By popular demand:

REFLECTIONS ON MARRIAGE

Dear Bethany, Dear Danny,
Ladies and Gentlemen:

My assignment for today is to give you some reflections on the marriage 
institution and to tell you what makes successful ones. The task is both 
ridiculously easy and impossibly difficult. I suppose I was chosen for 
this honor because, at least on the bridegroom's side, I seem to be the 
most experienced person on the subject -- having had in my life two 
marriages, and I certainly learned a lot along the way. To the question 
there is the conventional answer, the sanctimonious answer, the frivolous 
answer, the long answer and the short answer. I shall not bore you with 
the first four because you can read plenty of that kind of advice in 
marriage manuals, homily collections, and even on the Internet. Before I 
proceed to the last option, namely the short answer, let me give you some 
personal reminiscences.

Between my ages of 13 and 14, puberty crashed down on me like a ton of 
bricks. Ever since that age (with "time out" during life crises with the 
Nazis, Communists, and so forth) I was constantly in love, frequently with 
more than one girl at a time, and in a highly theoretical sense 
(recognizing the practical difficulties) I really wanted them all. I 
almost felt personally insulted when they started marrying others. What a 
waste of natural resources to let my virility go unused! Or even only to 
be restricted to just one partner! As I started to reflect on marriage I 
was astounded that Humankind should choose for itself such an imperfect 
institution. The limitations it imposed were counter-instinctive, and in 
conflict with the lifestyle of our own ancestors as attested in the Bible. 
What's more, some modern religions have continued to endorse several wives 
for one man.

Before I could run too far with these sentiments, my sense of fairness 
kicked in. What's fair for the gander is fair for the goose, and if 
several wives are OK for one man, why not several husbands for one woman? 
Indeed, that too had been tried by Humankind and became the dominant 
paradigm in certain civilizations. The combination of the two ideas 
finally suggested extended free-sex communities with carefully matched 
membership, and child-rearing chores delegated to trained specialists. In 
my young years I was dreaming of Utopian systems of that sort and actually 
witnessed the formation of one, in post-war Hungary, on an informal and 
free mutual consent basis. The experiment survived not even one year. The 
interpersonal difficulties multiplied exponentially with the size of the 
group, and the community broke up just about at the time when the first 
children were born, amongst mutual recriminations, furious hostilities, 
and yearning for the warmth of the intimate family. I suppose, going back 
all the way to the beginnings of our species in the Ice Ages and before, 
all Humankind was once a global free-sex community and it broke up into 
individual family units because that suited the genuine requirements of 
human life, and specifically the emotional well-being of the offspring, 
better. It is an accommodation that we must make for the sake of the next 
generation. I hope that we are not on the threshold of reinventing the 
wheel by going through the whole cycle once more.

So, the "nucular family", if I may be permitted to use the expression of 
our beloved President, is the societal form we are stuck with, and I do 
not pretend that it is an institution free from problems. But the problems 
are manageable and smart people find out early what kind of management 
suits their temperaments best. Now I come to the short answer to the 
question asked in the preamble and tell you what has worked with Shirley 
and me, during all these thirty years: it was, and still is, A SENSE OF 
HUMOR. We can laugh at each others' faults; occasionally, when we are 
really mad at each other, we impersonate two stags locking horns (I hope 
mine are only imaginary) and push each other a few steps back and forth, 
forehead-to-forehead. This way the anger subsides faster and we NEVER 
(well, hardly ever) carry any ill feelings to the dinner table or to bed. 
In the early days, when I was trying to characterize Shirley to my 
friends, I would say, in her presence, "The trouble with Shirley is that 
she has her own opinion on everything." When she reminisces about our 
first year together, she relates an occasion when we talked about a common 
acquaintance whom she characterized as a "dingbat". I was unfamiliar with 
the expression and asked her to explain it. "Well, it's kind of like a 
blind-flying bat, bumping into everything, or making a mess of 
everything." Later she asked me: "What did you call that kind of a person 
before you learned the word Dingbat?" and I said: "I never needed that 
word until I met you."

I guess some people would regard that kind of joking offensive but we 
learned to enjoy, and even mutually develop, each other's humor. That is 
what I recommend to you, Bethany and Danny, and your marriage will be 
long-lasting and happy.

* * * * * *

Andrew L. Reeves
17 February 2007

-- 
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/dreeves  - -  search://"Daniel Reeves"