Couplethinking

[ssk7882 <skelkins@attbi.com>]

That felt good.  I should rant more often.  ;-)

Haggridd wrote:

> This issue is-- or was-- viewed differently by males and females. I 
> no longer hold the following opinion (two score years since have 
> taught me its artificiality) but at the time I believed it as 
> Gospel, and I was not alone among my (male) peers. It is that the 
> relationship, or the love, isn't real unless there is sex. 

Yes.  And the female counterpart to that belief, of course, is
that if there is sex, then there must really be love.

Same dynamic, as I see it.  Slightly different take.


> This attitude was all tied up with the "double standard", with 
> the notion that the girl was "giving up" something, and with other 
> obsolete ways of thinking about the opposite gender, but when I 
> read this post, it made me wonder just how obsolete this attitude 
> was.

Sadly, I don't think that it's nearly as obsolete as I dearly wish
that it were, although I agree with you that it is beginning to
fade away.  

I'm not altogether sure, though, that the dynamic to which I was 
referring necessarily requires that old double standard in order 
to persist.  Mainly, I think that the engine on which it runs is 
the elevation of the romantic or sexual relationship as the be-all 
and end-all of human interaction, a notion which doesn't really
require acceptance of Dat Ol' Double Standard.  It can also live 
quite comfortably -- indeed, perhaps in some ways even *more* 
comfortably -- with the more recent post-sexual-revolution "what's 
good for the goose is good for the gander" stance, I think. 


Melody wrote:

> This might be the most foolish thing I do this week because I 
> probably misunderstood her whole intent of her post, but I cannot 
> help but take on "The Elkins" (as my HP friends like to call her) 
> here...

<blink, blink>

<blink, blink, blink>

There are really people who call me "The Elkins?"

Oh dear!  

> I just cannot accept a world covered in unhappy, wasted, 
> manipulated married people who want nothing more than to be free, 
> and that is the way I felt after I read your post Elkins.

Oh, double dear.  Now I am experiencing remorse.  Such a pesky thing, 
remorse. 

May I offer you a soothing cup of hot chocolate, Melody?  

> Wait - you will not persuade me. Not *every* couple is doomed.

Well, I certainly hope not!  Would it help at all here if I told you
that I've been married for over eight years now?  And I don't think
that I'm soul dead.  Not *quite* yet, at any rate. <g>

Judy mischievously asked:

> I just have to say this: Elkins, let me guess -- your husband 
> feels *exactly* the same way, right? 

But of course!  We believe that it is frightening and disturbing
when people who are supposedly individuals choose to speak with 
one voice.  We believe that this is symptomatic of a truly dire 
blight on the cultural landscape.  We just don't like that sort
of thing at all.

Right, honey?


Melody:

> And yet - Elkins - I know you are talking about the paradigm. What 
> is shown to all as the "right" way to have a relationship/marriage. 
> Why is it that so many reduce themselves to be so easily slotted 
> into that paradigm in the first place?

I.  Don't.  **KNOW!**

Seriously.  Can you tell that this is one of my pet peeves?  Why on
earth do people feel the need to behave so very *strangely?*

When I was single, people used to tell me: "Oh, you just don't
understand.  You'll understand when it happens to you."

Now that I have been married for rather a while, when the subject
comes up, and I point out that my husband and I do not behave in
this (supposedly inevitable) manner, people just tell me:  "Oh!  
Well, but you two are *different!*"

Well, yes.  <sigh>  So it would seem.

I strongly suspect that what people *really* mean when they say
that we are "different" is that they don't believe that we can
possibly really care about each other at all.  They're just far
too polite to come right out and say so.

Well...except for that one person who did, of course.  There's
always one of those, isn't there?

Whatever.

> Maybe that is my outcry here. Not that you have correctly 
> deduced 99% of the population's relationships, but because 
> you discredit the chance that even 1% would be in fact a good, 
> balanced, well-proportioned couple. 

