I really wrote the first one to write this entry.
I’m 25, single, and contemplating the notion of marriage. Is it something I really want or just another thing I should be doing at my age? Do I really want want it or is it just because so many of my immediate friends are coupled? If I meet that super-lucky someone, do I mean forever forever? Or we’ll try our best but really we live like 50% longer than back in the olden days (what era am I referring to? no idea), and we may end up growing into two completely different individuals who have nothing in common and at that point, we may mutually agree that we’ve loved and it was awesome, but now I really want to do something else?
And that got me to thinking about 2 things: 1) I’m Chinese, so it’s highly likely that even 50 years ago, I might be suited for an arranged marriage, and 2) even pre-airline/pre-personal car/heck, even pre-online dating era, it would be hard to get around, so even with choice, I’d be limited in who I date.
But is that necessarily a bad thing? The lack of choice that is.
Sure, steamy 3 hours, your boyfriend’s bored to tears Victorian era movies wax of forbidden romance and the unhappy arranged marriage birthed from business deals. Those aren’t reliable, are they? It hasn’t been until recently that art really started to capture the lives of normal, non-elite/rich folk. When I say ‘recently,’ I mean late 1800s?
I bet most people were happy in their marriages. Different criteria; I’m sure women back then didn’t always assume that their husbands would be the end-all, be-all of friendship, love, companionship, & passion. The divorce rate, due to religion & social stigma, was much lower. This is completely a wild guess, but arranged marriages don’t sound that awful to me. If you’re stuck in a situation, you’re going to make it work.
Isn’t the prospect of too much choice in marriage bad? You’ll almost never find someone who’s exactly perfect for you. And with 400 million people on Facebook, that’s at least 400 million people with internet connections and at most a 20 hour flight from you.
But if you’re forced to settled (that has an awful connotation but is it really that bad?), you’d probably be ok with Dick, James, or Bob.
In our way of thinking, perfection and good are nowhere close. The big differentiating factor is not the relationship of perfect to good but expectation to reality. We want perfect, and we’re likely to get pretty awesome but not quite there (I mean even Mary Poppins was ‘only’ “almost perfect in every way”). Back in the day, the expectations were more likely pretty decent guy, who’s responsible, non-abusive, and gave you some damned space, and that’s probably what you got.
So maybe I should just lower my expectations? Is Dan Gilbert really just trying to get laid? Lol I’m not sure and no respectively.
Interesting exercise in paradigm shifts though.
