<p>To answer the title question:</p>
<p>Not that I know of–yet.</p>
<p>I am not familiar with Mr. Savage’s column. However, I do tend to agree that whatever a couple can agree upon that doesn’t hurt anyone else should be between them and nobody else’s business.</p>
<p>Even with open communication, it is difficult to predict every situation that may come after years of marriage. I have read that disagreements about frequency of sex rank high among marital problems, although not as high as disagreements about money. Large doses of patience and compromise on both sides seem to be advised for couples who wish to preserve the union.</p>
<p>My only caveat, and this applies to all relationship issues (not just sex), is about those situations when one partner is somehow coerced, or powerless, and is forced to comply with a situation they object to. Historically, women have most often been on the losing end of this equation.</p>
<p>Well, this whole discussion could be flipped, by asking, in this day and age, IS MARRIAGE (IE A COMMITTED MONOGAMOUS relationship) even needed today?
Birth control, women’s decent access to wages and education, democracy, changing attitudes to sexual-orientation… The “couple” is very different now, more balanced in terms of “power”. The article is some ways is saying we need to re-think how relationships work now…</p>
<p>Has marriage become obsolete? have monogamous relationships become obsolete?</p>
<p>Is sex really always dis-connected from emotional well-being?</p>
<p>And is raising children in a stable two parent unit really necessary? Not economically, not politically. To me, that was the (biological) reason for a stable parental couple. And then the emotional connection can also be seen as important between the parents and among all the family members, calling for stability and commitment. Is this a romantic notion? Or is it a bio-chemical need for laying down neurons for trust and sociability??? Or is it a closed but self-renforcing loop, where by kids that are raised in emotionally supportive, stable families tend to develop so as to look for that “chemically”, emotionally…</p>
<p>Back to sociology and politics, does a society benefit from stable family units, i.e. monogamous or at least emotionally connected parents? Esp in a society where women DO have political rights and some degree of economic and educational equality???
Do children do better in school? Learn better? Is there more law and order? Is this a good check and balance to individualism? </p>
<p>Setting ground-rules does make sense, but is sort an alien concept to many; we just fall back on personal beliefs without communicating them, or act without thinking many time. </p>
<p>Also, what if women start to openly ask for sexual freedom in committed relationships? They could, given the status of women today, except for the fact that women do bear children and tend to have dependents. (I just realized that the Casey Anthony case is an interesting situation to think about in all this LOL)</p>
<p>Europeans do still tend to separate sex from emotions more than Americans. They also see marriage and raising children as a duty.</p>
<p>In many Assian cultures, the family unit is considered multi-generational- grandparents are valued and live with the family and often provide child-care and other domestic tasks.</p>
<p>Marriage (its significance and how it should work) is a culture-bound concept, for sure. I think the US is in a big transition with it. The rules are gone or changing, so may be we have to set new ones, or let each couple set their own (not an easy process)…</p>
<p>Thanks, performersmom, that’s a thoughtful post.</p>
<p>Having grown up with divorced parents, I believe that marriage is a necessity during child-rearing years. After that, I’d have to say it doesn’t make a lot of sense in the Western world anymore. I love my wife and would like to remain married, but the truth is, if we had to separate for some reason, we’d both get along just fine after an emotional adjustment period. Neither of us would starve or anything so drastic. I’d be more worried about the effect on our kids (11 and 19) than on us.</p>
<p>Please, Dan Savage is a fascinating writer, but he makes his living by being outrageous. That’s the reason he still has a column he gets paid for, when so many other columnists have been dropped. So… either enjoy him for his outrageousness, or don’t feed him. You can’t have it both ways.</p>
<p>Gosh, you’re not being very GGG, there. :rolleyes:</p>
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<p>I get upset when ministers talk about how the divorce rate wasn’t so high in the “old days.” Right…because the wife who was entirely economically dependent on her husband would have starved. Out on the prairie or when the Mayflower folks were settling in, both needed the other for any type of decent survival. Because of that, I think there were a lot of severely unhappy marriages, but one or both parties stayed married for survival purposes.</p>
<p>I don’t think marriage is necessary. I think the legal protections it provides are needed, but some sort of contract would be fine with me. I don’t think marriage has a lot of impact on monogamy either. I think people are just as likely to be monogamous in a committed relationship without marriage as with it.</p>
<p>*Savage also applies “game” to other things – e.g., you love baseball, your spouse does not; you should be permitted to go to baseball games with someone outside the marriage. *</p>
<p>Well…that depends…If the H loves baseball, that doesn’t mean that he can/should go with some single cutie from work. Yes, he can go “with the boys”…but not with someone where an attraction could be fed.</p>
<p>^I agree.</p>
<p>Also agree with performersmom. I think our kids will find their own way to define or redefine marriage. The trend of women outearning men may continue, which may lead to a more open discussion about who is responsible for child care, housework, etc. (or may not). I think what this comes back to is communication – about expectations, likes, dislikes, and all the nitty gritty things that go along with living together. Who does the laundry? Who does the cooking? And I agree with one of Savage’s points another poster mentioned – there is no right or wrong – but these things should be discussed before you ‘go down the aisle’.</p>
<p>Well…that depends…If the H loves baseball, that doesn’t mean that he can/should go with some single cutie from work. Yes, he can go “with the boys”…but not with someone where an attraction could be fed.</p>
<p>You can also go by yourself- I regularly go out ( about every or every other month) to listen to live music- sometimes it is in a bar/pub- sometimes in a theatre. H does come with me when he can, but often the performance is on a weekend he is working or during the week ( when he has to get up at 4 am- it is bad enough that when we go out together, we often don’t make it halfway through the closing set).
