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To: tortoise
Definitely a different prospective on marriage...market value
859 posted on 12/06/2004 6:00:49 PM PST by fritzz (Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers)
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To: fritzz
Definitely a different prospective on marriage...market value

Everyone has that perspective in the abstract. They try and find the best mate they can obtain given a laundry list of criteria and priorities under the circumstances they find themselves in. Most people do not think about it explicitly like this, but subconsciously it is how we choose mates, and we are wired to have little difficulty "falling in love" when we do find a reasonable match.

Not that long ago, marriage explicitly had relatively little to do with the modern notion of romantic love and more to do with finding a good match as determined by society to a great extent and to a lesser extent personal preference, the notion being that love would come later if the match was reasonable without too much effort. Nothing has changed, but modern culture has increasingly developed this nouveau modern fairytale conception of what marriage is that almost completely ignores the underlying themes of the ages that were a part of marriage for a reason. The problem is not with love per se, but with the shallow understanding of its relationship to marriage.

When you look for a mate in a market where you will have more value, it generally follows that the mate you find will value you more. It is more complicated than just "falling in love" -- more the symptom than the "disease" -- people need to feel and be valued in a relationship for it to work. This inevitably leads to what are effectively "markets" in the search for marriage. I don't think many people view it literally in this way (including myself), but it is the dynamic of the system.

867 posted on 12/06/2004 6:46:44 PM PST by tortoise (All these moments lost in time, like tears in the rain.)
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