Marriage, Schmarriage

I read an opinion essay on marriage last night that disturbed me so much that I just had to try and share it with Terence. I only got one paragraph into the article before my husband stopped me with an emphatic declaration: "I can't listen to that guy's drivel any longer!"

What drivel did my husband find so irritating that he couldn't listen to the rest of it?

Well, the author is a psychiatrist who has co-authored a book with Glenn Beck. I don't know if that makes him seem more or less reputable in your eyes, but just the word "psychiatrist" makes me roll my eyes a bit. Anyway, the article wasn't at all what I was expecting from someone who has been labeled a "neo-conservative."

It was an attack on marriage as an institution.

Not an attack on gay marriage, or an attack on the forces trying to dismantle marriage. An attack on marriage as a functional part of our society. Unless the entire article was written tongue-in-cheek (and it didn't seem so), this guy was actually saying that marriage is outdated and doesn't work anymore, and we should replace it with something different!

It seems that this guy in his psychiatric practice and in his personal life has only seen marriage cause great suffering and distress in people's lives, and so as a healer, he feels strongly that we should just dismantle the whole thing. Get rid of it altogether so it can quit hurting people. I read all of his "reasons" for why marriage doesn't work with increasing disbelief. Everything he described does not exist in my life at all. (Apparently, you can't be physically attracted to someone you've lived in close quarters with for five or ten years. That's kind of a surprise to Terence and I, seeing as we have quite a satisfying life on the sexual front without either of us having to close our eyes and ignore each other's bodies.) Or the idea that having to get government approval (i.e. a marriage license) should have made me feel rebellious and confined in my relationship from the very beginning. Or most ridiculous of all, that the difficulties in legally dissolving my marriage should make me wonder if Terence is just staying with me because it would be too big of a pain for him to leave.

Oh my.

What an unhappy world this man lives in! I'm not so naive that I don't recognize that there are a lot of people out there in difficult or less than satisfying marriages. I know that we have high divorce rates, and that to many people the vow "til death do we part" may seem quite iffy. But can any serious, thinking adult believe the solution to that is to get rid of marriage altogether?

Apparently there are sincere, thinking adults out there that believe this. And that's what I found so disturbing. It does not bode well for the future.