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Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2007 23:16:31 -0800
To: andrew.reeves &AElig wayne.edu
Cc: dreeves &AElig umich.edu, improvetheworld &AElig umich.edu, reeves-hayos &AElig umich.edu
From: "Eva Revesz" <erevesz &AElig hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Grandpa Andrew's Reflections on Marriage
Status: O

Hi Dad,
I do realize that you were joking about wanting to have all women, though on 
some level, it's not all that far from the truth and you sure wouldn't be 
the first man to have admitted to it. And after all, it goes along with the 
main point you were making that men are by nature promiscuous while women 
are not. I guess I believe that myself and am thus surprised that societies 
exist that practice "polyandry" (thanks Kevin) even today. I was erroneously 
basing my comment on what appears to be a common misperception that 
matriarchal societies actually existed -- matrilineal and matrifocal 
societies yes, but apparently these women-based societies always included 
men in their decision-making, hence cannot be strictly viewed as matriarchal 
(cf. Uwe Wesel's "The Myth of Matriarchy;" trans. from the German). So 
that's where I was coming from on that one.

As far as my being judgmental about doubting that one can be in love with 
more than one person (to respond here to Danny) or that different people 
love in different ways (to respond to Dave)-- of course I see the 
possibility of this, too. I guess I should have specified more exactly that 
I mean the phenomenon of "falling in love," which I think pretty obviously 
entails a physiological change or perhaps better identified as a chemical 
change of some kind (I assume the same for men as for women), namely that 
adrenalin rush, that feeling of walking on clouds, of being somehow 
out-of-touch with reality, of finding it almost impossible to concentrate on 
anything but the loved one (not in a sexual sense), of getting weak knees 
when seeing or hearing the voice of that "loved one." I'm sure you've all 
been there, right? Now how in the world can you have this feeling for more 
than one person at a time? It's downright impossible, if you ask me. But 
please, let me know if you disagree. In any case, that's what I was 
referring to. Such a "falling in love" is a temporary state, to be sure, and 
should you be hit by Cupid's arrow again, well, then the original beloved 
necessarily takes a back seat to the new love interest. Not that you don't 
still love your first, but it will be different from the second; so yes, you 
can be "in love" with more than one person at a time, I'd say, but not in 
the same way. That's why it happens time and again that a man/woman is 
willing to throw away a long marriage/relationship for a "new love" because 
it initially sweeps them completely off their feet. But perhaps I'm thinking 
of love in a completely conventional way (you know, intense, passionate love 
vs. deeply affectionate long-term love). HAve any of you been "in love" with 
more than one person at a time who would be willing to share their 
experiences and thoughts on this.

Here's a very interesting concept about love from a certain Nikolaus 
Luhmann, founder of the German "Systemtheorie" or systems theory, who holds 
that "Liebe ist ein selbst-referentielles System," or "Love is a 
self-referential system," meaning that love is essentially narcissistic in  
that you really only discover and love yourself through another person. 
According to him, everyone -- some more, some less -- love in this 
narcissistic way, even if they think they've fallen in love with someone 
completely different than themselves.

It's interesting that you mention Mozart's Cherubino, Dad. Cherubino is 
generally seen as the personification of the libido, which is love as sex, 
so not the kind of love I'm talking about here.


Love,
Trixie


>From: Andrew Reeves <andrew.reeves &AElig wayne.edu>
>To: Eva Revesz <erevesz &AElig hotmail.com>
>CC: dreeves &AElig umich.edu, improvetheworld &AElig umich.edu, 	reeves-hayos &AElig umich.edu, 
>improvetheworld &AElig umich.edu
>Subject: Re: Grandpa Andrew's Reflections on Marriage
>Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2007 10:29:40 -0500
>
>Hello Trixie,
>    I had no idea that my tongue-in-cheek remarks about marriage are
>going to start another big Internet discussion that begins to rival our
>big fall debate about feminism. OF COURSE, I did not mean everything I
>said seriously; I thought I made that clear with "I really wanted them
>all" or "what a waste of natural resources". I was setting the stage
>for the main point, namely humor in marriage. That said, you disregard
>in your reply the gender differences between male & female psychology.
>I won't get here into a physiological discussion of spermatogenesis vs.
>ovulation, but these processes do have hormonal consequences that can
>be character-forming, and while I agree with you that "being in love"
>can be only towards one person at one time, that "time" can be of very
>different average duration between the sexes. For further information,
>read the libretto of The Marriage of Figaro, specifically the stage
>character of Cherubino. So, as you can see, the sentiment is not new.
>    Kevin Lochner came to my rescue with the Polyandry citation from the
>Vikipedia, which is more than what I could have quoted off hand. But
>anyone who had traveled to Tibet and the Xinjiang province of China
>(as we did, twice, in the 90's) has heard of these things. I do not
>advocate the practice for adoption in Western societies.
>    Postscript only to Trixie: Philip was to send me banking information
>in relation to his birthday money!          Love, GGPA & S

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