FamilyCourtChronicles.com Web
Random photo from RoamingPhotos.com THE FAMILY COURT PROJECT HAS COME TO A CLOSE. Effective 6/1/08, Family Court Chronicles has become inactive (announcement), and no new information will be added. The page below is retained for archive purposes, but it could be out of date. Upon request, the webmaster will continue to correct significant errors and will consider removing information that is destructively obsolete. (Email: FamilyCourtGuy (at) gmail.com) See Glenn Campbell's home page for his still-active websites. KillroyCafe.com

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 Next Chapter>> Production Notes | College Lecture | Glenn's Home Page   NOTE: This work has been ABANDONED as too long-winded and repetitive, but you are welcome to get whatever you can from it. The essential ideas are best summarized in a single page. Most of my new philosophical musings on relationships, etc. are now found in Kilroy Cafe. —GC, 5/09

Commitment and Negotiation

The Case Against Marriage - Chapter 4 - 7/21/2007

Commitment.

It is a word you hear a lot at weddings and from people who are about to wed. They say, "I am getting married to express my commitment to my partner." Commitment, in this context, is supposed to mean dedication or loyalty.

The word has other meanings however. If you "commit" a crime you may be "committed" to prison. Once you are in prison, however, you wouldn't say that you were "committed" to your cellmate. It isn't loyalty or dedication that keeps you together. A more accurate description is that you are "imprisoned" together.

Commitment, in the sense of voluntary loyalty, is certainly an essential part of life. The question is whether commitment can be nailed down forever in a public ceremony. It is like capturing a butterfly and pinning it in a case. In the process of trying to preserve it, you are also killing it. Can commitment—the voluntary kind—really be pinned down forever without turning it into imprisonment?

The betrothed may tell you, "I know marriage won't always easy. There could be problems from time to time, but I am committed to resolving them. There is no reward without sacrifice."

Yes, there will be problems, because you will have merged your finances and created a cell for yourselves, and sooner or later most cellmates are going to be at each other's throats. Yes, you will probably "resolve" any problems between you because you don't have much choice. They won't necessarily be healthy resolutions, however; perhaps you'll just be sweeping problems under the carpet to be dealt with later.

If you are trapped in a cell with someone full-time, you are tempted to solve problems with temporary, superficial fixes rather than any deep surgery. If your cellmate has sensitivities, you are going to learn to tiptoe around them, because you know the penalty for saying the wrong thing. When you are trapped in cage with a tiger, you don't think much about the long-term health of the relationship; you only want to avoid being eaten right now.

Your motivation would seem purer if you had your own house and your friend had theirs and every day, through no formal obligation, you went over to see your friend. Then you could truthfully say that you were "committed" to them. If the two of you had a fight, you could withdraw to your respective homes and not see each other for a while. If you both found you missed each other and that there was still value in the relationship, you would probably be drawn back together—provided you could resolve the problem that pushed apart.

People who get married assume that love and positive reinforcement can solve every problem. The fact is, they can't. In every long-term relationship, problems will inevitably arise where the only effective solution is withdrawal.

Let's say your partner is drinking too much, to the point where you feel it is interfering in your relationship. Or maybe the problem is not something bad or destructive, just some aspect of your partner's behavior that diminishes your interest in them. If you are free to withdraw, then you will. You try to make it clear to them what the issue is, then you pull back to your own independent life.

Maybe this will be a permanent withdrawal or only a temporary one. At the time you pull back, you might not know. All you know is that the behavior has to change for the relationship to be comfortable to you and that talk alone hasn't helped. Even if you think the withdrawal will be temporary, you need to have the permanent option in your arsenal. Then you are in a strong negotiating position.

I regret to inform you: Love can be war sometimes. No matter how much you may be attracted your partner in the beginning, the ultimate success of the relationship will probably be determined by how well you fight. It may be all milk and honey at first, but sooner or later, your partner is going to head in some direction you object to. Either you are going to renegotiate or the relationship has to end.

If you are trapped in a cell with someone, then you are in a very weak negotiating position. You can say, "If you don't stop drinking, I'm leaving you," but things have to get really bad before you are likely to follow through on the threat. If you've already merged your finances and loudly declared your relationship to the world, then no withdrawal can be graceful.

Instead you make "accommodations." You start making excuses for your partner's behavior instead of setting boundaries on what you will accept.

Negotiation is what a long-term relationship is all about. Eventually, you will want certain things while your partner wants different things. You negotiate and hopefully come to some sort of workable compromise.

To be able to negotiate, you have to retain some independent power. It may be hard to think of love that way, especially when you are new to it. The fact is, a total merging is neither possible nor desirable. No matter how close you may become to someone, you ought to have one foot firmly planted outside the relationship, in an independent life where you don't need them at all.

This independence is a source of power that can help you squeeze the concessions you want out of the one you love. If they are strong, too, then you will find an honorable middle ground. Healthy love is form of ongoing conflict, hopefully more of a chess game than open warfare. The important thing is to play by the rules.

Think about the court system. When people go to court, they are fighting over something. The court system works because there is a standardized system for resolving these conflicts. The court is a "conflict resolution system," and the healthy functioning of society depends on how well this system works.

If your marriage falls apart, you might find yourself in the public court system, but every relationship should have its own "conflict resolution system" in private. When you have a conflict with your partner, what is the proper process you should go through to fix it? When you are fighting, all you are usually thinking about is the current bone of contention. What is more important, however, is the manner in which you fight.

The most powerful tool of negotiation is withdrawal. To be able to negotiate on substantial issues, you need to have the ability to pull back, away from the relationship, even if you don't actually do it. If the person you are negotiating with knows you are trapped, you might not get much change out of them. If they know you are free to move and perhaps take away something they want, then they will probably be more responsive.

We like to think of relationships as involving only love, but relationships also involve power. No matter how tender you are with each other, there is a power struggle going on behind the scenes. You are constantly pushing and pulling at each other. Sometimes, you can verbalize what you want and solve a problem with words alone, and sometimes you can't. If you have weapons at your disposal, sometimes you have to actually use them, not just threaten to.

Divorce is a nuclear weapon: It is withdrawal without any hope of recovery. Unfortunately, it is difficult to negotiate with only nuclear weapons behind you, since the only possible outcome is total annihilation. It is easier to negotiate with small arms—you know: bombs, guns, hand grenades, knives. In love, the weapons can be relatively gentle, as in, "Sorry, I don't want to do that, so I am not going along."

If I have my independent life and you have yours, and I decide not to see you for a few days, it's no big deal. Maybe I am sending you a message about something I want to change, but I'm not saying that the relationship is over. It's just that we come together when we have things in common and pull apart when we don't. If we are important to each other and truly "committed" to each other, then we will always be drawn back.

Things are different if the two of us have merged our practical lives to the point where casual withdrawal is impossible. If you are married, and your spouse takes off for a few days, it's a big deal. You'll want to know where they've gone and what they've done. Feelings may be hurt and jealousies may arise. Any withdrawal in this case seems like a loss of commitment. What about those vows you made on your wedding day? Joined at the hip 'til death do you part.

No one stands up before all their family and friends and says, "I pledge to stay with this person whenever it is convenient and for only as long as the relationship is really working." That's probably the healthier position, but it's not the way marriage is supposed to work. Marriage means you are living permanently with someone "for better or worse," even when you aren't getting along with them. Any withdrawal is going to be seen by the world as a failure of the marriage.

If you hadn't made this loud declaration in front of family and friends, then occasional withdrawal wouldn't seem like a big thing. It would just be part of the natural ebb and flow of the relationship.

Continued in Chapter 5