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ter> Sam Vaknin's Psychology, Philosophy, Economics and Foreign Affairs Web Sites 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 couples 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 cohabit ates 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 euphoria's 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, touching upon the very foundation of our personality that we shudder in anticipation of the imminent and, no doubt, horrible punishment that awaits us for being so presumptuous and iconoclastic. This, indeed, is the first dysphoria, which accompanies our mental preparations. Preparedness is achieved at a cost of great consternation and the activation of a host of primitive defence mechanisms, which lay dormant hitherto. We deny, we regress, we repress, we project to no avail. The battle is waged and it is horrific to behold. Luckily, only its echoes reach our consciousness and only in our dreams does it find a fuller (though more symbol laden) expression.
This self-induced panic is the result of a conflict. On the one hand, the person knows that it is absolutely life threatening to remain alone (both biologically and psychologically). A feeling of urgency emerges which propels the person with a great thrust to find a mate. On the other hand, there is this feeling of impending disaster, that he is doing something wrong, that an act of blasphemy and sacrilege is in the making. Getting married is the most terrifying rite of passage. The reaction is to confine oneself to known territories.
The terra cognate of ones neighbourhood, country, language, race, culture, language, background, profession, social stratum, education. The individual defines himself by belonging to these groups. They imbue him with feelings of security and firmness. It is to them that he applies in his quest to find a mate.
There, in the confidence of yore, he seeks to find the security of morrow. Solace can be found in familiar grounds. The panicked person can be calmed and restored among his peers and (mental, economic, social) brethren. No wonder that more than 80 % of the marriages take place among members of the same social class, profession, race, creed and breed.
True: the chances to come across a mate are bigger within these groups and associations but the more predominant reason is the comfort that it provides. The dysphoria is replaced by an euphoria. This is the euphoria, which naturally accompanies any triumph in life. Overcoming the panic is such a triumph and not a mean one at that.
Subduing the internal tyrants (or guides, depending on the character of the primary objects) of yesteryear qua...
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