Because most philosophies that frown on reproduction don't survive.

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

In Marriage, Ideas Do Matter

My commute-read lately has been Emile Zola's Nana, a novel about an actress and courtesan after whom the novel is titled. It's not for nothing that Zola's school of fiction is called naturalism, and as with The Belly of Paris, which I read a while back, this translates into a writing style which both provides huge amounts of sensory description and also takes a very frank and realistic approach to people's emotions and motivations.

Nana is too much a force of nature to be a likable character, but she's fascinating to watch, though at times also painful because of her bouts of self destructive impulsivity. It's probably no great shock, in a novel dealing with the high end courtesans of 1860s Paris and the men in their orbit, that one sees a lot of bad relationship models. The marriages we observe are universally unhappy ones, and many of the characters or yearning for a permanence and security which their actions are not likely to achieve.

This reminded me of some thoughts that I had not got around to forming into a post during a discussion of marriage a while back. The theme which many people felt called upon to write on at that time was that having a Catholic understanding of marriage is not a talisman against marital problems. This is most certainly true. A proper understanding of what marriage is for and how spouses should treat each other does not protect you against mistakenly marrying someone with great either great personal failings or who simply turns out to be hard to get along with. It does not protect you from marrying someone with hidden faults, or un-hidden ones that prove more difficult than you expected. It does not protect you from the shadow of your own or another's past. In short: ideas are not magic.

Nonetheless, ideas do matter -- in marriage as in the rest of life.

A couple who believe that marriage is simply a relationship of convenience which should last no longer than they find it adding to their happiness may, by chance, end up having a fairly successful marriage. And a couple who believe that marriage is meant to be a permanent and loving relationship for the purposes of bearing children and providing companionship may have a tragically unhappy marriage. But the latter set of beliefs is more conducive to happiness than the former.

This should be so obvious that it hardly needs arguing. Would we argue in relation to any other part of life that it doesn't impact the quality of your relationships whether you act well or act badly?

Where people get hung up, however, is on turning these things into absolutes: If you have incorrect ideas about marriage, your marriage will be bad. If you have good ideas about marriage, your marriage will be good.

It should be obvious that both of these are far too simplistic. People, both those with good ideas and those with bad ideas, often don't live up to their professed standards. Some people have good fortune, other have bad. A host of things contribute to the relative success or failure of a marriage. However, none of this means that ideas don't matter. They do.

2 comments:

Jenny said...

"But the latter set of beliefs is more conducive to happiness than the former.

This should be so obvious that it hardly needs arguing. Would we argue in relation to any other part of life that it doesn't impact the quality of your relationships whether you act well or act badly?"

The latter set of beliefs is obviously more conducive for a happy marriage. I think where people get caught is that you can only control your own behavior and not your spouse's. You can die to self over and over and if your spouse doesn't see it or recognize it, his/her behavior may not change which may continue to inflict pain on the other spouse, even if the inflicted pain is not intentional but just some blind spot.

You see a lot of writing directed at wives that says something like you can change your husband's behavior by treating him the way the ideal says you should except more so. You should be extra loving, extra caring, extra supportive and then he will respond in kind to you. But the husband, being a human man and not a mind reader, may not respond the way the wife thought he would, but may take the extra TLC as a sign that he is doing everything right. The wife is now unhappy because she feels like the ideal failed her. (I'm not trying to point the finger at husbands. I just don't tend to read articles directed at men trying to relate to their wives.)

There seems to be conflation of the ideals of marriage and proper behavior with getting the expected, desired response. I am flailing trying to explain what I mean.

Darwin said...

Yeah, I think part of the problem is that people are prone to think in terms of "If I do good, things will be good" rather than "If I do good, things will be better than if I did wrong".

Or even more so, it gets flipped around and so people thing "if things didn't go well, that means I did not behave virtuously".