Modern Marriage: Part 2

Go ahead, Read Part 1 First.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ PART 2: THE MODERN MARRIAGE \\\\\\\\\\\\\\

Modern Marriage is the most cutting edge form of marriage. It is the latest and greatest, the best, and it has the least flaws in it because some of the bugs have been worked out through the years of evolution. In a word, think: exceptional. 

People have a lot of expectations of what they will get when they get married--thousands even. I've simplified those reasons into 7 things that modern marriage offers. 

1. Synergy - One person plus another person doesn't equal two people, it equals more than that. Somehow, two people working together make them more efficient and more work is accomplished. Raising a kid alone is daunting, but rasing a kid with two is...less daunting. 

2. Mental and Emotional Stability - Whose shoulder do you cry on, or would you like to cry on more, your spouse or anybody else? If your relationship is good, then your spouse. Your spouse potentially knows you better and can relate to you better and understand you better, and you trust your spouse more have more time and opportunities with your spouse. You talk to your spouse more than anyone else and learn and explore new ideas with them as well.

3. Physical and Financial Stability - Two people working or one working the other taking care of the house either way, money is earned, the house, kids, and food is clean. Sex is safe because if you get pregnant they are legally obligated to support the child (and don't have to get a court order or take any tests). Sex is also safer in that STIs are controlled, if one partner already has an STI it can be managed, if neither have STIs then there is very little chance that they will get one if they only have sex with one another. 

4. Progression - Learning, growing, and even having children (if you look at it in a certain light) fall under progression and certain progress can only be made in a relationship. Your best traits are brought out when your partner has created a need for them; your worst traits are brought to your attention as well and the desire(need) to correct them is there if you want to keep the relationship.

5. Decision Making Support - Now that your decisions no longer affect you and only you, you can get input from your spouse and even defer certain decisions to them. Having someone else who is a legally invested stakeholder in your life gives you an anchor on which to make plans and decide on a course of action.

6. Release of Stress - Doing exciting things together can relieve stress and help you forget about your troubles. Having someone to listen to you who understands you can also relieve stress.

7. Attaining Purpose - When you are alone it is easy to get caught up into thinking you are merely treading water in life and that your actions don't necessarily affect the people around you. When you have a spouse everything you do for or to yourself affects your spouse. Being married gives you a reason to keep on living, and making your marriage work and worthwhile is what you strive for every day. That is your purpose. 

A successful, Modern Marriage provides:

1. Peace - Makes you feel at peace in a turbulent world. (Try being alone and you'll understand)

2. Happiness - Being married brings you greater happiness

3. Love - Your spouse makes you feel loved, and gives you someone to love back unconditionally.

It consists of:

1. Friendship

2. Trust

3. Intimacy

4. Respect

In order for a Modern Marriage to be successful it has to have:

1. Capitalization (of good moments) - When one spouse has success or a good moment, the other capitalizes on that to make it even greater. One form of this is Emotional Support. Capitalization can also include being happy simply because the other person is successful--a happiness as though you yourself were successful.

2. Excitement - Doing exciting things together, discovering new things, exploring the world and life.

3. Acknowledgment - Each spouse expressing that they know and care that the other exists. 

4. Acceptance - Regardless of personal opinion or what happens, neither spouse casts judgments on the other, but instead attempts to understand their motives. You do not have to agree with everything they say, nor do the things they would do in any given situation, but you do have to accept their opinions and decisions as their own opinions and decisions and respect the differences between the two of you.

5. Appreciation - Each spouse gives and recieves appreciation on a regular basis.

6. Needs Fulfillment - Physical, Mental, Emotional, and even Spiritual needs need to be met before the relationship will succeed. This is basic hierarchy of needs concepts--if you're not having sex and you want it, it WILL cause a strain on your marriage, or if your spouse is bawling because her coworkers were mean to her at work, it WILL affect your marriage. Resolving the needs that are your responsibility and allowing the other person to resolve needs they are responsible for is crucial to a good marriage. 

 The Successful Modern Marriage does the following:

1. Preserves Tradition - What holidays do you celebrate? What manerisms do you carry over from previous generations?

2. Preserves Wealth - When either or both spouses die, who will get the money and how will it be divided? 

3. Provides Physical Protection - Survival (food, shelter, etc), Sexual Protection (as mentioned above), Actual physical protection (if someone or something were to harm you), and protection to any offspring.

4. Provides Emotional Protection - A safe place from embarassment, a safe place to hide, or cry, or get excited.

5. Provides Social Protection - Two are more powerful against a mob than one. While together society doesn't judge as harshly a married couple as they do unmarried couples.

