The Tale of Oogie and Boogie, Part 3
A Cost/Benefit Analysis of Marriage
If you are just joining us, please flip back to read Part 1 and Part 2 before continuing. Oogie and Boogie, those teenage social innovators from the Neolithic period of human history, created the first monogamous, lifetime-commitment marriage. This was so long ago that years hadn’t been invented yet. Now, umteen generations later and despite a plethora of social and technological inventions added to our daily routines, we find modern couples still following much the same marriage patterns that worked for the hunter/gatherer tribes we descended from.
And, while you are catching up or plunging ahead, please consider tossing a pittance into the alms box by visiting my Buy Me A Coffee page. If not, I may have to trade our lovely son for a puppy, then sell the puppy.
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At the conclusion of Part 2, I proposed we look for a viable alternative, a way out of this mess. For the foreseeable future, there is no doubt that marriage as an institution is here to stay. So the question is how to modify our current marriage patterns and laws in a way that will be more beneficial and harmonious for the couple and for their society. Plus, it has to be a form of marriage that is generally acceptable across many societies as well as palatable to the Oogie and Boogie couples. Easy, right?
First, let’s look at the other side of the challenge. What are the benefits of marriage? What did Oogie and Boogie stumble upon that are worth preserving? And how can we modify our current marriage practices to retain the benefits while dumping the tired old features that are no longer working?
Benefit One: Division of Labor. Ask any single parent and they will assure you that their life is filled with unrelenting work, decisions, and hassles – all with no mate to share the load. With a mate, one of you can do the laundry while the other fixes dinner. One can watch the kids while the other does the shopping (or watches a movie). Add in a bit of specialization – say, someone who actually enjoys cleaning up after the little monkey is matched with someone who is a pretty good cook – and you have a definite mutual benefit.
Benefit Two: Economic advantages. A household with two incomes is going to offer each member a better lifestyle than one that is supported by a single income. Again, ask any single parent if they are living as well now as before the divorce. This is not about happiness or unhappiness; this is about the environment where you will be living. The economic arguments for staying together are irrefutable.
Benefit Three: Convenience partnered with Fear of the Unknown. It’s a scary world out there if you go solo again. When you consider modern dating practices and expenses and the number of psychotic, even dangerous, people you might encounter, the swinging single life may not seem quite so attractive. Living with a nice, dull adversarial contrarian might seem more palatable than the deep, dark pool of psycho-dates. It’s not true that “all the good ones are taken” but those remaining good ones may be lost in the sea of misfits and bad fits. Regardless of how important personal happiness, self-actualization, and freedom to seek romantic liaisons (temporary or permanent) are to you, the benefits of staying together are incontrovertible.
Benefit Four: Staying together is the easiest choice. Douglas Adams, in his classic trilogy (which now contains six books), The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, observes that, when confronted with the vast, ineffable immensity of the universe, most people will spend the rest of their lives trying to forget that disturbing vision. Too big, too confusing, too uncomfortable, too wild. It is simply impossible to grasp, so they mostly don’t try. They assiduously do not let it into their conscious thoughts ever again. Similarly, our modern-day Oogie and Boogie, disgruntled though they be, are likely to stay together because staying together eliminates the need for making a decision. Breakfast every morning with an indifferent or even hostile stranger may not be how you planned to spend your golden years but that stranger and the strained silence are at least familiar. The benefit here is that you don’t expend any more decision energy in thinking about alternative forms of breakfast company.
Taking an excerpt from China Bound:
Now, imagine your inner voice saying, “So, what’s it going to be, pal? Will you stay in this comfortable life – even if you hate it - or will you throw caution to the wind and face the great unknown? Will you give up all that you have now just for a chance to find something better?” This was exactly where all my previous conjectures had stopped. Each time I reached this point, I had always concluded that, unhappy or not, there was no reasonable way to start over. Always before, I had backed down from a decision and done nothing. In a way, doing nothing, changing nothing, is itself a decision.
So, with all these benefits, what’s the problem? Why aren’t couples happy? Basically, it is because they still have this wonderfully romantic idea that love should last forever. A marriage should last forever. The word “passion” comes from an ancient Latin word meaning “to suffer or endure”. Boy, did they get that one right.
On rare occasion, it does last but usually, as a friend forlornly commented, “Love dies.” If that happens - and it mostly does - then, what do you do with the empty husk of the marriage? Breakfast becomes the loneliest meal, consisting of two people facing each other across the short space of the breakfast table but separated by vast mutual indifference.
Speaking of breakfast conversations that can quickly spin out of control, there are two statements that should never, ever be uttered aloud, not even in the heights of marital discord. These two phrases are unretractable relationship killers. These are absolutely, indisputably, irrefutably true but speaking them aloud may have devastating long-term consequences. You have been warned. Number One: You were the best I could get. Number Two: I was the best you could get. As Jackie Gleason would have cautioned, “You can think it… but don’t say it.” (See the previously cited Green’s Law.)