I rarely go with anyone, if I do, it is a woman friend, but usually it is by myself.
( he does the same thing w skiing, I do not downhill ski & I am not fond of sitting in the lodge while he is on the slopes although I have done that)
We do attend baseball games together however :)</p>
<p>Hanna, he told the letter writer to stop whining-- but then again, he also said the girlfriend should stop doing what made the letter writer whine. He was to stop whining about the girlfriend not giving him sex on demand, but the girlfriend was to give him sex on demand. </p>
<p>On the other hand, another letter writer, a new father, wrote in complaining that his wife was uninterested in sex. Savage tore into him. My favorite bit: “If you expected your wife to bounce back to her pre-baby weight in 10 weeks like some sort of celebrity mom, then you needed to get her two nannies, a personal trainer, and a full-time nutritionist like some sort of celebrity mom.”</p>
<p>and a full-time nutritionist like some sort of celebrity mom."</p>
<p>That is great. I don’t read Savage regularly, TMI for me :o, but I like that response.</p>
<p>Can’t believe the comment section is closed. Like ***.</p>
<p>I like the Ron Paul approach to the marriage issue. He says it’s nobody else’s business, and that the government shouldn’t be involved. If a couple wants to get married and can find a church that will marry them, then they can get married. If they want to sign a legal contract to share their assets and responsibilities, they can do that, too, whether they’re a man and a woman, two men, two women, or whatever. I like it because it solves the gay marriage issue and numerous others without imposing anyone’s beliefs on anyone else.</p>
<p>Edit: But now he’s framing it as a states’-rights issue in order to avoid alienating the right wing, whose vote he needs if he has any hope of being elected. But those of us who have known and loved him for a long time know what he really thinks. :)</p>
<p>I wouldn’t have an issue if BF wanted to go to a baseball game with someone else… male or female… chances are he’d go with me since I LOVEEEEEEEEEEE baseball but still. I don’t like hockey so if some chick had an extra ticket and asked him to go I’d tell him to go for it. Hot or not.</p>
<p>Thirteen years ago I went to a show with a “chick” I worked with because she had an extra ticket. Her brother was there, too, so it was not a date by any means. My wife said okay at the time but still won’t let me forget about it. Believe a woman who says she’s “okay with it” at your peril, men.</p>
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<p>Talk about redefining “marriage.” Now we’re going to say that everyone who was married at a courthouse isn’t really married, that’s not marriage? Good luck with that.</p>
<p>The idea is to change marriage laws in the future through the usual legislative channels, not to retroactively invalidate everyone’s marriages. Even libertarians aren’t that crazy. Well, most libertarians.</p>
<p>What are civil unions? They’re contractually identical to marriages, except that they’re called civil unions. They’re both contracts between two individuals who agree to share their assets and responsibilities. The distinction is arbitrary. That’s all Paul and other libertarians are saying. Let people enter into these contracts the same way they would any other. There’s no other contract that is valid only if the signatories are of the opposite sex. Why do we accept this for marriage contracts but not for any other kind of contract?</p>
<p>Civil unions aren’t contractually identical to marriages, because marriages come with a lot of rights and responsibilities-- rights to visit spouses in the hospital, tax consequences, Social Security consequences, default rules about children born or adopted into the marriage, and hundreds of other rights and responsibilities. Libertarians may want to take those rights and responsibilities away, but nobody else does.</p>
<p>But let’s say they were identical. Let’s say we had a legal union, and a church-sponsored union. Oh wait, we already do have that, for opposite-sex couples. Why on earth would I want to surrender the word “marriage” to churches? I wouldn’t. I don’t want to talk about people getting unioned. I don’t want to hear, “I now pronounce you unioned.” No. Marriage is marriage, and gay people should be able to get married.</p>