THE LANDSCAPE OF THE SOUL: CamassiaAmba wrote a
nice response to my
post about my parents' divorce, in which she reflects on what her own marriage means:
Jacques and I don't have kids, but the longer we have stayed together, the more I've had this weird sense of responsibility to keep on staying together for the sake of the other people in our lives who somehow count on us as a unit, a phenomenon. Friends we've been out of touch with for a few years have sighed with wonder and peace to find that we're still together. A lasting relationship between two people becomes like a feature of the landscape in the lives of their friends and family. Starting out as a promising sapling, it thickens like a tree, becoming ever more solid and stout and trustworthy. People can rest in its shade. Eventually, it comes to seem as permanent and mythic as a local mountain’s silhouette against the sky. At times when the going got rough and I’ve fantasized about some other direction for "my life," I've realized that my life is not only my own any more. The need would have to be imperative for me to destroy what has become a landmark for others.
...
The real survival value of mating for life, it seems to me, is what amba described -- that the marriage accrues an entire network of relationships around it. This would have been even more true in societies where the only real social structures were kin-based. Every marriage creates not just one relationships but a multitude of in-laws, meetings of his friends and her friends, and sometimes half- and step-siblings. If the couple divorces and marries others, all the relationships change. So even if the divorce doesn't do anything to that particular couple's kids, one can see how it would affect the continuation of the community and therefore the species.
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posted by Eve at
4:35 PM | Link |
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