poemranker ::Marriage by Dovina

DetailsThe poem, its numbers, and the conversation.

Free verse № 132276

Marriage

by Dovina

Member since 2004 · Posted 18 Oct 2005 · 29 comments

Lay aside the legal lies Put away your dogma your hope of financial reward Keep your romantic notions but divorce them from marriage For marriage is stubborn an act of faith a union of forgivers Marriage overlooks wrong and raises his desires above yours every time, every day Anything less is fleeting doomed

Rate it

0 is the worst, 10 the best. Pick a number, add a comment if you like, then send it. Keys: 0–9 pick, Enter sends.

mean 5.40 weighted 5.05 rank 6890 views 295 View voting details →

5 votes so far. Yours would make 6.5 votes so far

29 comments

[n/a] INTRANSIT 18-Oct-05/4:56 PM Reply
Marriage a-la Jurrassic Park:

Sure it's all oohs and ahhs now, Later there's running and screaming.
[n/a] Dovina › INTRANSIT 19-Oct-05/7:32 AM Reply
Let’s consider the running and screaming right up front.
[7] zodiac 19-Oct-05/3:14 AM Reply
Spoken like someone not married.
[n/a] Dovina › zodiac 19-Oct-05/7:32 AM Reply
Hear the Gospel According to Dovina and pray it’s not too late.
[7] zodiac › Dovina 19-Oct-05/9:11 AM Reply
If it were me, I'd lay aside the legal, the dogma, the financial hopes, and the idea of marriage as anything more than romantic notions plus nifty benefits like tax breaks. I would forgive, but I wouldn't overlook wrong. I'd realize there's a point where my marriage couldn't survive if I didn't occasionally raise my desires over hers. I wouldn't call anyone else's marriage fleeting and doomed, for fear of being immediately stricken with a bright bolt of ironic comeuppance.

Oh, right. It IS me. And all that aside, I'll stick with my original proposal: The only necessity for a nonfleeting nondoomed marriage is that both parties understand and agree to their respective roles. Agree to be servant and self-negator, I'm sure you'll find plenty of guys who'll agree to be masters and self-centered.
[n/a] Dovina › zodiac 20-Oct-05/12:41 PM Reply
When you say that success in marriage depends on being a servant and self-negator, you negate all you said previously, and agree with me.
[7] zodiac › Dovina 21-Oct-05/9:19 AM Reply
Have you gone momentarily epileptic? I didn't say anything about marriage depending on anything except that each party in the marriage know and agree to both parties' roles. If YOU, DOVINA, were to agree to be a servant and self-negator, YOU, DOVINA, would find plenty of guys who'd agree to be masters and self-centered. I personally would rather die than have it that way, but I think it can make a lasting marriage. As lasting as any other kind.
[n/a] Dovina › zodiac 21-Oct-05/9:39 AM Reply
If, I DOVINA, were to agree to be a servant and self-negator, it would not be to some jerk self-centered master. The whole point of this discourse is to say that if I marry the perfect man, and at some later time he becomes a jerk, my committment will still hold. I will not can him because he is no longer desirable to me. Do you see that?
[7] zodiac › Dovina 21-Oct-05/10:09 AM Reply
1) I used to think that a successful relationship required each party to think the other one was way-better than him/her in practically every category. Now I'm not so sure. If we're only talking about LASTING relationships, I'm REALLY not sure. Not even sure that that kind of relationship exists in the real world. Then you have to add that the servant self-negator gets to think he/she is better than his/her partner for sacrificing him/herself to such a schlub (cf Crystal Lane Swift.) What I can tell you for certain is I've been in an amazing relationship with my now-wife for five years and I'm better than her at not overloading everything I cook with cheese and salt, and cleaning in a quick, superficial way.

2) How often do you think the perfect man abruptly changes into a jerk? Really. That was the serious part of this point. The not serious part is absolute power corrupts absolutely; maybe if you weren't such a servant and self-negator...

3) I think I got the idea early in our correspondence that you were a lot more iconoclastic than you actually are. You can probably tell from the way I'm constantly confounded by your traditionalism. I don't mean that as an insult to traditionalism, I just mean I'd have been talking to you differently if I'd known.

5) On that note - seriously, why would your commitment hold if you didn't find your man desirable? (Please assume that by 'undesirable' we both mean 'over an extended period of time without exception'.) Would you say the same thing if there weren't kids/property in the equation?

6) FROM ZODIAC'S AND MRS ZODIAC'S WEDDING CEREMONY: "Here, today, you stand side by side, excited and exultant, looking out into the future. It’s not clear what that will be exactly. You don’t know where you’ll be taken, or what trials, adventures, and new experiences await you. But you believe that you will be together, looking back across ten, twenty, or seventy years at yourselves, standing here on this day. What you believe, no sacrament or oath can make more real or permanent than the ones you have already made, the simple commitments you have chosen to live by... You are united by a connection that is strong because it is flexible. It endures because it is made anew each day of your free choosing. Your love is not the kind that is blind and unknowing; it is open-eyed and grown out of knowledge and desire to know more... You will settle for nothing, but instead will always pursue your dreams and each other’s. You will be open to new dreams, new goals, and new ideas. You will travel."
[n/a] Dovina › zodiac 21-Oct-05/10:33 AM Reply
1) It’s good that what you used to think has changed. If I ever thought that being a servant self-negator made me better than he, I would no longer be a servant self-negator.

2) Seldom would the perfect man become a jerk in the long term, though a jerk for an hour is expected.

3) That’s the nicest compliment you have ever given me.

