That's the question that popped back into my head after stumbling across this blog about what I would call the death of black love.
I posed this question on a message board a few years ago and thought, what better place than here to give it a second shot and get different perspectives?
How do you feel about this statement . . .
"Love doesn't mean anything. But commitment and being team players is what's important. Work towards a common goal and a marriage will last forever." - ?
Also, how do you feel about parents who stay together for the children in non-abusive relationships?
5 comments:
I think love is crucial to even being able to establish a team. Teams agree to work on a common goal but you have to be able to accept roles and responsibilities and no your teammates strengths and weaknesses. You only find out those things when you care to find them out. So I don't think love is "nothing". I think all three components are important.
As for people staying together for the sake of the children, I don't understand it. I'm not married and don't have children but I can't conceive of the notion where I would cosign on being unhappy for the sake of others. As a child of divorce parents, it would have killed me to think that my mother would stay with my father who at that time was a womanizer because she thought I would benefit from it. I could see my brothers, who now honor and cherish women, viewing them as pieces of tail because that's the way my dad viewed women.
Having said that, I'm a daddy's girl and I love him dearly, but I'm glad they ended their marriage.
Well if you look at the history of marriages, the concept of love being present or even going so far as being a requisite within marriage is a fairly recent development. Marriages are basically contractual agreements between 2 people and "The State" - think about it, why else would you have to get licensed and registered if it was based on love alone? Marriages have occurred as business transactions between nations and kingdoms to ensure that strength and power stayed within a certain circle of people and no one else. Women used to become a man's PROPERTY when they married him. I could go on, but I digress...
Some of my earliest (and happiest) memories from my childhood are of my parents and their doting attention. Separately, they were great - together they were awful. Most of my memories of them together are the long, screaming fights, my mother crying, and my aunt coming over to mediate and possibly intervene on an attempted homicide. I was very sad when my father left, and there was always a varying level of struggle on many fronts in the wake of his departure - but they were clearly just not right for each other and my father wasn't willing to try and make things work, which he compounded by having an affair and re-marrying 44 days after the divorce. My mom used to tell me that if they had stayed together, she would have killed herself. In short, NO, I don't think people should stay together for the sake of the children, even if the relationship isn't physically abusive. Growing up around constant hostility can be just as damaging.
Love, commitment and team playing are essential elements of a good marriage. When all of these are in play, a marriage can last forever.
I disagree with parents that choose to stay together for the sake of their children. Children thrive in loving environments. These types of arrangements, although non-abusive, can be detrimental to a child's emotional growth.
This topic depresses me, to be honest. I think our generation can be married-- once it stops being so selfish. We haven't learned to appreciate compromise and in-depth partnership because that kind of vulnerability is viewed as weak. And let's face it, our parents' and grandparents' generations went through a lot, and in many cases, they're right. That vulnerability got them burned.
I think we swung the pendulum too far though, and now we're all too busy looking out for ourselves and watching out for being "weak," and what we wind up with is this inability to form the kind of rock-solid relationships we idolize as unreal now.
And I don't think a relationship like that can survive without love. If you are unhappy and uninspired, you're not going to put forth the effort it takes to make something as difficult and complex as a marriage work.
As for parents staying together for the children's sake... I don't like it. I think children can see and feel when it's cold in the home, so to speak. I think it gives them the wrong impression of what a healthy relationship is like.
It's one of my biggest fears, being in a loveless marriage.
This was way too long, wasn't it? lol.
Oh (I keep going.. sorry lol). As for that statement that "Love doesn't mean anything. But commitment..."
I totally disagree. I think love and commitment go together. Love is commitment, if you think about it. It's commitment with passionate affection, I guess you could say.
Love is about commitment. If you take the "lovey" part out of that commitment, you might as well just be business partners. And if that's what you want your marriage to be, I mean, to each his or her own.
But I don't see the point in it, not in this day and age.
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