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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 |
One is the loneliest number. It is also the most efficient, flexible and creative number. The vast majority of mankind's most creative works, from books and movies to great scientific ideas, were the product of one. When you are challenging the creative limits of anything, only one is likely to pull it off.
Couples and other kinds of teams can have great accomplishments together, but these are usually "second wave" expeditions after one person alone blazed the trail. Teams, by and large, don't blaze trails; they can only support and follow the one individual who does.
There is a reason that most organizations have only one ultimate leader, not two: It simply works better that way. The leader can consult with others and call upon a team for advice and support, but the fundamental decision-making unit has to be one person alone. If one general isn't put clearly in charge of a project or organization, or he doesn't have the courage to make painful decisions, then the organization will drift and degenerate and eventually crash against the rocks like a ship without a captain.
Two can certainly have a fun time together, but when times get tough and the problems become stressful, two start stepping on each others and sniping at each other. The problem with two is deciding who will be responsible for what. If two people become CEO of a corporation, how will they divide up the tasks between them? Who will the staff go to when there is a problem? Equal cooperation may work when the decisions are easy, but when the ship starts taking on water, you've got to have real leadership, which doesn't come in twos.
Two is supposed to be the optimal number for raising children, but is it really? If a child needs permission for something and Mom denies it, what is he going to do? Ask Dad, of course! If the two parents' are inconsistent, as they often are, then the child can choose whichever answer he prefers. In the myth of perfect equality, the parents are in perfect harmony and reinforce each other's decisions. In reality, there is usually a substantial gap between the two.
One is a necessary number, because one person can hold in their head more subtle ideas, plans and compromises than can possibly be worked out between multiple people. In a crisis, only one person can weigh a lot of complicated and conflicting factors and respond in real time with one optimal solution. Only one person can effectively assert authority and convey a consistent position to their subordinates. Only one person can step outside the box and rethink a problem in a totally new way.
The alternative form of leadership is a committee. Committees can get things done only when the goals of the group are simple and stable and can be conveyed between members in words. For a collective management to work effectively, the destination and the means to reach it have to be clearly defined. If you instruct a committee to build a skyscraper according to the plans you provide, they can hire and coordinate the many contractors and thousands of workers to get the job done. The one thing a committee can't do is produce those original plans.
In a romantic relationship, the two of you form a committee. No matter how "in sync" you seem to be, the two of you together are unlikely to produce decisions that are as subtle, competent or creative as one person potentially can. In any complex project, one person can certainly assist the other, contributing their independent judgement and supportive labor, but one leader alone has to be in charge.
A romantic couple, deeply in love, can probably be trusted to put together a jigsaw puzzle. That's the sort of well-defined, ritualized, labor-intensive task a team is good at. A couple can't be trusted to create the puzzle, however. That's one person's job.
If the two of you go into the kitchen together intending to create a great gourmet meal, there can be only one head chef. She tells the sous-chef what to do, and no matter how skilled the sous-chef may be in his own right, he has to be willing to take the back seat and follow her lead. There can be no greater disaster than two celebrity chefs going into a kitchen on equal terms and trying to create a single meal. It just doesn't work.
The potential benefit of a relationship is that your partner can give you independent feedback and thereby enhance the quality of your own independent decision-making. The possible risk, however, is that a relationship will "dumb down" your decision making. If you are forced to seek consensus with your partner on things that you can better handle alone, then you may have to settle for clumsy solutions that you know aren't the best.
In the absence of a clearly defined leader, committees tend to make poor decisions under stress and during periods of rapid change. No one is willing to make the hard, politically-incorrect choices to get the organization out of whatever mess it is in. Committees don't like to lay off staff, accept strategic losses or kill anybody's pet project. Committees want only happy solutions.
Likewise, when a married couple faces a crisis together, the need for consensus may prevent the team from making the unthinkable decisions to solve the crisis. The wiser party may say, "We have no choice, we have to sell the house," but if their partner doesn't agree, then no action will be taken. Ideally, in a crisis, you want to move quickly, but two people can never move as quickly as one. It is hard enough for one person to make a decision under stress; the more difficult challenge may be convincing their partner to go along. If the partner can't be recruited for the plan, then the status quo prevails, and they will both go down together.