5) My commitment would hold even if he becomes undesirable because it is a commitment, and I believe in commitment. It would be the same with or without kids, though kids add strength to a commitment. Property be damned.

6) Your wedding vow statement, “You are united by a connection that is strong because it is flexible” is what I’m talking about. We change; and the kind of love must change. The extreme outcome of this is an act of faith, where I overlook the wrong, raising his desires over mine, every time, every day.
[7] zodiac › Dovina 21-Oct-05/10:46 AM Reply
1) I don't know if that's good or bad. Seriously.

2) Well, obviously neither of us is talking about leaving our partners because they're jerks for an hour.

3) It only took me a year-and-a-half.

4) I wonder what ever happened to 4?

5) I'd agree, with the following caveat: I'd only make commitments I could conceivably or comfortably keep. Most marriages don't fall into that category. That sounds weak, but going into marriage with both of our parents recently divorced, we spent a lot of time asking "If we ever did split up, would we feel that all the commitments we'd made were invalidated? If 'til death do us part' proved untrue, what would we be able to say WAS true?" You're going to call me unromantic. Go ahead. I'm more in love with my wife than ever. We didn't promise to love til death, we promised to love until we didn't love anymore, then get out before it was a travesty of love. That, for me, is romance.

6) "the kind of love must change". Granted. I'd add, the fact that it's love means it will change by itself, not by our will. Who ever manhandled love?



[n/a] Dovina › zodiac 21-Oct-05/10:56 AM Reply
5) We are not so obtuse as to make commitments we don’t intend to keep. I don’t know if you are romantic, but you seem uncommitted. To even consider breakup is non-commitment.
[7] zodiac › Dovina 21-Oct-05/11:03 AM Reply
Of course not. We do, however, as a race tend to make commitments we couldn't possibly know if we'll be able to keep, like LOVING someone until we DIE. Over 50% of the Americans who've ever been in married thought they could, and were wrong.

I'm committed to love and my own and my wife's happiness, not to commitment itself. If any of those things goes, we've already failed. We will not set ourselves up to fail at pure endurance. What's the romance of that?
[n/a] Dovina › zodiac 21-Oct-05/11:15 AM Reply
Oh I see, you’re justifying it on the basis of race and Americanism. You’re saying that because 50% of marriage commitments fail, that it’s ok to fail. And you’re further justifying it on the basis that “pure endurance” is not worth the cost. But the kicker is that “romance” becomes the goal.
[7] zodiac › Dovina 21-Oct-05/11:22 AM Reply
Are you serious? One, I mean the HUMAN race. Two, if I had statistics for marriage in other countries, I'd use them; as things stand (and as we're both Americans), America's a stellar example. Three, I'm saying that because 50% of marriage commitments fail, maybe there's something wrong with the commitment. Four, no, pure endurance of anything has never been worth the cost of anything. Is that what you want on your tombstone? "I endured"? Five, scoff, but I don't have to change my very conception of love to fit some outside institution, or justify unhappiness to myself. THAT'S romance. Six, it's early where you are to be so drunk. Shame on you.
[7] zodiac › Dovina 21-Oct-05/11:23 AM Reply
PS-Good night.

"It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there"

- William Carlos Williams
[n/a] Dovina › zodiac 21-Oct-05/11:27 AM Reply
Good night, and sleep committed, romantic, and poetic.
[7] zodiac › Dovina 22-Oct-05/9:25 AM Reply
Last I checked, I wasn't mocking your existing, functional relationship.
[7] zodiac › Dovina 23-Oct-05/5:38 AM Reply
PS-My experience is that people who aren't in relationships talk about what they'll give to a relationship; people who are in relationships talk about what they get from theirs. I think there's hope for you after all.
[n/a] Dovina › zodiac 23-Oct-05/6:57 AM Reply
And what I get is worth the price.
[n/a] <~> 19-Oct-05/6:37 AM Reply
is that what you think marriage is about?
[n/a] Dovina › <~> 19-Oct-05/7:33 AM Reply
Yes. Of course it’s perfectly legal to marry on whims of romance, giggles of puppy love, or to save a fetus. But it’s one-sided commitment that makes it last.
[n/a] <~> › Dovina 19-Oct-05/7:36 AM Reply
are you married? if so, does he feel the same?
[n/a] Dovina › <~> 19-Oct-05/7:49 AM Reply
I am not married, but if I decide to be so, I will take this position regardless of how he feels about it.
[7] zodiac › Dovina 19-Oct-05/9:14 AM Reply
As a married, and several-times almost-married, I honestly believe you'll eat those words. Best-case scenario, you stand to not recognize yourself in all this posturing when you do in fact find him.
[5] Tintagiles 19-Oct-05/11:10 PM Reply
Marriage is masculine? Gasp! (wait, well, I suppose it is in French...)

Now, does this apply to homosexual marriages? Where the idea is that managing to get married is writing a wrong rather than performing one?
[n/a] Dovina › Tintagiles 20-Oct-05/12:47 PM Reply
It applies to all marriages.

I believe that in trying to right a wrong, you have written a wrong. Pity.
[9] Caducus 21-Oct-05/5:10 AM Reply
I like the thoughts in this poem they are well written and orchestrated and though a mere opinion of one a damn eloquent one at that.

This in my humble opinion is one of your strongest - its very good.

Its also a good piece to do open mic.
[n/a] Dovina › Caducus 21-Oct-05/9:48 AM Reply
Wow, I’m about to melt. Does this mean that you’ll raises my desires above yours, every time, every day, knowing that anything less is fleeting and doomed? Just kidding.