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Marriage (Free verse) by Dovina 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
Up the ladder:
Burn for Her
Down the ladder:
The Ballad of Rakesh Rajani, Court Reporter
Votes: (green: user, blue: anonymous)
Arithmetic Mean: 5.4
Posted: October 18, 2005 4:02 PM PDT; Last modified: October 18, 2005 4:02 PM PDTWeighted score: 5.0476813 Overall Rank: 6898 Comments:
Spoken like someone not married.
Hear the Gospel According to Dovina and pray itâs not too late.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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. Itâs not clear what that will be exactly. You donât know where youâll 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 otherâs. You will be open to new dreams, new goals, and new ideas. You will travel."
1) Itâs 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) Thatâs 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, âYou are united by a connection that is strong because it is flexibleâ is what Iâm 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.
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?
5) We are not so obtuse as to make commitments we donât intend to keep. I donât know if you are romantic, but you seem uncommitted. To even consider breakup is non-commitment.
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?
Oh I see, youâre justifying it on the basis of race and Americanism. Youâre saying that because 50% of marriage commitments fail, that itâs ok to fail. And youâre further justifying it on the basis that âpure enduranceâ is not worth the cost. But the kicker is that âromanceâ becomes the goal.
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.
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
Good night, and sleep committed, romantic, and poetic.
Last I checked, I wasn't mocking your existing, functional relationship.
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.
And what I get is worth the price.
is that what you think marriage is about?
Yes. Of course itâs perfectly legal to marry on whims of romance, giggles of puppy love, or to save a fetus. But itâs one-sided commitment that makes it last.
are you married? if so, does he feel the same?
I am not married, but if I decide to be so, I will take this position regardless of how he feels about it.
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.
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?
It applies to all marriages.
I believe that in trying to right a wrong, you have written a wrong. Pity.
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.
Wow, Iâm about to melt. Does this mean that youâll raises my desires above yours, every time, every day, knowing that anything less is fleeting and doomed? Just kidding.
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Sure it's all oohs and ahhs now, Later there's running and screaming.