marriage friar tuck She been married so many times she got rice marks all over her face. -- Tom Waits 000426 ... MollyGoLightly I think that money would be the only reason I would ever marry. 000526 ... lokkust i'll give you 50 bucks 000621 ... MollyGoLightly okay. point me toward the church. i'm also expecting some chocolate cake out of this. 000707 ... DarklingDuck she lost her mind in the wake of two unrelated marriages the first, her own the second and most ironic that of her lover to his "other" girlfriend. 001226 ... penis flying Marriage allows two people who love each other to grow to hate each other through spending their lives together. If divorce hadn't been invented... 010309 ... Aimee is something I really don't see ever happening to me. granted I have a "gay husband" but I mean someone who's willing to be more intimate with me, emotionally, mentally and the obvious physically. I guess marriage is just something for people who aren't afraid to let people love them. 010310 ... misspent youth marriage....that is a word i have been afraid of all of my life, and i don't know why. mabey its because everyone in my family, except for my grandparents, have been married at least 3 times. or mabey it was from watching my parents fight for 19 years and two weeks before their 20th annaversary they got a divorce. or watching friends get maried then the husband or wife is gone for a couple of months for work and the one that stays home skrews everything in sight. niether sound appialing. 010321 ... BewareOfPenguin Studies have shown that the leading cause of divorce is: marriage. 010528 ... ditto why don't you have an icecream then? 010528 ... The Truth Marriage is not for those of you who are so weak. Marriage takes hard work, loyalty, dedication, commitment, Love. Marriage has it's peaks, but of coarse it has valleys too. So many weak people go into a marriage dressed so beautifully, but inside they are dark and ugly. They go there with that terrible word in their back pocket: Divorce...The ugliest word in the english language. "Well, if it doesn't work out we can always get a divorce" they tell themselves...which is basically signing the divorce papers up front, condemning the marriage to fail. Every marriage has troubles, life is fair and balanced, there is good AND bad things that happen...if you take one, you have to take the other as well. One problem is the delusional fantasies induced by television that more and more people are actually starting to ACTUALLY BELIEVE!!! I am sad that so many people give up. They let foolish greed, of all things, destroy a beautiful and sacred union. But hey, I guess that's america. I got married, and I chose to NEVER get divorced. The only reason a marriage fails is because one or both people DECIDES to let it! ----is directly above. 010528 ... peyton divorce in the back pocket till death do us part "Well my happiness is more important than anything else. It's his fault for not making me happier. If he'd only brought me more flowers I wouldn't have fucked his best friend." 010731 ... Weed Eater What a pathetic thing to say...ughhh, I feel sick, peyton... who are you quoting? 010731 ... ashes you screwed who's best friend????????? and was it female or male???? 010801 ... Hebrew Conquistador marriage is a waste of time. it solves nothing. it proves nothing. what it does do is make it so that if/when you choose to not be with that person anymore.... you have to sign legal papers. 010830 ... girl hmmm..scarey word.. whats kinda amusing is how i didnt feel that way about 6 months ago.. i had been dating a guy for 2 years and we lived together for most of it..toward the end i felt like we were already married and wondered what would change if we did get hitched. im glad we didnt because even after being together for two years, the thought of being together like we were any longer is just as scarey as being married. it bothers me because i'll never know if ive found the right guy because i thought he was for well over a year and thats a long time to me..and i dont guess it really matters just yet..im only 21 (even though my parents were my age when they got married) 011208 ... kitten on drugs i thought it would happen so soon...but i ended things. after 2 long years, i felt as though we were married, but i didn't want the long-term anymore. i wanted something new. now i see myself with someone else...but i'm scared. he's scared, too. we both come from perfectly intact homes, but we've both been hurt. marriage will be forever for me. but i have a feeling it won't be with him. 020101 ... pralines&cream I embrace marriage and i look forward to sharing a life, a house, bedsheets, and children with my husband. 020102 ... kerry i could never imagine being in love with one man for the rest of my life. eternity is a long time, baby, and you'd be having sex with the same person for that entire eternity. what if they're not even GOOD? and even then, even if you're sick of them, divorce is still painful. and if you have kids, it sucks for them. 020102 ... ClairE is a contract. But I'm not getting into that spiel again. Dude, if you even consider divorce upfront, you're dooming it. I hope I find someone who understands this. 020102 ... lady lunchbox ok, so maybe it will be with him... at least he'll let me speak the evil "m" word in his presence now. 020208 ... pralines&cream i understand that, and i agree 020208 ... Rhin what a crock! 020208 ... little wonder i don't know why anyone would do it. 020208 ... god it's like huffing nitrous without the nitrous. (ask tj) 020719 ... Teenage Jesus word 020720 ... p2 not as much fun as mawwage 030107 ... MDogMA Antiquated germination colony, intended use unknown, reason for continuance the reduction of cervical cancer from too many male compatriots. Holds some sort of nostalgic and “spiritualistic” value (no actual reliable statistics). Just another example of the lessening of the male aggression to be so dominated in a way that goes against their very instincts and natural behaviors. 