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The Case Against Marriage
A Book in Progress by Glenn Campbell “Read it or weep!” Chapter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Production Notes This is a ROUGH DRAFT of a book that still needs a lot of work. I have set it aside for now but expect to come back to it later Your feedback is encouraged, but I recognize that the chapters don't yet flow together as they should. FamilyCourtGuy<at>gmail.com |
"Bonding" is the process by which humans become emotionally attached to one another. It is like tying two people together with an invisible rope. When you are bonded to someone, you are always drawn back to them, whether or not the relationship is healthy for you.
Two kinds of bonding are critical to the survival of our species: the bond between child and parent and that between the man and woman in a child-rearing unit. A toddler won't wander very far from his parents; he may explore for a few minutes on his own, but then he looks around with alarm. "Where's Mom?" he says, and he runs back to her. Likewise, a man who goes out into the world to hunt for food for his mate is drawn to return to her and not just take off. (There may be some delays and diversions, but he will be back, eventually, with a damn good excuse for why he was late.)
If you are bonded to someone and are separated from them for a while, you start getting anxious. Toddlers cry for their parents, and adults start calling on their mobile phones just to hear the voice of their partner. Both want to assure themselves that their relationship is still secure.
Bonding can work in one direction or two: The person you are bonded to can be equally attached to you or might not even know you exist. A teenager can become bonded to a heartthrob movie star who definitely can't return the sentiment, but the bond is still real to the teen. When a bond exists in only one direction, we could call it "unrequited love."
Bonding is a physiological and neurological imprinting process involving a primitive and unconscious part of the brain. The thinking part doesn't have a lot to do with it. An infant is going to become bonded to whomever is taking care of him. He doesn't stop to think, "Is this the best parent for me?" Likewise, if you put a man and a woman on a desert island together, they are probably going to fall in love and become emotionally attached to each other.
The lesson here is that you got to be careful which desert island you let yourself be shipwrecked on. You also have to be prepared to leave a desert island if it isn't good for you—or more importantly, good for humanity as a whole.
The existence of a neurological bond between two people doesn't mean that the relationship is healthy. Sometimes it can be more like an addiction. People can be bonded to each other who have nothing in common and who even hate each other. This is why some former romantic partners turn violent. All functional aspects of the relationship may have collapsed, but the primitive attachment can still be engraved in the recesses of the brain. Instead of phoning to say how much they love the other person, the frustrated party can call to issue threats and to try to engage the other in a fight. This, too, is an expression of bonding.
In the animal kingdom, humans are "pair bonded" creatures. The natural order of things seems to be one man bonding with one woman for long periods. True, homosexuals can also bond, but even there, pair bonding seems to be desired outcome. It is extremely rare to find someone who doesn't care to bond at all. There are plenty of single adults in the world, but most of them remain single mainly because the circumstances for bonding haven't been right, not because of a lack of private desire.
Statistically, most humans end up pair-bonded sooner or later. If this is the lifestyle that people naturally gravitate toward, there is no reason to fight it. The problem is finding the right person to bond with, one who enhances ones potential rather than drawing it down.
Once the bond has been formed, the problem is how to make the relationship work in a complex social environment. This is something that is not coded in the genes and doesn't necessarily come naturally.
In ancient marriage systems, still practiced in some parts of the world, who bonds with whom is considered far too important a decision to be left to the parties themselves. After puberty, boys and girls are kept strictly segregated, and the elders alone determined who would be placed on a desert island together.
Victims of arranged marriages may bond just as surely as those who marry for "love." In fact, choosing your own spouse may be no better a predictor of long-term success. Proponents of arranged marriages in modern India point out that their rate of divorce is much lower than in the Western world. In both cases, the marriage can turn dour and loveless with time. The difference in our culture is probably a greater willingness to jump ship.
In Western culture, we are hooked into the notion of romance as an avenue of personal enhancement, not necessarily procreation. If producing children is your only goal, then any almost partner will do, as long as they bring home the bacon. If you are looking for some kind of vague personal satisfaction, then your standards are much higher—maybe impossibility high.
Pair bonding is a neurological "latching-on" to the other person. The formation of this bond sometimes goes by the colloquial term of "falling in love." Bond formation can be joyous experience!. Everything about your partner becomes magical: their look, their smell, the color of their eyes. Everything they do seems just so very fascinating. It feels, for a while, like there is no one else in the universe and that you were somehow "made for each other." People who have to watch this gooey lovefest from the outside may feel a little queasy, but to you it is the most wonderful feeling in the world.
The dreamy unreality of falling in love is really just the brain rearranging itself to absorb this new image of "Mom." After a while, the fog lifts; objects become solid again, and you have reached your destination. Bonded. Now what do you do?
Sex becomes irrelevant after a while. Eventually, it is more like a routine maintenance activity than meaningful communication. Sexual attraction is replaced by a non-sexual bond closer to that between parent and child. Even if you married the perfect sexual specimen, you stop seeing their body; it becomes no more special to you than your own. Instead, you become preoccupied with the routine problems of living. After it stabilizes, the bond itself is taken for granted. A new family is formed, and the two of you are less like lovers and more like a couple of siblings who have been sharing the same bedroom since as long as you can remember.
This is when the real trials emerge. During the courtship, sexual attraction and your own desperate emotional needs lead you to gloss over the differences and inconsistencies between the two of you. "Sure, he's a serial killer," you said, "but I can work with that." As the sensual attraction wanes, those practical problems, previously swept under the carpet, reemerge with a vengeance and have to be dealt with. It's a huge challenge. You thought that falling in love was going to solve all of your problems; instead, it just rearranged them.
Withdrawing from a bonded relationship can be very difficult. Is is similar to trying to quit an addiction. Even if you have made the decision that the relationship isn't working, your partner might not have. Webs of dependency have developed, and egos are on the line, so it may not be possible to pull away gracefully.
It is going to be many times more difficult if your finances have been merged and you have made a vow to stay with this person "forever." Aren't you a person of your word? How can you go back on it?
As the songs say, "Breaking up is hard to do." In popular culture, when someone is "dumped" by their girlfriend or boyfriend, it is an emblem of loserhood. It could be the worst part of your week. The damage, however, is only to your ego, and you will probably recover.
Divorce, however, can be absolutely devastating. It's not just a ego problem or a de-bonding problem but a vast strategic and financial challenge as well. Aren't the dilemmas of bonding difficult enough without adding additional layers?
Continued in Chapter 6
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