amorphous_constellation
Well-Known Member
If you were never married or if you are divorced or widowed, why would you want to get married? In other words, what are the reasons to be married over remaining single?
I think people would want to be married if they plan to have children and raise a family, but other than that why would you have a desire to get married if you are not married?
I am mostly curious about people who are older and single but would like to get married. What are the reasons why older people want to get married if they were never married, or remarry if they were or divorced or widowed? In other words, why would an older person want to be married as opposed to remaining single and living alone?
If you are young or old, single and happy with no desire to get married, please explain why you have no desire to get married.
If you are young or old, and single and unhappy being single, and you have a desire to get married, please explain why you have a desire to get married.
As usual, I have a reason for asking these questions which will be revealed later.
Thanks, Trailblazer.
What I'm going to try to reply with will likely be pretentious and uninformed: I've never married, and likely will not. I am 36 and starting to get my first gray hairs. I feel like I would be too old to have a kid, or really build a complete life with another person
That said, my comments are as follows. I find your line of questioning to be quite common, in american/western culture after the middle of the last century. Fair enough I guess, as technology and a sense of new philosophy has freed people to do more of what they want in life. I have never been told to actually marry myself, and have very often been told that it would be a major pitfall, were I to. My mother told me I should just go travel. Family and acquaintances have often confessed to me that marriage is not worth it
I have witnessed domestic strife, between my mother and father. My own maternal grandmother had multiple marriages, and two of her sons, and a daughter, had divorced. I have coworkers that I can tell are divorced. What are their attitudes and choices based on, though? Is it about 'doing what they want to do,' or is it more about not getting along with others. Sure, those two things can both be present as qualities in a person, but which is more dominant?
Going back to your line of questions, I guess my conclusion is that a lot of that is too harsh - it seems to me that a culture that values marriage, thinks of it more as an intrinsic good. For example, I work in a factory with a lot of immigrants. Many, many of them are married, and they come in there to actually work with their significant others. On other hand, those of us that are natural born americans are steeped in an almost essential idea of atomization, and though I haven't analyzed the data, I feel like singleness and divorce is more common for us
I'm not judging how people 'want to live,' but then again, I am a social constructionist, and do believe that people live in those channels carved out for them by social forces.
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And now to a few comments on what the Tarot seems to say. Skip if you are not interested. I have not thought very much about what the Tarot seems to say about couples, but there are two couples I have thought about in it, that may work. Though the Tarot is of course infinite, so it probably says a lot of things.. To follow what I am saying, you will have to look at the Tarot of Marseilles
I think that the queen of pentacles and the king of pentacles might make a good couple, despite the inherent flaws in their matching, if they are careful. The pentacles are of course, the suit of material. If the queen is first, and the king second, you can see they have their backs to each other. So it seems to me, that they risk indifference - so it seems like the one should tightly guard the back of the other, to make sure nothing comes between them.
Their strength doesn't rely on a face-to-face kind of bond, they aren't concerned with each other in that way, it seems. Their strength, when the queen is first, and the king second, is to scan the whole material world - you can see that they both look out onto the horizon forever in this position, the queen looking left, and the king looking right. So their collaboration can be powerful, in that they can find what they need to make it in the world.
Another couple, is almost an opposite kind of couple: and I think that it would be comprised of the Strength card, the first one on the left, and the Hermit, on the right. In this configuration, there is a different kind of synergy, where it seems like the human mind is completely understood. The hermit shines his lamp, onto what strength is doing: she is mastering all impulse, and the hermit is letting her see even more of the detail.
This couple, however, has both of their backs to the rest of the world. Is this a good thing? I might argue that in our atomized context, it might be. But obviously, there are disadvantages to not being able to look out over the world. That is to say, that the 'hermit' and 'strength' seem to work good together in the atomized context, but might be too atomized? Will they be as rich as the king and queen of pentacles? Probably not. But like I said, this is an example of an opposite mode, or nearly.
Either way, I dare to say that the Tarot will at least, by way of showing synergy, perhaps begin to declaim marriage/partnership as some kind of possible intrinsic good. And from what I can tell, through multiple reasons.
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