Marriage vs. Cohabitation

Wow--that seems like it was a personal jab, kwidge--let's keep it professional. How I spit my game in my batcave is not the issue at hand.

I'm not trying to make cohabitation seem like something crass--I'm just saying that love, which is a quintessential human emotion, should not have to be justified by a document. Love is much more than that. Although I found your automotive analogy quite interesting neeru (because you don't seem like a car person), I actually feel that it is you and your marriage devotees who have the greatest insecurity. You refer to the "the idea of being bound" and the need for contracts to keep the community together. I can understand documentation for a land deed--but love? It seems that those who need marriage are insecure about their love and need something more to justify it. Cohabitation seems to imply a higher understanding of love (if treated with care--not regarded for its "temporariness")--that love supersedes some concepts of humanity. Maybe only those who have this understanding can cohabit.

Thus, sex could ultimately happen when those individuals have reached that level of understanding of their love. Hopefully most of society will continue to teach abstinence--and for most until marriage---but for those select few--

I think that cohabitation is a great plan for a couple who are thinking about getting married. I think they should live together for about two years before making any real plans to get married. That way by the end of the first year, both should be pretty comfortable with each other and used to the way their partner handles things. It also gives them plenty of opportunity to get out before they make the huge investment that a wedding and a marriage.

Personal experience:
I was dating this guy for about five years. We started talking about getting married by the end of the first year. After three years, we moved in together. Recently, I moved to another state because of my education and the opportunity for what amounted to a free ride. If I hadn't lived with him, we would probably still be together, and I would be just as blind to his habits as I was when we started dating. But now I know what kind of person he is, and that helped form my decision to break the relationship. I don't think I would have known that if we hadn't lived together.

So yeah. Simple way, without all the explanation: Cohabitation, then marriage. It's like a trial run.

'Hymen, Hymenee, why do you tantalize me thus? O, why do you last only for a single moment? Why can you not continue? Is it because, if you were to last beyond that moment, it would surely kill me?' (The Goddess of Marriage employed as a synecdoche for the Supreme Communion of the Self with the Self; All Love is an Allegory of Masturbation).

It's a bit of a banality, nowadays, to presuppose a distinction between Love and Lust; that difference is a Vapor. Your Libido has as much to do with your 'transcendent' relationships as your Soul, or your Mind. Love between Strangers cannot begin without the interest (whether sublimated or explicit) of the Flesh (the Body being the provenance of our Dreams; thus spake the First Meditation of Renee Descartes). In order to sustain that love, moreover, one always requires the presence of an erotic Vitality (By this, I allude neither to the 'copulations of Lady Chatterley' nor to the diagrams of Vatsayan; The theatricality of the relationship, its aesthetic beauty, has to be maintained). When it comes to Autonomous (as distinct from manufactured) persons, I do not see how anyone can disagree with Marcello (8 1/2): 'I don't want your sticky, maternal love. It's not love. It's brutalization.'

I don't know what, precisely, Batman could mean when he writes of 'a higher understanding of love.' Is it superior to Shakespeare's understanding of (fleshly) love?

'My mistress' eyes are nothing like the Sun,
Coral is far more red than her lips' red,
If snows be white, why then her breasts are dun,
If hair be wires, then black wires grow on her head'

Love has to be apprehended as an Antithesis, the Beloved outside of Consciousness, outside of Mimesis: Pure Negation.

There is no place for experiential reality when it comes to relationships amongst autonomous beings; there is only theatricality. The motivations are simple: the relationship has to be kept interesting. The dialectics of Marriage/Cohabitation (the two relationships are precisely the same) always have to stress the Devourer, not the Prolific. And Creative Energy, as everyone knows, originates in one's phallus. What Batman describes is Angelic Love, love amongst the unsexed; he forgets that Angels are inferior to Men. You are a mammal, sir, and an embodied Self. Spirit, for us, is always a Bone.

Interesting implications--I like the idea of bringing in a legal perspective--I'm coming to see cohabitation as too idealistic of a situation in a world riddled with realistic problems such as those you've mentioned---"proof of ownership, maintenance of costs, division of expenses." I feel that I might have to settle for a marriage because of these logistics. It seems that cohabitation would be the easy way to not deal with the details, but I think it could also be the most difficult.

Do you think the legal consequences would be comparatively more in the dissolving of cohabitation or a marriage situation? Because I'm sure that marriage would also have its issues.

I know people who lived together without marriage that didn't make it, but I also know people who ended up divorced. Likewise, I know couples who chose cohabitation, have been living together happily for decades, and have children between them. I also know married couples who have made similar commitments. The potential and results of these relationships have nothing to do with some pieces of metal and a couple of signatures on a piece of paper, the culprits are commitment and love. They are not mutually inclusive with marriage, nor are they mutually exclusive with cohabitation.

Evidently, a highly intelligent and literate conversation that I was having with Dooshby has been expunged from the Boards. It is interesting that his engaging and inviting encomium for my work (his first epistle to me; what a great guy!) has not also been deleted. But if the expurgated conversation was far too cerebral for this discussion board, then Doosbhy's original letter would surely need to be omitted as well. It is a supererogation of Dooshby's peculiar genius.

If marriage is just a legal formality, then screw it. There is no point.

Marriage is more than that.
It's a life-long commitment. It calls both parties to restrain self-centeredness and self-indulgence. Inside the frames of a marriage, you are called to make your spouse's needs your needs, and to reject any temptations to infidelity or actions that may hurt your husband/wife.

Marriage shapes us into people with values that tell us to think beyond ourselves. It is one of the best kinds of training for our participation in society. In taking this institution seriously, we are encouraged to take part in a relationship that disciplines us and curbs our self-centered tendencies.

