So my head is currently wrapped by this notion that some people believe their relationship is more ‘modern’ than mine just because I got married, am monogamous, like my family and spend time with them, also I chose to have children.
They know nothing about my reasons to get married, or any of those other things, they just assume because they can label their sexual/personal relationships as ‘n’-gamy or ‘something’-sexual, or that they choose individual expansion in a complex and fluidly expressed environment and see that as a defining concept in a modern world, that it makes them 21st century and me some kind of troglodyte hitting women with a stick to drag them back to my man cave.
I have news for you all. They were doing the same as you in the classic periods and we have no real evidence to say different, but I doubt that primitive man had marriage and was probably pretty damn ‘n’-gamy or ‘something’-sexual 🙂
In other words, your notion that my marriage or anything else I choose is an anachronism, or archaic, or a primitive/simpler/traditional value, is in fact a huge pile of doo-doo.
I didn’t marry because of tradition. I married because of an educated discussion and deliberation with my wife. Yes, it sounds clinical (parts of it were, most of it wasn’t – there you go, we both also subscribe to that silly notion of love) but we ‘chose’ to get married. We discussed it and determined based on a number of factors, including Leigh’s love of the actual event and her belief in the good force that marriage represents and my belief that a promise is special and sharing that promise with family and friends shows how special it is to people (i.e. the event itself is special), to get married. Also, we really had a blast on our wedding day, if I had the money I would do it again and invite the same people they were all brilliant.
I think the fact that we both *chose* this, based on how we felt, and the other persons feelings means we have a modern relationship. Because our relationship is not just based on someones ability to define a term, or solely on some societal or cultural definition, it is based on an understanding of the other persons needs, desires and wishes.
We are both fully aware of many of the sociological, psychological and historical factors that determine relationships, interactions and traditions. We neither conform or reject them, we choose which ones are applicable to our status and what we wish to represent to others as our relationship. In some manner they shape that relationship by their existence, but they do not determine it and they do not define it.
Thanks.
(Oh, none of this is meant to indicate that your relationship isn’t modern, personally if you chose to do it, it is brand new and shiny, all of interaction is 🙂 ).
* This was originally posted on Facebook, then i realised that many people I know are not on Social Media places and I have no ‘real’ control over it there, so I placed it on here.