Skip to main content

Love and Marriage

Commitment Adam Spitz wrote on his blog:
Our culture tries to make us think that it's a good thing to promise to never change your mind about someone, but I don't think that it is. I think love is more meaningful when you can say to the other person, "I could leave, but I choose not to, because I still want to be with you more than I want to be with anybody else." Once you've promised not to leave, you can't say that anymore.
Adam's comments came up in a a lively discussion about SSM at Andrew's Bound by Gravity. The question of commitment is a bit off the topic but it's interesting nevertheless. I'd to put forward an argument why I think Adam's argument, which he admits he hold tenuously, is not a good idea. "I could leave, but I choose not to, because I still want to be with you more than I want to be with anybody else." There are a lot of I's in that sentence. In fact, the whole thing is bound up with what "I" think and what "I" feel. If a marriage really is based on Love - not luv, but capital L, mature Love - then you will care about that other person as much as yourself, if not more. With this formulation, you are staying in the relationship because "it works for me"; the implication is that if it works for the other person, well, that's nice but not necessary. It means you are using the other person in order to evoke feelings in yourself that are pleasurable. In contrast, taking a public vow of lifelong duration is admirable because it says that "I know there may be times when my passion for you will rise and fall, but I will not put my own personal feelings over my commitment to you." This view of love is properly other centered. This is the kind of love that stays when something horrible happens - cancer, brain damage, etc. Under the first definition, as soon as you're not getting what you want, or it becomes hard, you'll probably bug out. We all have moments when we are not out best. Who wants to live in such a way that our behavior is always hostage to our marriage? That is how any old friendship or acquaintance works. There are obviously limits, but marriage is different from those kinds of relationships because when the commitment is in place you can let your hair down a bit, without fear that you will be judged and rejected in short order. Marriage should be about giving, not getting. It is a sanctuary from the upheaval of ordinary friendships. C.S. Lewis described the idea that a marriage is binding only so long as one or both parties are in the full throws of passion as a parody of what love really is. I'm of the same view. One of the best descriptions of marriage that I have heard is that it is like rock polishing. You place two rocks into a grinder with some sand (call it family) and let them be turned over and over in the machine, for years and years. All the rough edges are ground away and when you finally take the stones out, what you have are two highly polished, smooth and beautiful objects that are almost nothing like the stones you started with.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Reuters joins CNN on the bench

Makes room for CanWest to join the majors Kudos to CanWest for calling a terrorist a terrorist . Many, including The Last Amazon , will be happy to hear it. Reuters is among the worst of the major western news services, where I would also place the BBC and the CBC. Unsurprisingly, Reuters is not happy about the changes CanWest made to Reuters wire stories: Our editorial policy is that we don't use emotive words when labeling someone," said David A. Schlesinger, Reuters' global managing editor. "Any paper can change copy and do whatever they want. But if a paper wants to change our copy that way, we would be more comfortable if they remove the byline." Mr. Schlesinger said he was concerned that changes like those made at CanWest could lead to "confusion" about what Reuters is reporting and possibly endanger its reporters in volatile areas or situations. "My goal is to protect ...

Wordpress

My move to Mac has been very happy except for two issues - gaming and blogging. For websurfing and multimedia, a Mac is of course a terrific machine. Games on the Mac platform are often ports of games made for the larger PC market and that means a Mac gamer will have to wait for the port. I'm not a heavy gamer by any means but I am very happy that the Mac port of Civilization 4 is finally here. Well, my copy isn't here quite yet - but it has been ordered and ought to be here soon. The blogging issue is more complicated. I'm not fond of writing my posts in a browser window. This goes back to when I was first blogging and I lost one or two large posts into the ether. After that I moved to w.bloggar - a great little app that let me compose on my desktop and then click send when all was said and done. I have not been able to recreate that experience on my Mac, and not for a lack of trying! I looked at Marsedit , but that forces you to compse while staring at a bunch of HMT...

The One and the Many

Plato's Theory of The Good is still relevant Copelston on Plato's Republic : In The Republic it is shown that the true philosopher seeks to know the essential nature of each thing. He is not concerned to know, for example, a multiplicity of beautiful things, but rather to discern the essence of beauty and the essence of goodness, which are embodied in varying degrees in particular beautiful things or particular good things. Non philosophers, who are taken up with the multiplicity of appearances that they do not attend to the essential nature and cannot distinguish, Eg. the essence of beauty from the many beautiful phenomena, are represented as having only opinion and as lacking in scientific knowledge. ... In The Republic ... Good is... compared to the sun, the light of which makes the objects of nature visible to all and so is, in a sense, the source of their worth and value and beauty. This comparison is, of course, but a comparison, and such should not be pressed: we are...