No, I'm sorry if I didn't make myself clear.  I didn't mean to 
be discounting that possibility at all.  It is the overall paradigm 
that I object to, not the very notion of amicable, equitable and
sane relationships which happen to combine friendship with sexual
compatability.  Those most certainly can and do exist.  I do think, 
though, that the ugly weird societal expectation of "romance" all
too often serves more as an impediment to that happenstance than
as an aid to it.

One of the reasons that my husband and I *did* choose to get married, 
actually, was in the hopes of battling the dread Couplethink.  

You see, married people are actually permitted a good deal more 
individuation, in many ways, than unmarried "romantic partners" are.  
In the milieu in which I was raised, for example, married people are 
*never* seated together at dinner parties, nor are they expected to 
spend much time in each other's company at social gatherings.  
Unmarried partners, on the other hand, are *supposed* to spend all 
this time talking (and flirting <shudder>) with each other in public, 
and they are often seated next to each other at table.  Similarly, it 
is in many ways more socially acceptable for married people to keep 
their own friends, pursue their own interests, travel alone, or spend 
long periods of time away from each other than it is for unmarried 
"romantic partners" to do the same.

Presumably this is because, as you pointed out, once people get
married, the "romance" is supposed to come to an end.

Well, good!  As the cultural baggage associated with "romance" is 
precisely what I so dislike, I couldn't have had that happen soon 
enough!

David added to my little list of things that would none of them
be missed:

> It causes supermarkets to pre-wrap only even numbers of things;

Heh.  Not to mention those prizes that Tabouli mentioned: dinner
for two, vacations for two, airfare for two.  All of which means
that if, like me, you live with more than one Significant Other
(ugh!), you find yourself rather hoping that you *won't* win
one of them, just to avoid the issue of deciding which two people
are going to get to enjoy the benefit.

> It causes single people to postpone non-couple life goals;

One of my friends finally bludgeoned her way past this one and
bought herself a house.  But it took her *years* to give in 
and do so.
 
> It causes babies to be seen simultaneously as cute accessories 
> and sleep-disturbing monsters;

You mean they're *not* sleep-disturbing monsters?

> It causes children to be regarded as an acceptable excuse not 
> to invite their parents to things;

Oh yes.  For some reason, my friends have all proven very poor 
breeders, so I hadn't even considered this one.  But that's
true, isn't it?  Childless couples often move with other childless
couples.  They invite their single friends to things only when
they have a single person of the opposite sex they wish to set
said single friend up with.  And their friends who have children?
What happens to them?  All too often, they just get dropped, don't
they?  Not very nice -- especially since I should think that if
anyone desperately needs a bit of the stimulation that a gathering 
of adults can provide, it's parents whose children are still very 
young.

> My observation is that many people imagine that if they find 
> the right partner they themselves will miraculously change 
> into the person they want to be. Perhaps it's a UK/US difference?

Perhaps.  I see both factors at work, and I tend to think of
them as facets of the same phenomenon.  People do often seem to 
think that the right partner will "fix" them, and in fact, that's 
a staple of literature, isn't it?  It's everywhere, not just in
romance fiction, but in all sorts of fiction.  I find it profoundly 
irritating, myself.  *Why* must novels about characters undergoing 
profound philosophical changes in their lives so often tie that into 
some romance plotline?  Why?  It so *annoys* me.  It really does.  
And it's so common, too!  In fact, there are some genres in which it 
seems to be utterly inescapable.  Has there ever been a Utopian novel 
(either positive or negative), in which the protagonist's break with 
his culture is not somehow connected to his sexual desire for some 
woman?  

Yuck.

It's one of the main reasons that I've such a strong aversion to 
romance suplots in fiction, actually.  They're all too often linked
to the protagonist's philosophical or spiritual development in a
manner that...well, that just sort of offends me, honestly.  There's
something about that conflation of sexual attraction and 
philosophical sea change that really bothers me.  As if lust is the 
only thing powerful enough to affect change in the human psyche!  I 
mean, for heaven's sake!  Did Paul get *laid* on the Road To 
Damascus? 


Elkins