In the worst case, a relationship turns into a "bureaucracy of two" where you are forced to seek permission for every decision you make. You can't move a piece of furniture without filling out Form XJ-17A and having it signed by your partner. If you fail to get permission, and somebody's toes get stepped on, you know there will be hell to pay.
In the beginning of the relationship, everything your partner does is "no problem." They are just so wonderful in your eyes that they can do no wrong. After a while, however, territoriality sets in. Your partner cuts down your favorite rose bush, and you start demanding that they consult with you before doing such things. That's when the bureaucracy begins.
A single person, rummaging through his closet (or his life), can easily say, "I don't need this. I'm throwing it out." Don't try that when you are married! Throwing out anything requires Form GB-137, signed, sealed and notarized in triplicate. This applies not just to unused objects but also to time-consuming activities that no longer serve a purpose. The ship has to actually be sinking, with the band playing "Nearer My God to Thee," before the passengers are willing to jettison any of their baggage.
All relationships demand a certain degree of accountability. Even if you aren't married to the person you are living with, you want to know when they'll be home at night. This accountability can be warm and gentle, but it can still be a burden on your creativity. The more you need to seek permission for things, the less capable you are of implementing complex, rapid and inspired solutions that only you understand.
In the simple projects that two people choose to share, the status quo is usually the preferred option. You go back to the same restaurants you've been to before and repeat the same sentimental activities. The management of the household proceeds on automatic: Once your home has been set up, things tend to stay the same for long periods. Within a relationship, there aren't usually a lot of radical changes. When you find patterns you both feel comfortable with and that cause the least conflict, you tend to stick with them.
It is an unfortunate fact of life that long-term emotional relationships tend to inhibit change, creativity, personal growth and dynamic movement, at least in directions you haven't gone before. Relationships require consistency and don't flourish in conditions of uncertainty. This is one of the trade-offs of love that you have to live with.
If you want to be a secret agent, licensed to kill, roaming the world on Her Majesty's Secret Service, then you have remain unattached. In this kind of creative position, you need to be able to change course instantly to serve your mission, and you can't be putting your partner through the wringer every time you go to work. You can't be calling up all the time, "Dear, I'm in Singapore about to be sliced in two by a laser. I'm going to be late for dinner." Real relationships won't tolerate that kind of uncertainty.
If you are unattached, you probably want to fall in love, but once you do, it is bound to slow down at least some aspects of your own personal development. For one thing, a relationship occupies a lot of time, taking you away from your own developmental projects. Secondly, your partner is going to embody a certain worldview, which in turn will probably lock you into a limited conceptual neighborhood.
Imagine you are a police officer and you fall in love with another police officer who you meet at work. You have a common language together (filled with acronyms and code names) and can talk about your jobs with great subtlety and ease. The one thing that becomes more difficult, however, is switching careers. Becoming bonded to someone who shares your interests may seem admirable, but it also tends to have a reinforcing effect, binding you to that lifestyle and culture.
After bonding with a fellow police officer, you are less likely to wake up tomorrow and decide you want to be, say, a teacher in Nome, Alaska. To make changes like this, you may have to leave your partner behind, at least in the sense that you may lose your shared language and your common experience. This kind of radical and inspired change is relatively painless for a single person but is inherently stressful in a relationship, so it doesn't happen often.
Before you fall in love and certainly before you marry, consider this: To a significant degree, any relationship is going to "freeze" you at whatever developmental stage you were in when the bonding occurred. If you marry your high school sweetheart, your development is going to be frozen at the high school level and not grow far beyond it.
You probably know former high school classmates like that: those who found romantic "success" at an early stage and were nailed in place by it. They never left your hometown. They're still working at the local factory, and if you go back to visit them, you may see that their bodies have aged but their brains haven't changed much at all. From your point of view, they stepped into a time capsule at graduation and never left.
This is a dangerous effect of romance, especially when followed by marriage, debt and children. You think that love is going to open up new worlds to you, but instead it shuts them down.
Continued in Chapter 11
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