Post by mirrororchid on Jul 12, 2022 6:11:04 GMT -5
The start of this essay series is found here.
We promise to love honor and cherish, always, and list a number of conditions under which we can cite no exception.
We promise to L,H,C even if we are poor. We're told this is a common cause of divorce, but a study by the National Center for Biotechnology Information says only 14% of marriages broke up for "Financial Reasons", so it may be that most couples manage this part of traditional vows okay. Perhaps they kid themselves.
We make this promise for similar reasons to the SICKNESS AND HEALTH caveat. If we're wretchedly unlucky and an accident or chronic disease befalls us, someone is going to care for us, and for that guarantee, we're expected to help our unfortunate beloved if they are the unlucky one. Spin the wheel.
Of course, we know some folks only like half of that contract, but... it is the promise being made.
Similarly, a loved one can be plunged into poverty by that medical bill. It can drag us down with them, marital shared financial responsibility is a legal chain. Less blameless causes of poverty can similarly take us down. Reckless behavior that leads to addiction or a lawsuit can ruin us. Such poverty-for-cause that hooks in the blameless spouse can try one's patience, especially absent a method of avoiding a repeat. The solution to such monetary battering might be sophisticated legal maneuvers to protect assets from the medical ravages or irresponsibility of a partner; a simpler answer could be divorce.
A divorce in name only could make sense in such an instance. Loving, honoring, and cherishing a person until they die need not be affected by a piece of paper on record at the courthouse.
If you are both poor, together, is that better somehow? Is the promise more difficult to keep? Perhaps the opportunity to leave one's spouse to pair up with someone of means is a scenario being foreseen here. This vow seeks to value loyalty over money. How quaint.
If one spouse starts off well-to-do, does a financial power imbalance persist. Does the spouse of more modest means feel indebted to teh richer one for their carrying the weight of financial burdens? Is this imbalance exploited, or magnanimous. If the latter, is the generosity unacceptable due to pride? Does controlling behavior cause guilt, disappointment, or resentment that endangers the marital bond?
If both are rich, together, wherein lies the risk? Hedonism? Seeking life's meaning in things or the world, rather than relationships?
Are affairs likely because money makes such shenanigans easier to hide and afford?
Are there money fights because of fear of becoming poor (or maybe just "less rich")? Have lives been spent pursuing wealth and left the marriage fragile and distant?
I'd expected this essay to be short and cursory. Done for the sake of completing the set, but it fails to coalesce into something concise and bland. I'm feeling more bear traps in this one than in the SICKNESS and HEALTH entry, but I can't identify the theme. I'm not up to the task. I'm stuck listing observations like a melancholy Andy Rooney.
RICH can mean more than money, but there is a strong conflation. It's also relative, there is a richest person in the poorest country and that person may be envied for what may constitute paltry sums in another country. In such places, relationships may be a very strong currency. In communist countries, connections and favors replace a great deal of power designated by wealth in capitalist countries. Can you love, honor, and cherish the spouse who's rarely home?
In both types of countries, dedicating the bulk of your time and attention to accumulation of whatever form power takes can produce poverty in one's relationships. This may mean you never make vows, but if you do, despite a lack of time to dedicate to nurturing a relationship, do riches promote breaking of the promise to L, H, C?
Is the person not consumed with riches left with too much time on their hands and no purpose to drive them, occupy them, and fulfill them? Do such spouses blame the partner and marriage? Do they sabotage the pursuit of riches? What if it was those riches that made the vows seem like a good idea?
When the riches are a draw to marriage, the things money can do can fill one's time, but is it satisfactory? Does money help nurture relationships? Marital or otherwise? Can it lead more quickly to a dismissal of the enticement of the world? Does it all become humdrum, having tried the reported best of everything? Do more expensive pursuits become the goals, and the only thing holding out hope of distraction and amusement? Does an inability to afford these pricier pleasures or delays in experiencing them become a source of strife?
Does the RICHER or POORER vow tell us to look to the simpler (cheaper!) things of life when RICHes have lost their luster? Or have been lost through misfortunate or fault? Do we remember this portion of the couplet when we should? Is it possible to reject achievable greater wealth? Is wealth addictive? Can you leave it if your marriage is on the line?
