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February At a mainstream level, we seldom seriously examine some of the core expectations of those who actually do freely decide that marriage is for them. Too many of the counselors whom the popular media pushes write to “improve” those people who have already bought into marriage’s current definitions. They don’t become popular by questioning the core assumptions that are guaranteed to keep the institution disappointing. Their books would be too challenging to get past a publisher’s marketing expert. Yet, when one marries, one brings to the relationship all of the role expectations they’ve learned from our society. On top of these, another set of roles – marriage roles – are added. We’ve been taught what a marriage looks like, how a marriage should work, and what two married people should feel, think, and do. Those roles are quite different from what a relationship would be without any more than the expectation that both people will bring their full humanity to the marriage. The two participants, therefore, judge their normalcy, interactions, and success by standards that continue to chide them into certain ways of being, acting, thinking and feeling. Since most of those around us have bought into these standards, looking around at others only reinforces what keeps marriage a less than fifty-fifty roll of the dice. But culturally installed expectations aren’t necessarily, or usually, based in what is healthy for human beings. They are only roles meant to keep a profit-oriented society expanding at an addictive pace. Few will therefore be satisfied with their self-evaluations based on their ability to live up to these ideals. The relationship or the partner will become the scapegoat. Unexamined, the result will be a searching for yet another relationship. “This time, this one” will fulfill the unfulfilable. We start by bringing society’s male and female gender roles to marriages. Our culture’s already installed them. No wonder marriage equality is said to be dangerous by the pushers of the status quo. To the extent that marriage is believed to be a living out of these gender roles, marriage equality threatens “traditional marriage.” Two men or two women marrying can’t come to the institution with the standard expectations of who is the husband and who is the wife. Let’s hope they won’t be using “traditional,” straight-acting marriage as their model no matter how much those thinking only through these roles keep asking who plays the man, and who the woman. If LGBT people do, then the kind of creative thinking needed to save heterosexual marriage itself will be difficult. Same-sex couples will have given up the chance to model a healthy lifestyle by rejecting dysfunctional straight-aping. A revolutionary examination of what marriage is, needs to begin with affirming coupled love as a relationship between two human beings, not two gender roles. How would one human being (however you want to define human) relate to another? It’s no longer assumed that because of ones anatomy or gender identity, we automatically know who will take out the garbage, mow a lawn, initiate sexual expression, nurture the other, wash the dishes, do any laundry, or take the car in for repairs. Everything is now and always up for negotiation. This means the relationship will take more effort. It will challenge the belief that we’re supposed to be spending our time promoting business by working more, shopping more, and consuming more. Who has time for all this? We’re not supposed to value sitting down together to discuss the “little” things of life. They’re a waste of time. And what if in a few years we change our minds and want to change our roles? You mean we have to do this again? Tough. Sacrifice. Bury your dissatisfaction. It’s better for our economy that those things are settled and taken for granted. On to the “important” things that take the focus off of relationship disappointments. And the male role, the role that’s supposed to define what marriage is by its dominance (Isn’t that why the man’s the boss?) isn’t supposed to think in terms of feelings, relationships, and all those little things anyway. Men only dwell on big issues, like finance, work, and sports. On top of this, when one becomes someone’s spouse, there are further roles to add. What does it mean to be a husband or wife? What’s on the list of new expectations? Few discuss these with their partner before they tie the knot to see if there’s agreement. Few reflect upon them at all. But most have an unconscious list that one learns about after the fact. They appear when a partner hasn’t fulfilled the expectations of what a spouse it supposed to be. This is part of what makes someone in a marriage conclude that they’re walking on a minefield. Boom! Gosh, I didn’t even know that was there. They’re unexamined but related to the models provided by our own moms and dads as well as the images around us. Some of those models also provided exactly what we know we don’t want in a relationship. We’ve looked on and watched people we know move from one relationship to another and conclude that they haven’t really left the previous one – just found another person like the former in terms of these expectations. But what if there is no model of an ideal marriage? What if there is no normal, average, or okay standard? What if each relationship, and each marriage, is a standard unto itself? What if each couple needs to stop looking around itself to compare how it’s doing? What if we could give up the fear of what others think? What if we could look into each other’s eyes, listen to each other’s deep desires, and create the relationship or marriage that worked for us? What if we could define for ourselves what Valentine’s Day is? What if we could give up the fear that how we relate to someone must be confined to straight roles? © 2010 Robert N. Minor Other Issues, Books, Resources
Robert N. Minor is the author of Scared Straight: Why It's So Hard to Accept Gay People and Why It's So Hard to Be Human and Gay & Healthy in a Sick Society and Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. He may be reached through www.fairnessproject.org
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