitt has been reported as saying that he will not be marrying (Angelina Joley (sp?)) until everyone in his country is free to marry as they choose. Which, given the current moral climate there, gets him karma with the liberal thinkers & seems like a pretty good excuse for non-commitment!
Any hope? Of course. There are people out there who are celebrating being married, successfully, happily, for five, ten, twenty, twenty-five, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, sixty-five, even seventy years. There are, increasingly, churches out there who, when people turn up asking to be married there, make them take pre-wedding classes, so that they at least begin to realise something of what they're letting themselves in for. Even the government is suggesting that some aspects of marriage be taught in schools as part of a Citizenship course, provided they can agree on which aspects!
Meanwhile I shall keep plugging the benefits of marriage: - a partner, someone there when you need a hug (or need to hug someone), or when you need more than a hug, stability (don't knock it). Somewhere safe to bring up children - where they can learn about how adults relate to each other, & how to relate to 'safe' adults (& yes, I know most children are abused by people they know, but this is still an exception, fortunately). And somewhere to give the 'glue' to bind a stable & caring society. Friends are wonderful, but family you're stuck with, & they're always there for you, that's what family's for. That's why weddings should involve the embarrassing relatives (even if they fight)! Because marriage, even the wedding, is about far more than just you & him/her expressing your love for each other & having a party to celebrate. It's about building lasting links between people, so that everyone is related to someone & noone is left entirely on their own.
BTW - my email server keeps telling me it's unable to receive messages at present. I've contacted our SysAdmin &, I hope, he's looking into it. So if I haven't replied to you, this could be why!
So y'all have a good, & related, day now!
The other day someone was telling me about how they are in a band - four guys, one girl, & how the girl has "gone out" with the other three & is now (living) with him, & he seemed to think it was ok, & normal*. Then, while on holiday, the Pastor of the church we visited said that a while after he'd moved into their present home he heard that some of the locals were making a book (betting) on how long his marriage would last. Apparently they were the only couple in the village who hadn't been married before.
I was horrified but not surprised, guess he was too! I have friends who, while only in their thirties, or only just thirty, are divorced, for several years! Some of them are planning to remarry, which is evidently the triumph of hope over experience. Just hope they've chosen better this time - & that they realise that love is something you have to work at. Then again, came across a question the other day, "Should I sleep with him or not?" So I said, "Not, unless you're married to him." Other replies were variants on, "I don't know how to advise you", "it's up to you, be careful". What really bothered me here was the girl says she's a Christian. OK, so when you're in love things can get a bit confused, but it sounds more like she didn't know beforehand, if she felt the need to ask. Of course, it could just have been a rhetorical question (& pigs fly, unfortunately).
It's not just a generational thing, people my age, & older, are busy partner swapping (heck, my generation invented wife-swapping parites); looking for excitement, change, their lost youth (?), love even. Maybe they've been married for years, then one morning one wakes up & suddenly thinks (realises) "I don't love him/her any more" whatever that means. So do they try to work out what's happened? Even start to do something constructive about it? Actually some of them do, & sometimes it 'works'! Meanwhile there's a lot to be said for having a faithful partner, a settled life & a home, & passion can always be rekindled.
Then there are the teenagers who, having been brought up on a diet of soap operas (where the main plot seems to be who likes whom, who's going out with whom, who's sleeping with whom, who's now actually becoming interested in someone else while still being with whom, oh, & the occasional wedding to add glitz to it all, followed, eventually, by who's divorcing whom) etc, & picking up the idea that sex is everything (& they're teenagers) are 'experimenting' ever earlier. OK, so when the newspapers publish stories about 12 year olds having babies they do so because it is still, fortunately, a fairly rare occurrence. These days, it seems, to be 'normal'* you have to have sex with someone, or several someones - gender optional. *We all know - "Normal" is a statistical distribution.
Meanwhile marriage is regarded as 'just a bit of paper', a personal thing, an outmoded convention, even a Bad Thing, & the focus turns to weddings - an excuse to really splurge on a party with all the trimmings, or maybe to get away from it all to some exotic location (that way you can get married without the embarrassing relatives). With all the emphasis on the Wedding, the party, Getting it Right (whatever that means) the real reason for the wedding, the marriage, gets lost among the flowers, cake, invites, balloons, doves, etc. Maybe pre-nuptial agreements aren't such a bad idea - at least it means people have put some thought into things, even if it also contains the thought that the marriage may well fail.
So the incidence of sexually shared diseases (thrush/Chlamidia, Gonnorrhoea, Syphilis, Herpes) increases, not to mention 'unwanted pregnancies', as does the number of women who have difficulty conceiving in later life, ie: when they want to. Also on the increase are the 'emotional casualties' this kind of lifestyle generates: - men & women who, having been hurt once, are reluctant to commit themselves to anyone ever again. People who, having been 'used' by so many, have really low self-esteem, after all, noone else has really valued them so perhaps, they think, they really are worthless. The 'users' - they continue, becoming ever more self-centred. As for any children . . . always assuming they survive conception! NOT a good way to develop society.
Brad Pitt has been reported as saying that he will not be marrying (Angelina Joley (sp?)) until everyone in his country is free to marry as they choose. Which, given the current moral climate there, gets him karma with the liberal thinkers & seems like a pretty good excuse for non-commitment!
Any hope? Of course. There are people out there who are celebrating being married, successfully, happily, for five, ten, twenty, twenty-five, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, sixty-five, even seventy years. There are, increasingly, churches out there who, when people turn up asking to be married there, make them take pre-wedding classes, so that they at least begin to realise something of what they're letting themselves in for. Even the government is suggesting that some aspects of marriage be taught in schools as part of a Citizenship course, provided they can agree on which aspects!
Meanwhile I shall keep plugging the benefits of marriage: - a partner, someone there when you need a hug (or need to hug someone), or when you need more than a hug, stability (don't knock it). Somewhere safe to bring up children - where they can learn about how adults relate to each other, & how to relate to 'safe' adults (& yes, I know most children are abused by people they know, but this is still an exception, fortunately). And somewhere to give the 'glue' to bind a stable & caring society. Friends are wonderful, but family you're stuck with, & they're always there for you, that's what family's for. That's why weddings should involve the embarrassing relatives (even if they fight)! Because marriage, even the wedding, is about far more than just you & him/her expressing your love for each other & having a party to celebrate. It's about building lasting links between people, so that everyone is related to someone & noone is left entirely on their own.
BTW - my email server keeps telling me it's unable to receive messages at present. I've contacted our SysAdmin &, I hope, he's looking into it. So if I haven't replied to you, this could be why!
So y'all have a good, & related, day now!