While I'd not pointed out teh obvious to myself last time, in the LOVE essay I transparently strung together myriad questions as if I'm asking when I seem to be proposing a hypothesis, so maybe it's time for less coy and more blunt.
Promising to Love, Honor, and Cherish someone until they die is a terrifyingly reckless thing to do. In teh event of undisclosed, new, or undiscovered frailty causing medical or addiction disaster, your prospects of comfort or retirement are severely jeopardized. You are linking fates with decades ahead of you. People change. Sometimes for the worse.
Money changes people. The popular anecdotes of lottery winners spending everything and worse off just a few years later may spin out over teh course of decades, wealth bringing with it pursuits that don't involve a strengthening of your partnership but, instead, a presentation of opportunities more tempting and plausibly fulfilling than your marriage, breaking the vows you made, because you want to, and you can. You are expected to not live your best life. If you keep your vows, you are expected to disallow yourself from a great many things you may prefer to do. Time spent in pursuit of dreams will be sacrificed for time spent together.
The only compensation for your leap of faith and your relinquishing your personal fulfillment is a promise from another to do the same for you.
It is this couplet that has brought home for me the foolish optimistic innocence and head shaking naiveté that newlyweds must be armed with to make such promises.
Then again, what is teh alternative? Facing poverty and sickness without a companion having promised to see after your needs? No partner to face off against the challenges of life with?
I'm leaving off there, convinced that there remains layers and levels of nuance and entire categories of pitfalls I didn't provide time to warn about. The insanity of linking up with someone permanently, despite enormous unknown quantities against the hubris-riddled daring of tempting fate with no one assuredly there for you if the worst should strike.
Divorce is common and sunders that mutual promise. We face our remaining challenges alone anyway, with fewer years to brace for impact, abandoned by the one person we expected to count on, or leaving behind the person we promised to help, possibly with dubious odds of their survival. Foreseeing the cost of the breakup of marriage is to appreciate the cost of starting it.
NEXT: In Sickness and In Health
We promise to love honor and cherish, always, and list a number of conditions under which we can cite no exception.
We promise to L,H,C even if we are poor. We're told this is a common cause of divorce, but a study by the National Center for Biotechnology Information says only 14% of marriages broke up for "Financial Reasons", so it may be that most couples manage this part of traditional vows okay. Perhaps they kid themselves.
We make this promise for similar reasons to the SICKNESS AND HEALTH caveat. If we're wretchedly unlucky and an accident or chronic disease befalls us, someone is going to care for us, and for that guarantee, we're expected to help our unfortunate beloved if they are the unlucky one. Spin the wheel.
Of course, we know some folks only like half of that contract, but... it is the promise being made.
Similarly, a loved one can be plunged into poverty by that medical bill. It can drag us down with them, marital shared financial responsibility is a legal chain. Less blameless causes of poverty can similarly take us down. Reckless behavior that leads to addiction or a lawsuit can ruin us. Such poverty-for-cause that hooks in the blameless spouse can try one's patience, especially absent a method of avoiding a repeat. The solution to such monetary battering might be sophisticated legal maneuvers to protect assets from the medical ravages or irresponsibility of a partner; a simpler answer could be divorce.
A divorce in name only could make sense in such an instance. Loving, honoring, and cherishing a person until they die need not be affected by a piece of paper on record at the courthouse.
If you are both poor, together, is that better somehow? Is the promise more difficult to keep? Perhaps the opportunity to leave one's spouse to pair up with someone of means is a scenario being foreseen here. This vow seeks to value loyalty over money. How quaint.
If one spouse starts off well-to-do, does a financial power imbalance persist. Does the spouse of more modest means feel indebted to teh richer one for their carrying the weight of financial burdens? Is this imbalance exploited, or magnanimous. If the latter, is the generosity unacceptable due to pride? Does controlling behavior cause guilt, disappointment, or resentment that endangers the marital bond?
If both are rich, together, wherein lies the risk? Hedonism? Seeking life's meaning in things or the world, rather than relationships?
