Love and Marriage.. like a Horse and Carriage?
I finally have quenched my desire to start reading biographies. I received a book on Christmas called 'Honest' by Ulrika Jonsson. She is a very popular TV presenter from Britain. Originally Swedish, she moved to England at the age of 12 which became the reason for my attraction to her book. She and I seemed similar enough, having been moved around as a kid, experiencing fucked up family relationships, and not surprisingly, struggling to be loved by a suitable man.
Her struggles make me realize that I could end up exactly like her when I get to her age. The book is extremely heart-wrenching so far. Ulrika is still alive so I don't know how she chooses to end the book. I've already finished half the book in 2 days. She (or her ghost writer) wrote it very passionately, and I found myself dwelling upon her failed relationships out of all of her narrative storylines. A successful career aside with loads of money, she never had happiness in her quest for love. As always here I am the Philosopher-Psychologist, with a theory.
If you are a woman reading this, you'd agree with me that some others of our gender have it so easy. Their married life seems to be so rosy red when they rub their eternal smiles and shiny teeth in your face. Good for them. What I want to turn my attention to is the fact that if they're living in the United States, they have a 60% chance of getting a divorce. That's more than one out of two couples! Marriage has absolutely no value it seems other than gaining companionship for a set period of time, and acquiring your partner's resources including financials and societal stature. So what's love got to do with it?
I wonder why despite being fortunate to have a loving and caring husband, Ulrika Jonsson decides she is not happy even with the birth of her son. Her husband did everything to love her.. but she didn't feel happy. Her resistence to receiving love most definitely goes back to her childhood.. and all you post-modern anti-Freudian thinkers can have your own opinion.. but if you haven't had love from where you wanted it most as a child, it surely would have an impact on your adult life. So if you do get truly loved as an adult, you might resist it because in the kid lurking inside your conscience, its normal for you not to be loved not matter how anyone tries. Twisted eh? But very very common.
I'd like to now remove my psychologist hat and make my personal position clear. I do believe in the sanctity of marriage. I believe in love. And I believe I'll find it someday. I remember when I was watching the game show Wheel-of-Fortune a few years ago, an old lady contestant was speaking about herslf. She had met her husband one Tuesday, they were married on Thursday.. and what a proud little strong frail old lady she was announcing that she had been with the love of her life for 54 years. I certainly do believe it is possible to love someone so intensely right from the minute you meet them. The dating scene has failed so miserably with its scripted philosophy of "do's and don'ts". You must dress like this, you must wait till 3 days after the first date to make a phone call, you must not talk about marriage for whatever length of time, etc. How unreal and Barbie-like! I'm a positive woman who belives love can happen at any time with anyone (just make sure it isn't mistaken for lust), but please don't get me wrong because I also believe that love can be a choice just as anything is.. and with choices, comes work.
Ulrika's marriages failed because they had no foundation. She met people she liked, and then thought they would make good husbands. She was deeply afraid of giving her all, which cracked the foundation of her marriages. She felt suffocated even with a loving husband. She admits that motherhood oozed out of every pore of her soul, but felt very claustrophobic when her husband tried to love her. For heavens sake, why!? I want to shake women like her sometimes and make them realize how lucky they were to be loved. Why people refuse to accept the most beautiful, secure, uplifting, and the ultimate source of happiness is beyond any mystery known to mankind.
I have one very harsh reality check. Most people are majorly fucked up in their relationships, careers, friendships, and their self-awareness. If you try to deny and pretend you are so free of baggage, good luck to you when emotional suffocation and claustrophobia set in.
For marriages to have genuine substance in today's world, it appears that the man and woman must naturally have had to go through either an extraordinarily exhilerating or an extraordinarily traumatic series of events and experiences together. The 'togetherness' experience has to be so significant, that it becomes the binding force uniting a man and woman as one. Sorry to say, passion does not cut it. Passion dies down in no time. There needs to be something almost supernatural.
