This long discourse has been quite interesting to me; it's kind of curious how, lurking behind so many of the posts up-thread is this ghostly desire not to let go of the romantic sense of "love." Yet time and time again the Walkaway is lambasted here for following his/her "feelings;" what's the ultimate WAS-speak insult? "I love you but I'm not in love with you." Pshaw! "In love???" That's just feelings b.s.! Yet in nearly the same breath, Well, hey now, we can't analyze this stuff -- it's feelings!
One wonders what the true beliefs about love, in-love, and marriage are from time-to-time.....
Maybe, DB'ing mojo to the contrary notwithstanding, at the end of the day NO ONE wants to give up the fairy tale.
Anyway, some responses:
@alive 9/28 21:44 You don't know and find that intolerable now that you have a decent handle
Au contraire mon ami. I find it eminently tolerable. Enjoyable even.
----------
@JonF 9/29 08:55 Divorce statistics aside, I still hold that modern thinking revolves around "What makes me feel good." You are arguing divorce statistics, and I'm simply searching for a root cause as to WHY the divorce statistics are what they are - beyond the obvious reason that all human beings are flawed.
And I maintain my original response – “when wasn’t that case?” 1928: “In The Marriage Crisis, Ernest Groves argued that divorce was rising because [of] a new pleasure-seeking code.”
Sodom and Gomorrah were S&G because... why? They were full of people NOT interested in “what makes me feel good?”
Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty and really tease this idea out: If you’re really searching for a root cause, why aren’t you examining ALL root causes?
What if marriage just plain sucks? What if it is, in fact, unnatural in some sense, as proponents of “open marriage” claim.
What if it was a fine idea when – as Woody Allen said – people were afraid of being eaten by dinosaurs at the age of 25, but now when we live to 100 is sort of....archaic?
As Katherine Hepburn said, “Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.”
Aren’t THOSE also potential root causes?
Or how about this – instead of asking why people divorce, why not ask why they marry? Instead of wondering why the divorce rate is so high, why not wonder why the MARRIAGE rate is so high?
Or go from the purely engineering standpoint. Maybe the failure rate of the social product known as “marriage” is 50%.
Some people are “A” marriage students, some people are “B” marriage students, and some people fail. Why assume that as inherently “human” an institution as marriage would somehow be magically insulated from the fact that it is inhabited by humans and lots and lots of humans are just plain stupid?
Or maybe, in some cosmic sense, marriage requires divorce – yin to yang.
Nancy Cott did a study of divorce in 18th-century Massachusetts back in the 1970s. According to the Puritans, marriage was a civil contract – not a sacrament – and therefore could be dissolved like any other contract. And contracts have failure rates.
Why did people divorce in the 1600s and 1700s? Some no-brainers: cruelty, abandonment, adultery. And some surprisingly modern reasons -- the petitioners, more often women than men, loved their husbands, they just weren't "in love" with them anymore.
In 1783 Mrs. Sarah Backus of Suffolk filed for divorce on the grounds that though she “would be content by the most penurious industry to gain a support for herself and Child [IOW, she’d get a job to support herself and her kids if that's what it took instead of alimony], but every Idea of comfort is banished from her Breast when she reflects, that by Law her Person is subjected to be controlled by a man possessing no one tender sentiment” (IOW, her husband didn’t speak her LL).
Tuas res tibi habeto – “take your things for yourself” – was the Roman incantation of divorce, which could be undertaken for adultery, failure to procreate (woman's fault), and losing that loving feeling. And lo and behold, by the time of Cicero there were financial penalties involved (you had to pay support) and lawyers got involved.
So can’t it just be the case that human institutions are inherently flawed? The churches thought so -- that's why they took over marriage. By investing it with sacramental obligation, they hoped to stem the tide of divorces.
Why does “searching for a root cause” inherently have to exonerate the institution as a potential causal factor?
I'll keep my opining off of your forum
Well no one’s asked you to do that, but....okay.
-----------
@Coach 9/29 11:33 What happens if I choose to feel in love?
Doesn’t negate the basic proposition. If PDT is right, and it’s a “feeling,” choice is not involved. It is an autonomic impulse. If you are right and you can “choose” it, it’s a decision – and decisions are eminently quantifiable and analyzable.
----------
@Dia 9/29 11:39 A wise IC once told me that I was doing pretty much everything I could to avoid feeling my feelings, and that included thinking about them intellectually and analyzing them.
IF one is avoiding them, then perhaps. But can’t one do both – feel AND analyze? Don’t we criticize the Fog-bound OP-infatuated WAS for “not thinking” (i.e., not analyze) and instead “feeling”?
-----------
@PuppyDogTails 9/29 11:57 Love is an emotion. To love (or not to) is a decision.
Then does this mean you’re okay with “I love you but I’m not in love with you?” Because Love is the emotion, “in love” is the feeling.
Calderon de la Barca once wrote, “When love is not madness, it is not love. “ So once the madness of “in love” goes away, I guess we don’t have love. Because, you know, it’s a “feeling” and all. And after the feeling is gone, well, I guess love is gone.