Are affairs likely because money makes such shenanigans easier to hide and afford?
Are there money fights because of fear of becoming poor (or maybe just "less rich")? Have lives been spent pursuing wealth and left the marriage fragile and distant?
I'd expected this essay to be short and cursory. Done for the sake of completing the set, but it fails to coalesce into something concise and bland. I'm feeling more bear traps in this one than in the SICKNESS and HEALTH entry, but I can't identify the theme. I'm not up to the task. I'm stuck listing observations like a melancholy Andy Rooney.
RICH can mean more than money, but there is a strong conflation. It's also relative, there is a richest person in the poorest country and that person may be envied for what may constitute paltry sums in another country. In such places, relationships may be a very strong currency. In communist countries, connections and favors replace a great deal of power designated by wealth in capitalist countries. Can you love, honor, and cherish the spouse who's rarely home?
In both types of countries, dedicating the bulk of your time and attention to accumulation of whatever form power takes can produce poverty in one's relationships. This may mean you never make vows, but if you do, despite a lack of time to dedicate to nurturing a relationship, do riches promote breaking of the promise to L, H, C?
Is the person not consumed with riches left with too much time on their hands and no purpose to drive them, occupy them, and fulfill them? Do such spouses blame the partner and marriage? Do they sabotage the pursuit of riches? What if it was those riches that made the vows seem like a good idea?
When the riches are a draw to marriage, the things money can do can fill one's time, but is it satisfactory? Does money help nurture relationships? Marital or otherwise? Can it lead more quickly to a dismissal of the enticement of the world? Does it all become humdrum, having tried the reported best of everything? Do more expensive pursuits become the goals, and the only thing holding out hope of distraction and amusement? Does an inability to afford these pricier pleasures or delays in experiencing them become a source of strife?
Does the RICHER or POORER vow tell us to look to the simpler (cheaper!) things of life when RICHes have lost their luster? Or have been lost through misfortunate or fault? Do we remember this portion of the couplet when we should? Is it possible to reject achievable greater wealth? Is wealth addictive? Can you leave it if your marriage is on the line?
While I'd not pointed out teh obvious to myself last time, in the LOVE essay I transparently strung together myriad questions as if I'm asking when I seem to be proposing a hypothesis, so maybe it's time for less coy and more blunt.
Promising to Love, Honor, and Cherish someone until they die is a terrifyingly reckless thing to do. In teh event of undisclosed, new, or undiscovered frailty causing medical or addiction disaster, your prospects of comfort or retirement are severely jeopardized. You are linking fates with decades ahead of you. People change. Sometimes for the worse.
Money changes people. The popular anecdotes of lottery winners spending everything and worse off just a few years later may spin out over teh course of decades, wealth bringing with it pursuits that don't involve a strengthening of your partnership but, instead, a presentation of opportunities more tempting and plausibly fulfilling than your marriage, breaking the vows you made, because you want to, and you can. You are expected to not live your best life. If you keep your vows, you are expected to disallow yourself from a great many things you may prefer to do. Time spent in pursuit of dreams will be sacrificed for time spent together.
The only compensation for your leap of faith and your relinquishing your personal fulfillment is a promise from another to do the same for you.
It is this couplet that has brought home for me the foolish optimistic innocence and head shaking naiveté that newlyweds must be armed with to make such promises.
Then again, what is teh alternative? Facing poverty and sickness without a companion having promised to see after your needs? No partner to face off against the challenges of life with?
I'm leaving off there, convinced that there remains layers and levels of nuance and entire categories of pitfalls I didn't provide time to warn about. The insanity of linking up with someone permanently, despite enormous unknown quantities against the hubris-riddled daring of tempting fate with no one assuredly there for you if the worst should strike.
Divorce is common and sunders that mutual promise. We face our remaining challenges alone anyway, with fewer years to brace for impact, abandoned by the one person we expected to count on, or leaving behind the person we promised to help, possibly with dubious odds of their survival. Foreseeing the cost of the breakup of marriage is to appreciate the cost of starting it.
NEXT: In Sickness and In Health
