Marriage will decline until "we" overtakes "I"

Where did all this abortion crap come from? Do we really have to turn every discussion of marriage and relationships into some kind of moral referendum on those uppity broads who are tearing their marriages and our society apart by making their own medical decisions?

Back on topic, for heaven's sake. Janet, your uncle and his partner sound like they had a beautiful relationship, and I'm glad that they had each other. It's unfortunate that it surely didn't receive the recognition it deserves. People like them are the ones who'll give the institution of marriage renewed warmth and grace.

RJPAL,
I do not consider my daughter the same as a mole. I love her dearly and chose to have her. Had I opted not to have her, I would not have even told her father that I was pregnant.

Any medical procedure that I opt to have done on MY body is MY decision, whether my husband likes it or not.
Aborting a fetus that has his DNA may cause him emotional pain if he had the desire to be a parent, but the fact is that his physical involvement in the pregnancy process ended when he shot his load. After that, it's MY body that will have to undergo the changes and stresses of pregnancy and delivery, not his.

I used to use Depo-Provera for birth control. It was wrecking my health. When I informed my ex that I had decided that I was no longer going to take the Depo shots, and that I had decided that my body needed a break from synthetic hormones in general, so I would not be using any hormonal birth control, he actually had the nerve to ask, "Don't you think that's a decision WE should make?" No - it wasn't OUR health being wrecked, it was MINE. I knew that he didn'tlike wearing condoms, so I told him that I would use a female condom and spermicidal film.

It is clear that even many feminists appreciate "We-ness" in marriage.

But when there is a conflict between one's own selfish interests and the interests of the couple, it is easy to throw the "We" out the window and replace it with "Me".

This is where the role of society comes in. Society used to say, "Thou shalt not." And that was of great help in a moment of weakness.

There is a great deal of recent psychological literature that shows that it is difficult to be moral without help from outside. And as the Nazis showed us, it is easy to be immoral with a little encouragement from the outside.

This was confirmed by research by the Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment.

If feminists tell you that a living being living inside your body is no more than a mole, you will treat it as such and forget that you are destroying a potential human being. In case you are not consulting the father, then you are harming him also.

And why? Because the Court says that you can.

Society has the obligation to help us be moral, but more and more we tell society, "None of your business" and society responds with "Sorry we said anything."

If you look at the ten commandments, number four is shared by many religions. The Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh endorses a day of contemplation. The last six are entirely secular and have to do with the easy relations between human beings.

But in our passion to separate church and state, we threw all ten out of the window.

A pity really...

We should remember that we all belong to the SAME species as the Wall street bankers. We all realize that they need to be regulated. What about ourselves?

RJPAL,
A married woman is not requireed to inform her spouse if she has a mole removed, if she has her gall bladder removed, if she gets breast implants, or if she has a hysterectomy. Why should she be required to inform him if she plans to have an abortion? If she's planning to abort, I would assume that SHE does not wish to be pregnant.
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I believe this is part of the problem, that a child (which has two parents) is thought of as no different from a mole.

Is this what you tell your children, "You are not much more than a mole to me"?

"An unborn child is no more than a mole or a kidney" is a fiction. But many believe it, and are backed up by the lawyers.

A pity...

RJPAL,
A married woman is not requireed to inform her spouse if she has a mole removed, if she has her gall bladder removed, if she gets breast implants, or if she has a hysterectomy. Why should she be required to inform him if she plans to have an abortion? If she's planning to abort, I would assume that SHE does not wish to be pregnant.
My husband and I do inform each other of doctor's appointments any medical procedures we schedule - as a courtesy, as well as to make sure that the co-pays are worked into the budget. But neither of us feels that we have a right to know every detail of every doctor's visit the other has.

Some 30 years ago the state of Pennsylvania passed a law that a married woman seeking an abortion must inform her husband. No, it wasn't "get his permission," it was "inform". And women who said their husbands were abusive were excused from this requirement.

Nonetheless, the Supreme Court knocked down this requirement as too onerous.

So what remains of joint decision making?
The Court said to husbands, "You get the bills, but you have no rights to the child."

That decision was the American flip side of some fundamentalist societies stoning adulterous women. America became the land of deadbeat husbands and dead foetuses.

I am sorry that marriage is going - it is lawyers, and our excessive reliance on them which has destroyed it, along with many other values which nourish society.

Excessive individualism was built into the US constitution, but somehow it did not come to fruition until the last 30-40 years. But it was a time bomb which was bound to destroy a sense of community sooner or later. And the time for that to happen seems to be now.

Many people dislike priests, and no doubt priests have their faults. But are you SURE that when you replace priests by lawyers you are getting the better deal?

"She was so pleasant." Old tombstone somewhere in New Zealand. He was so blessed. Somehow men and horses have formed a partnership of mutual loyalty and understanding. When the horse is obsolete, so marriage will follow. The family who rides together, stays together. The horse knows that he or she owns the Earth. Ride on.

RevMark, that's how we do it at my house. My husband and I don't see each other as jigsaw pieces who need the other to complete them, but as a Venn diagram - two complete wholes (me, you), with an area of overlap (we).

I don't entirely agree, although I think I basically agree with your general thrust.

In any two-person relationship (marriage, engagement, friendship, business partnership) there are three entities: me ... the other ... the relationship. Each of those three is equally important, so I don't look for the "we" to overtake the "me" and the "you." I look for it to make an equal claim.

What do I need for myself, from you, and to give to you? What do you need for yourself, from me, and to give to me? Then, allowing ourselves the license of poetic perception, personifying the relationship, what does the relationship need and call for from me, from you?

Then it all goes into the complexities which Murray Bowen, Edwin Friedman, Harriet Lerner, Michael Kerr and others have perceived. Any two people wobbling under stress pull in a third for stability, usually by unconscious maneuvers. Then triangles begin interlocking, and pretty soon we have a tangled bowl of noodles and noodling we call tribe, city, nation. But that's another story.