6. Preserves Social Status - A widow retains the respect his or her spouse earned whereas the secret lover does not.

7. Preserves Knowledge - "Trade secrets" or even personal secrets that we as humans feel we need to share with someone yet we can't share with just anyone--definitely not anyone outside your immediate family.

Above all a Modern Marriage is agreed upon. A modern marriage doesn't have to have a formal ceremony (though if you want it to be legal you do have to sign a piece of paper and vocalize it before an authority figure), but does have to be agreed upon by both parties. Whatever you want your marriage to do, you both have to genuinely want to accomplish the same objectives with your marriage. These days it doesn't matter if you are getting married solely for money and financial stability. It doesn't matter if you're getting married so that you can progress or share secrets or any number of things. It doesn't have to last until you die, you can agree to be married until you decide not to be together, but you both have to agree to the same terms. Marriage today is less formal than a hundred years ago but more formal than a few hundred years ago (back when a handshake constituted a marriage agreement). It is more useful than marriage previously because it can be customized to any combination of people. And it isn't any more or less stable than any other form of marriage. It is whatever two people make it.    

I have made this article easy for you, next time you or someone else asks the following questions, just refer to their respective section above:

What does a modern marriage offer?

What does a modern marriage need to have to succeed?

What does a modern marriage provide?

What does a modern marriage consist of?

What does a modern marriage do?

What is a modern marriage?

Click here for Part 3

Mankind's Slow Evolution

I have been reading several books lately on interpersonal communication and conflict--newer books--The Guide to Compassionate Assertiveness (2012), The Triangle of Truth (2011), Conscious Communication (2010), Breaking the Argument Cycle (2009), and How to Hug a Porcupine (2009). 
These books Should be the latest and greatest knowledge on communication, yet I am under the impression that most of these books are complete garbage.

Conscious Communication seems to be the best book I have ever read on interpersonal communication. I think it comes closest to reality and the "truth" as Plato would put it. In one section of this book, Miles Sherts begins to touch on the evolution process of man and my mind began to mix with his thoughts and I think I completely understand where he is going with this thought:

One of the things that separate us from Animals is that we have the ability to create complex noises to communicate with one another and formulate sentences; we also have the ability to think about thinking--which supposedly animals cannot. Most importantly, we have the ability to recognize our feelings and to name them. We can assess ourselves and determine: I am sad right now, I am happy, I am grateful, I am distraught, I am angry.

Yet even though we can create complex sounds and communicate how we are feeling--we haven't advanced very far in this field as a human race. 

Most of us communicate logically rather than emotionally. We make assumptions and treat them as facts. When someone does something that hurts us, we say "You are a bad person" and we live on the assumption that that person is out to get us, out to hurt us, out to dishonor our families and circumvent our lives. It is the simple: "Because of this, therefore this." Logic. That's what that is. But that's now how logic is supposed to be used, because it isn't an avenue to the truth.

Rhetorical tools, Logic, Ethos, Pathos, Kairos--these are supposed to bring us closer to the truth, not theory. They are supposed to bring about good in the world, not fear. They are supposed to help you learn or teach, rather than narrow your mind to new ideas.

The thing I have learned from my recent studies has been that the NEW avenue of evolution--the area in which we humans NEED to evolve in order to survive, the area in which we have been fighting generationally to overcome this and unfortunately it has been a slow process can be explained as follows:

We have found a way to gather resources so that all of our physical needs are easily taken care of, but our emotional needs, because of society and the culture required to reach this level of human advancement, have taken a back seat. Instead of addressing emotional needs we focus on physical needs as the means to an end, but it doesn't help to heal emotional wounds.
We run away from emotional pain or blame others because of 'logical' associations we make between other people and our emotional pain. Because our emotional needs aren't met and more importantly, because we don't know how to address or resolve emotional wounds, we sever relationships, we lash back, and we "fight" to survive.
But emotional pain isn't like physical pain. We don't need to fight for our emotional well being like we do for our physical well being. Gaining possessions, securing more resources of food and water, these might help us resolve our physical well-being, but our emotional well being isn't resolved by securing more relationships. If you don't resolve your emotional needs, having more relationships will only bring more opportunities for conflict and can ultimately lead to you pushing away your relationships or hurting other people and making your emotional pain even worse because the closer people are to you the more likely they are to bring out your emotional wounds.

As a society, but more importantly as individuals, we need to focus on resolving our emotional needs ourselves and being more compassionate to others who are suffering emotional pain. But before we can do that, we need to evolve so that we can recognize emotional pain--in ourselves and in others. And then we need to learn how to resolve emotional pain, because emotional pain can be triggered by other people, but resolving that emotional pain is an individual process in which we might rely on the support of others but ultimately must make the journey ourselves in the confines of our own minds.

You shouldn't walk away from other people simply because they trigger emotional pain in you, just like you shouldn't blame the fire for burning you.