So, how did our modern Oogie and Boogie wander innocently into this recurring breakfast minidrama? The modern love affair often starts just like in the fairy tales. We have the lovely damsel under some kind of duress – maybe credit card debt and unpaid student loans - and threatened by the bad credit rating dragon. Now, along comes a Prince Charming to rescue her. He must show the Princess and maybe her parents that he will be a good mate. Often that means their joint incomes will provide a way out of her financial dungeon.
Considering the financial bad habits and other liabilities the fair damsel brings to the match, this prince is the best she can manage to catch. Of course, the prince has his own set of problems and shortcomings which sometime emerge only after the nuptials. Like the pragmatic princess-to-be, he also has to conclude that this tattered and tarnished damsel is the best he can catch. (Hopefully, both Prince Charming and the prospective Princess Charming have learned to never, ever verbalize such conclusions.) So they get married. Prince Charming and his rescue princess ride off into the sunset to live happily ever after. That's what we see in the movies.
Now, here’s what those movies don't show you. A few years later, she is dreading the fact that he'll be late getting home again, probably drunk and sullen - or maybe he won’t come home at all. And he is thinking, “Well, why should I want to go home to face another evening of nagging, complaints, criticism, and demands?” Can you see why breakfast has become their loneliest meal?
Don’t forget the two biggest romance killers that emerge only after the wedding day, when Prince and Princess Charming are getting accustomed to living together. The first is the unwelcome interference from the two new extended families. The second is even worse.
The extended family… A great source of stability and support. A great resource. A great fall-back position. A built-in source of short-term, small-figure loans. But, along with those benefits is the family pecking order. The new bride, Princess Charming, (especially if she is the youngest adult in Prince Charming’s family) will find that those polite and distant strangers - before the wedding day - are instantly transformed into authority figures who feel perfectly free to criticize and give orders. Especially pity the young Princess Charming who marries into a family where the tradition is that the youngest wife gets to do all the cooking and cleaning when the whole family gets together for a holiday feast. Likewise, she may find instant older “sisters” who now tell her how to dress, what to feed her husband and baby, what to buy and how much to pay for it, and which people she should and should not associate with. To complicate matters, their brother, Prince Charming, will probably caution his new wife that following the dictates of his sisters is the best path to family peace. Poor Princess Charming… and Poor Prince Charming when the princess with the dishwater hands gets him alone! The outside interference is no less upsetting for Prince Charming when confronted by unsolicited advice since he is obviously too stupid and inexperienced to have any worthwhile thoughts of his own. Don’t forget the delightful sensation of frequent gentle prodding - applied with a branding iron - concerning the arrival date of impending grandchildren. If you add an unhappy mother-in-law into the mix, the holidays become a time of maximum dread and minimum holiday spirit. So much for happy holidays. Not in your family, of course.
And what about that second hidden feature, the one that is even worse than the joys of the new extended family? I am referring to the unspoken expectations that Prince and Princess Charming both bring to their marriage. Very often, these are never discussed before situations arise. Why not discuss these very important expectations? Because… everyone knows that is how a wife is supposed to act. Conversely, “You are a husband now. Everyone knows that you cannot do that any more.” When the two people have significantly different expectations and role models that they never realized the other did not share, it can get real ugly, real fast.
Expat Exhibit A: When my son was born, my wife stayed with her mother for one month before bringing our new baby home. On that Sunday afternoon, when my wife and month-old son arrived at our home on the campus where I taught, grandmother also trooped up the stairs. I said to my wife, “That’s nice. Grandmother will help you get settled into your new routine.” I asked my wife how long her mother would be staying with us and she replied, “Until he is old enough to start school.” To say I was stunned would be an understatement. Gotta watch out for those unspoken expectations.
Both of these two hazards are common icebergs in the sea of matrimony. They can be easily dealt with by two rational, loving people fully committed to a mutually acceptable win-win solution after a respectful, unemotional exchange of views. Right. And you might also buy a winning seven-figure lottery ticket tomorrow.
These two problems seem to be inherent and virtually unavoidable in every long-term relationship - even in the form of marriage I am about to propose. When you get other people involved and must deal with their unsolicited opinions of how you and your mate should think and act, there are shoal waters ahead. All I can say is good luck.
But, what about the solution I keep referring to? Can we change the marriage contract that Oogie and Boogie would have signed if pen and paper and writing had been invented in the neolithic age? Is there something that would somewhat moderate the irreducible friction in every marriage? Is there something already existing that can be modified to solve the unhappy marriage problem? I believe there is.
Stay tuned…
(What? Another cliffhanger? You’re burning up a lot of electrons here. This had better be good.)
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Thus endeth Part 3. Tune in next week for another exciting episode of The Tale of Oogie and Boogie. Same time, same station… as the TV networks used to say.
And while you wait…