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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 |
"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs."
That's the Communist credo. In a perfect society, people who are strong should use their extra resources to take care of those who are weak. Communism was supposed to address the huge disparities between wealth and poverty that we still see today. It is obscene to see how some people ostentatiously waste money while others a few feet away are struggling just to feed their families.
Communism tried to equalize things by taking from the rich and giving to the poor. In the process, it destroyed the incentive to excel. If you are protected from the consequences of your mistakes, then you have no incentive to correct them. Likewise, if you have no incentive for exceptional performance, then you aren't going to attempt it. No matter how well intentioned it may have been, Communism only reduced the total pool of resources and encouraged bland mediocrity.
Marriage is Communism in miniature. You are choosing to combine all your income and expenses in one pot and live by that Communistic credo. It's 1917 all over again! When you make your vows and enter into the contract, you think that everything is going to be equal from this day forward. You are going to do what you are good at—say, cooking—and your spouse will do what they are good at, like mowing the lawn. Each of you will work just as hard as the other and with equal quality, and all the work will get done. In the evening, you will collapse into each other's arms, happy with your day's labor and content in your Worker's Paradise.
Unfortunately, that's not the way things usually work out in real life. What typically happens in this mini-Communism is that one person ends up doing more and more of the productive work of the relationship while the other does progressively less. If you start out with a gung-ho attitude and eagerly do more than your share, the system will adjust to that, and this elevated quota will be expected of you permanently.
The alternative, Capitalism, isn't much prettier. "What's mine is mine and what's yours is yours." Each person is strictly accountable for their outward performance regardless of their circumstances. If you get sick, lose a leg or happen to be a child, that's your problem.
If you engage in a romantic relationship, you are agreeing to abandon some aspects of Capitalism. To be in love, you must be willing to share with your partner without a strict accounting of who contributes what. Mutual aid is also part of the deal: If something bad happens to your partner, you will be there to help them.
To get the most from life, you have to be willing to share. The question is, at what point does sharing become destructive and counterproductive?
Without marriage and its communistic financial merger, the two of you would have to actively negotiate how much money you would each contribute to the community. Maybe you will split the rent, utilities and other household expenses 50-50. Whatever money you have left is yours alone, and you are each free to spend your own money as you wish without consulting the other. If you see something expensive you want, and you have the money, you are free to buy it, no permission or negotiation required. You would not be spending the other person's money, because you would have to explicitly ask for it first.
Throwing all your assets and liabilities in the same pot dilutes each person's responsibility. Because the new pot is bigger and more complex, each person is less connected to the consequences of their actions. What this means in many marriages is an explosion of debt. "Two can live as cheaply as one," the saying goes. In reality, it appears that couples spend more extravagantly than single people, because the "community" is only as disciplined as the least disciplined partner.
Couples are also less innovative and creative in finding cheaper solutions to their problems. It's the bureaucratic factor. To do something differently—like buying a cheaper laundry detergent—you need consultation and permission. If you are willing to make a financial compromise but your spouse isn't, you'll probably stick with the more expensive solution by default.
Marriages, like Communist states, always start out with high ideals: We are going to share everything equally. Unfortunately, true equality can be incredibly difficult to maintain. It is like two stars orbiting close to each other. Inherently, the system is unstable. Even if they come together equally, eventually one is going to start sucking more material out of the other than it is giving back.
However, in a marriage, it is not usually the stronger party who is sucking resources out of the weaker but the other way around. As one party gains in strength, the other tends to get more emotional, throw more fits and demand more attention. As the weaker party feels increasingly useless, they compensate by magnifying their discomforts and generating conflicts.
It is amusing to watch this dynamic in gay couples. With uncanny regularity, the couple consists of a strong "provider", who goes out and competently deals with the world, and a more emotional "housewife" who overreacts to everything and requires constant attention. The hysterical wife remains perpetually needy in part because the provider is willing to provide. The substance of their relationship often consists of a series of repetitive sitcom scenarios where the needy one creates problems and the more competent one dutifully comes along clean up the mess.
How many marriages does this describe?
Think of Homer and Marge Simpson. Isn't Marge an enabler? Doesn't her strength and willingness to clean up messes ultimately encourage Homer's oafishness? Now, think of several marriages in the town where you grew up—say, the parents of your friends who you were able to watch at close range. In how many of those marriages was the power truly equal? Wasn't one partner usually more dependent and child-like, taking more than they gave?
By throwing all your finances into one pot, you are erasing natural boundaries and destroying incentives. The result may be the developmental stagnation or regression of one of the partners as the other voluntarily steps in protect them. When the going gets tough, it is easy to fall back on your partner. Isn't that what they are there for? What this Commmunism may encourage, however, is unhealthy dependency. One person stops standing up for themselves because they no longer have to, while the one with ability feels obligated to pick up the slack.
The presence of this dynamic doesn't necessarily mean that a marriage will collapse. There are many other kinds of marriage hell. In the Soviet Union, Communism itself cranked along in dull matrimony for 70 years.
But stagnation or regression wasn't what you hoped for when you started your revolution, was it?
Continued in Chapter 12
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