I am desperately trying to explain it to you ladies and gentleman, but love is not rational and it cannot be verbally expressed. The irony of this blog post is that I don't think I've succeeded in articulating what I want to say. We have come full circle and I'm sorry.
Her struggles make me realize that I could end up exactly like her when I get to her age. The book is extremely heart-wrenching so far. Ulrika is still alive so I don't know how she chooses to end the book. I've already finished half the book in 2 days. She (or her ghost writer) wrote it very passionately, and I found myself dwelling upon her failed relationships out of all of her narrative storylines. A successful career aside with loads of money, she never had happiness in her quest for love. As always here I am the Philosopher-Psychologist, with a theory.
If you are a woman reading this, you'd agree with me that some others of our gender have it so easy. Their married life seems to be so rosy red when they rub their eternal smiles and shiny teeth in your face. Good for them. What I want to turn my attention to is the fact that if they're living in the United States, they have a 60% chance of getting a divorce. That's more than one out of two couples! Marriage has absolutely no value it seems other than gaining companionship for a set period of time, and acquiring your partner's resources including financials and societal stature. So what's love got to do with it?
I wonder why despite being fortunate to have a loving and caring husband, Ulrika Jonsson decides she is not happy even with the birth of her son. Her husband did everything to love her.. but she didn't feel happy. Her resistence to receiving love most definitely goes back to her childhood.. and all you post-modern anti-Freudian thinkers can have your own opinion.. but if you haven't had love from where you wanted it most as a child, it surely would have an impact on your adult life. So if you do get truly loved as an adult, you might resist it because in the kid lurking inside your conscience, its normal for you not to be loved not matter how anyone tries. Twisted eh? But very very common.
I'd like to now remove my psychologist hat and make my personal position clear. I do believe in the sanctity of marriage. I believe in love. And I believe I'll find it someday. I remember when I was watching the game show Wheel-of-Fortune a few years ago, an old lady contestant was speaking about herslf. She had met her husband one Tuesday, they were married on Thursday.. and what a proud little strong frail old lady she was announcing that she had been with the love of her life for 54 years. I certainly do believe it is possible to love someone so intensely right from the minute you meet them. The dating scene has failed so miserably with its scripted philosophy of "do's and don'ts". You must dress like this, you must wait till 3 days after the first date to make a phone call, you must not talk about marriage for whatever length of time, etc. How unreal and Barbie-like! I'm a positive woman who belives love can happen at any time with anyone (just make sure it isn't mistaken for lust), but please don't get me wrong because I also believe that love can be a choice just as anything is.. and with choices, comes work.
Ulrika's marriages failed because they had no foundation. She met people she liked, and then thought they would make good husbands. She was deeply afraid of giving her all, which cracked the foundation of her marriages. She felt suffocated even with a loving husband. She admits that motherhood oozed out of every pore of her soul, but felt very claustrophobic when her husband tried to love her. For heavens sake, why!? I want to shake women like her sometimes and make them realize how lucky they were to be loved. Why people refuse to accept the most beautiful, secure, uplifting, and the ultimate source of happiness is beyond any mystery known to mankind.
I have one very harsh reality check. Most people are majorly fucked up in their relationships, careers, friendships, and their self-awareness. If you try to deny and pretend you are so free of baggage, good luck to you when emotional suffocation and claustrophobia set in.
For marriages to have genuine substance in today's world, it appears that the man and woman must naturally have had to go through either an extraordinarily exhilerating or an extraordinarily traumatic series of events and experiences together. The 'togetherness' experience has to be so significant, that it becomes the binding force uniting a man and woman as one. Sorry to say, passion does not cut it. Passion dies down in no time. There needs to be something almost supernatural.
I am desperately trying to explain it to you ladies and gentleman, but love is not rational and it cannot be verbally expressed. The irony of this blog post is that I don't think I've succeeded in articulating what I want to say. We have come full circle and I'm sorry.
posted by Mubeena Mohammed at 2:24 PM
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