030114 ... MDogMA that should piss someone off. 030114 ... p2 dammit! MDogMA yer pissing me off I was gonna post that! 030114 ... Sam Vaknin Despite all the fashionable theories of marriage, the narratives and the feminists, the reasons to engage in marriage largely remain the same. True, there have been role reversals and new stereotypes have cropped up. But the biological, physiological and biochemical facts were less amenable to modern criticisms of culture. Men are still men and women are still women in more than one respect. Men and women marry for the same reasons: The Sexual Dyad – formed due to sexual attraction and in order to secure a stable, consistent and permanently available source of sexual gratification. The Economic Dyad – To form a functioning economic unit within which the economic activities of the members of the dyad and of additional entrants will be concentrated. The economic unit generates more wealth than it consumes and the synergy between its members is likely to lead to gains in production and in productivity relative to individual efforts and investment. The Social Dyad – The members of the couple bond as a result of implicit or explicit, direct, or indirect social pressure. This pressure can manifest itself in numerous forms. In Judaism, a person cannot belong to some religious vocations, unless he is married. This is economic pressure. In most human societies, avowed bachelors are considered to be socially deviant and abnormal. They are condemned by society, ridiculed, shunned and isolated, effectively ex-communicated. Partly to avoid these sanctions and partly to enjoy the warmth provided by conformity and acceptance, couples marry. Today, a myriad of lifestyles is on offer. The old fashioned, nuclear marriage is one of many variants. Children are reared by single parents. Homosexual couples abound. But in all this turbulence, a pattern is discernible : almost 95% of the adult population gets married ultimately. They settle into a two-member arrangement, whether formalized and sanctioned religiously or legally – or not. The Companionship Dyad – Formed by adults in search of sources of long-term and stable support, emotional warmth, empathy, care, good advice and intimacy. The members of these couples tend to define themselves as each other's best friends. It is folk wisdom to state that the first three types of dyad arrangements suffer from instability. Sexual attraction wanes and is replaced by sexual attrition in most cases. This could lead to the adoption of non-conventional sexual behaviour patterns (sexual abstinence, group sex, couple swapping, etc.) – or to recurrent marital infidelity. Economics are not sufficient grounds for a lasting relationship, either. In today's world, both partners are potentially financially independent. This new found autonomy corrodes the old patriarchal-domineering-disciplinarian pattern of relationship. It is replaced by a more balanced, business like, version with children and the couple's welfare and life standard as the products. Marriages based solely on these considerations and motivations are as easy to dismantle and as likely to unravel as is any other business collaboration. Social pressures are a potent maintainer of family cohesiveness and apparent stability. But – being enforced from the outside – it resembles detention rather than a voluntary arrangement, with the same level of happiness to go with it. Moreover, social norms, peer pressure, social conformity – cannot be relied upon to fulfil the roles of stabilizer and shock absorber reliably. Norms change, peer pressure can adversely influence the survival of the marriage ("If all my friends are divorced and apparently content, why shouldn't I try it, too ?"). It is only the companionship dyad, which appears to be enduring. Friendships deepen with time. While sex deteriorates, economic motives are reversible or voidable, and social norms are fickle – companionship, like wine, gets better with time. Even when planted on the most desolate land, under the most difficult and insidious circumstances – this obdurate seed sprouts and blossoms. "Matchmaking is done in heaven" goes the old Jewish saying but Jewish matchmakers were not averse to lending the divine process a hand. After closely scrutinizing the background of both candidates – male and female – a marriage was pronounced. In other cultures, marriages were arranged by prospective or actual fathers without asking for the embryos or the toddlers' consent. The surprising fact is that arranged marriages last much longer than those, which are, ostensibly, the result of romantic love. Moreover: the longer a couple cohabitates prior to the marriage, the higher the likelihood of divorce. So, romantic love and cohabitation ("getting to know each other better") are negative precursors and predictors of marital longevity, contrary to commonsense. Companionship grows out of friction within a formal arrangement, which is devoid of "escape clauses". In marriages where divorce is not an option (due to prohibitive economic or social costs or because of legal impossibility) – companionship will grudgingly develop and with it contentment, if not happiness. Companionship is the offspring of pity and empathy and shared events and fears and common suffering and the wish to protect and to shield and habit forming. Sex is fire – companionship is old slippers: comfortable, static, useful, warm, secure. We get attached very quickly and very thoroughly to that with which we are in constant touch. This is a reflex that has to do with survival. We attach to other mothers and have our mothers attach to us. In the absence of social interactions, we die younger. We need to bond and to create dependency in others. The marital cycle is composed of euphorias and dysphorias (which are more of the nature of panic). They are the source of our dynamism in seeking out mates, copulating, coupling (marrying) and reproducing. The source of these changing moods is to be found in the meaning that we attach to our marriages. They constitute the real, irrevocable, irreversible and serious entry into adult society. Previous rites of passage (like the Jewish Bar Mitzvah, the Christian Communion and more exotic rites elsewhere) prepare us only partially to the shock of realizing that we are about to emulate our parents. During the first years of our lives, we tend to view our parents as omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent demigods (or complete gods). Our perception of them, of ourselves and of the world is magical. All are entangled, constantly interacting, identity interchanging entities. Our parents are idealized and, then, as we get disillusioned, they are internalized to become the first and most important among the myriad of inner voices that guide our lives. As we grow up (adolescence) we rebel against our parents (in the final phases of identity formation) and then learn to accept them and to resort to them in times of need. But the primordial gods of our infancy never die, nor do they lie dormant. They lurk in our superego, conducting an incessant dialogue with the other structures of our personality. They constantly criticize and analyse, make suggestions and reproach. The hiss of these voices is the background radiation of our personal big bang. Thus, to get married, is to become gods, to commit sacrilege, to violate the very existence of our mother and father, to defile the inner sanctum of our formative years. This is a rebellion so momentous, so all encompassing, <