Cohabitation does not do this.
It does not restrain our inclination to self-serve.
The tendency in such a relationship is that the individual dictates the status of the relationship according to personal opinion/needs. The glue that holds this sort of relationship together is the individual consent of each party, not a joint effort to succeed, and the relationship can fall apart the instant one person decides to give up. Yes, two people living together can love each other very much, but the door is left fairly open for abandonment. I do not believe that joint commitment reaches its highest potenital in this case.

Marriage gives the couple an umbrella of responsibility that they both must hold up. If one person wants to release his grip, the two have to seriously assess the situation and see if they can keep the umbrella up, or if they should let go and accept the rain (divorce).

Marriage is the stamp that establishes a mutual fight against self-interest with the goal of sacrificing for the whole.

Its implications are such that, like I said before, we are disciplined into truly loosening the grip on what we want, and considering the concerns of another.

Why is this important?
To reference a pamphlet I was given on marriage, such a relationship is healthy for social order. If people learn discipline and self-sacrificing love for another, society can improve. If such qualities are degenerating in the world, individuals may become increasingly self-serving, and society may face greater difficulties to advance.

Unfortunately, not everyone is born a commited Gandhi or a loving Mother Teresa. But the institute of marriage is a great practice that can help shape laymen into contributing and even sacrificing members of society. In learning to place our spouse before ourselves, we can learn to further value our neighbors as well.

Can this quality be learned elsewhere?
Sure.

But when it comes down to marriage versus cohabitation, I say marriage is the healthier choice, for the individual and the whole.

Crap, man, I am beginning to wonder if you do really talk like this in normal conversation. An aural delight, the ladies must call you. Cunning linguist.

Anyway, I learned somewhat about Zazen Buddhism today and a portion of the theories some of those meditative processes employ and I thought of our correspondence. Specifically, it was to think of something negative and to try to think of an antidote or positive reaction to it.

Thusly began my search into the beginning of this animosity, which I admit I instigated. One moment, I must go defecate in the middle here, but I shall return. Wonderful, I am back.

I think you explained about the capital letters in your last that got deleted and also a reference to the Russian masters and perhaps some ideological collaboration they may have had?

I desire to read what small portion of the books that inspired your erudition that I can, barring, of course, the dictionary.

It began with Ethics, I think. Please, refrain from your seemingly Newtonian method in speech with me if you do answer to this with a literary list, because I can't understand the things you type, often. I am but a layman endeavouring to reach up from ignorance.

If it would be more pleasing, my facebook is under K. Safdar Hussain, send me a message or poke me (whatever that does) and I'd be happy to correspond, assuming you also frequent that attention hotspot. New ideas are always welcome, especially when it comes to the so-called Classics, as I find that their meaning changes as I age. It is a neverending cycle: the same words again and again, and only a fraction more comprehension each time.

I would like to read your point of view.

Cheers

Marriage is an evolving institution. For example, I could, back in the day, have married four chicks at once. In fact, I could have married children, waiting for them to mature and then consummate when they are of a reasonable age. I imagine marriage was a way for people to rationalize their desire to have sex and proclaim god or their city or king or whatever wanted it.

Given, marriage has been around longer than religion, but it could easily be used as a means to obtain an untouchable beauty or, politically, to unite two kingdoms, countries, whatever. I see it as more of a way to rationalize yourself to the public ("See? Now we are married! Our lust is justified!"), than as a healthy partnership. If I truly love a woman, I am able to keep myself faithful to her. What's more, I am able to trust in her faithfulness to me. There is no need to marry her, just as there is no need to wear genital cuffs or for her to cover her face in public or what have you.

Forcing a woman to wear a veil or stay home all day is a way for insecure or disloyal men to further indulge themselves in self-pity or promiscuity, or both.

All that crap being said, I see the merit of marriage in a community or family. Yes, it is a good foundation for trust and such to pass on to our children, but the stigma is that unmarried couples are seen as unclean or sinful. This is stupid.

Cohabitation allows you to understand more than your feeling of love for someone. I feel that love is not enough of a reason to marry another person. If you marry solely for love, you are gimping yourself, plain and simple. There are billions of people on this earth and to lock yourself to a single one on the basis of an intangible (and fleeting) emotion is impractical. Cohabitation is a way for couples to test their love, to come to understand one another's true face without the possibility of losing one's possessions (as in a divorce) if they find that they are incompatible in a household environment.

What is key is taking personal responsibility for yourself without having to be held up by some public oath or institution. Marriage should only be done when you are sure of yourself, your material assets, your self-esteem, and your confidence in the ability for you and your partner to apply yourselves to a community as a single organism. I cannot take responsibility for a wife before I learn to take responsibility for myself.

What I see is a lot of young people getting hitched too early and realizing what they really want when they mature (which could take decades) and either 1.) holding back, amputating their true desire or 2.) resorting to infidelity (physical or otherwise) and thus devastating their relationship.

Men and women need to learn that segregation of the sexes is a worthless endeavour. Let them get together and mingle in every aspect before they decide to swear before god, their family, their king, etc. that they are willing to take responsibility for one another.

Marriage is less of a legal concept than you think and is more of a cultural concept and experience. You're right in many aspects however I think the concept of marriage has devolved into a legal binding contract rather than a ceremony celebrating two people who appear to actually love one another.

It really depends on your view in today's society and whether you wish to accept the devolved meaning or perhaps "adjusted" meaning of marriage in 2007. It's all perception, your spouse can just as well cheat on you married or not married--it's all a formality on paper.