Thoughts on Living Together

I haven't posted in a while, for two reasons a) busy-ness b) writing these posts requires intense focus and can be draining, because I am writing about something that really matters to me.

In the next few days I will try to post the following: A. Thoughts on an article I read B. Thoughts on Rape C. Finish Up the Sperber Stuff D. Thoughts on the halachik process

Here is A:

I recently read an article that said breakups of those who live together are comparable to divorce in terms of logistic complications and emotional damage. I thought this was interesting, because in Judaism, having sex and living together can be enough to constitute a marriage, worthy of an official divorce document should things not work out - perhaps the rabbis were on to something. The article noted statistics for gay and straight couples. This bothers me. By noting the different statistics, the article a) was working off of an assumption of sexual binaries, which I find problematic b) implied that there is some sort of cosmic difference between gay and straight couplese necessitating separate categorization. Assuming that each behavior is as moral and normative as the other, why should it matter whether the man/woman in question happened to be sleeping with a man, or whether they happened to be sleeping with a woman? What matters are behaviors - monogomous v not, long-term, long-distance, live-in v live-apart - these do speak to large lifestyle differences worthy of separate statistical categorization, but who you choose to seek this lifestyle with should be irrelevant. As a matter of fact, why did this poll not have a separate category for incestuous relationships or abusive relationships - things that are surely much more relevant than gender. The only way I can think of sexuality being pertinent, is that this was of living-together non-married couples, and marriage is not an option for most gay couples. Perhaps the study should have weeded out gay couples who would have been married were they legally allowed to do so.

Another interesting thing was that most men polled said they viewed living together as a "test-drive" to see if a long-term romance was possible, while most women viewed it as a gateway to marriage. I think this is interesting because it shows the different expectations men and women have about relationships, expectations that are taught to them by our society. Women are socialized for marriage to a much greater extent than men, and are socialized to get married younger than men. Men are socialized to be in some sort of stable relationship by the time they are in their 30s, but are not viewed as failures if unmarried and childless, the way that women often are.

To me, this statistic is further evidence that the sexual revolution often disempowers women, who are still chained to social expectations about marriage and long-term relationships, but no longer can use sex as a means to get those, since they are expected to give sex to men sans those things, giving the man, who is not socialized towards those same objectives, less incentive to give the woman the comittment she needs from him in order to be a validated member of society.

The statistic that marriages where people lived together first have a slightly higher divorce rate also makes sense in this context: People who live together first are giving their relationshio a test-drive, speaking to a doubt that may be evidence of a larger but subtle problem in the relationship, while people who get married without living together first, are making a leap of faith - and this attitude, of "I love you and am going to make sure our marriage works, so I don't need a test-drive", may lead to a more succesful marriage, because it shows determination to make it work, whereas the other couples may lack that degree of determination.

My general theory on living together is that often couples move in out of convenience: You are sleeping together, so you spend most of your time at someone's apartment, and then it becomes a question of convenience - you are practically living together anyway, so why not move in - especially if there is financial incentive to do so or one of you has a lease about to expire. The problem is, that then you might be together for ten years, without having ever paused to examine if this is someone you want to be in a relationship for ten years with, without having made a conscious decision to do so and spoken about other issues. You might even get married, if you're at the point where you feel society demands it, or that "we've been together for five years, so it's time", but then at some point one of those major undiscussed issues come up and - presto, separation.

Of course, there are many couples who make conscious, well-thought out decisions to live together, couples who stay together for a lifetime, and even couples who move in out of convenience but wind up being happy together for a lifetime. I am also not saying that longevity is necessarily a good way to measure relationships; it is largely a holdover from the assumption that marriage (ie lifetime monogomous child-producing hetero relationship) is the "best" romantic option. Perhaps it may be better to measure relationships in terms of intensity, or how happy you are during minus how sad you are during the breakup. Perhaps not.