sex and marriage

Chapter 22 Divorce (2)
In my opinion, adultery itself should not be grounds for divorce.No one, except those who are fooled by ecclesiastical prohibitions and bound by a strong moral conscience, can go through life without a strong urge to adultery.However, this impulse by no means means that marriage can no longer retain its function.Even with this urge, there may still be passionate love between husband and wife, and both parties will still want the marriage to continue.For example, a man who is away from home for several months, if he is physically able, will have difficulty suppressing his sexual desires all the time, although he may love his wife very much.The same applies to his wife, if she has any doubts about the correctness of conventional morality.Infidelity in such circumstances should not be an obstacle to a happy life later on.In fact, it is unlikely to be an obstacle to a happy life later, because both spouses will feel that they need not indulge in the dramatic mystery of jealousy.It may be further said that every married couple should have this temporary extramarital interest, because it is always inevitable so long as that latent love exists.Traditional morality distorts the psychology of adultery. It believes that in monogamous countries, if there is love for one person, it is impossible to have true love for another person at the same time.All know that this is not the case, and yet, under the influence of envy, all, according to this false theory, make a very small event a great one.Therefore, adultery does not constitute sufficient grounds for divorce, unless people really think that a third party is better than their husband or wife when they commit adultery.

When I say this, of course, I do not mean the kind of adulterous intercourse that leads to the birth of a child.When illegitimate children are involved, the matter becomes complicated.Things are more complicated when the child is born to the wife.For in this case, if the marriage continues, the husband has to raise not only his own children, but also the children of other men.And in order to cover up the scandal, he had to treat other men's children as his own.This is a violation of the biological basis of marriage, and causes almost unbearable, instinctively excruciating pain.Therefore, adultery may indeed be something worth objecting to before the birth of the contraceptive law, but the birth of the contraceptive law has made it easy for us to distinguish sexual intercourse from the married life of producing children.Therefore, we should change our traditional concept, because adultery is not such a big deal now.

There are two reasonable grounds for divorce: first, because of a problem with one of the spouses, such as mental illness, alcoholism, and criminal behavior; and second, because the relationship between the couple is not harmonious.Disharmony in the relationship between husband and wife mainly has the following manifestations: Although the two parties never quarrel, they cannot live in harmony.Both parties are engaged in important work, and the work requires both parties to live separately.Although one of the parties does not dislike the other, he is so attached to the third that he considers marriage an intolerable bondage.In this case, if the law fails to help in due course, hatred will undoubtedly follow.In fact, this condition, as everyone knows, is likely to lead to murder.If the marriage breaks down because the two parties are not compatible, or if one party has a very deep love for a third party, the law should not make a negative judgment.Therefore, mutual consent is the best grounds for divorce.The only time the consent of the parties is not required is when the breakdown of the marriage is due to a significant and undeniable problem with one party.

Divorce law is a very difficult business, because, whatever the law says, judges and judges are governed by their feelings, and husbands and wives try to distort the will of the legislator.According to British law, although the agreement between husband and wife cannot be used as a basis for divorce, it is well known that such agreements often exist between husband and wife.In New York, people tend to go a step further and they'll hire perjured witnesses to make adultery legally warrantable for divorce.In theory, abuse is perfectly sufficient grounds for divorce, but explanations for abuse can reach a level of absurdity.A well-known male movie star was sentenced to divorce for abusing his wife. One of the many evidences of abuse given by his wife is that he often brings friends who talk about Kant to his house.I can hardly believe it.Legislators in California will allow a wife to leave her husband because his husband frequently talks about knowledge in her presence.Avoid this?The only way out of chaos, deceit and absurdity is: In any case, if there is no such obvious reason, such as insanity, to justify the divorce application of one party, the divorce must be obtained by the consent of both parties.In this way, both parties will resolve all economic matters outside of court, and neither party will need to hire smart people to prove the other party's wrongdoing.It should be added that we should agree to the dissolution of the marriage contract when sexual dysfunction results in childlessness.This means that if a childless couple wishes to divorce, they can divorce if they have a medical certificate that the wife is infertile.Children are the object of marriage, and it is a cruel deception to bind men in a barren marriage.

All that has been said has to do with the law of divorce; as for custom, that is another matter.As we have seen, although the law can make divorce very easy, custom can make the divorce rate very low.Divorce is so common in America, I think, on the one hand, because Americans do not seek what they should seek in marriage; and on the other hand, because adultery is not tolerated.Both parties should think of marriage as a partnership that must be maintained at least as long as their children are young, not as a temporary love affair.If the public opinion or the conscience of the parties does not tolerate this kind of temporary love, we can have a happy marriage.This approach of viewing marriage as love can easily and completely destroy a family with both parents.If a woman changes husbands every two years and gets a child from each husband, those children lose their father and marriage loses its meaning.We are reminded again of St. Paul's point of view.As it says in [-] Corinthians, in America marriage is seen as an alternative to adultery, so when a man commits adultery without getting a divorce, then he must get a divorce.

If we viewed marriage solely in the interests of our children, we would arrive at a very different moral outlook.All parents who love their children should restrain their speech and conduct, that their children may obtain the best conditions for happiness and healthy growth.Sometimes this requires a great deal of self-restraint on the part of the parents, and it certainly requires the parents to recognize that their children's rights are far more important than their own romantic feelings.In fact, all this will happen naturally if the parental feelings are real, and the hypocrisy of morality does not kindle the flames of jealousy.Some say that if husband and wife no longer love each other passionately, if they do not prevent each other from having sexual experiences outside of marriage, they cannot work together in the education of their children.Therefore, Walter Lippmann said: "Couples without love will not cooperate as sincerely as Mr. Bernd Russell requires in the matter of having children, because they are always absent-minded, and worse Yes, they see the relationship as a duty." Here, there is a slight glitch that may be accidental.Couples without love will certainly not cooperate in the matter of having children, but when the child is born, they will not lose the care of their parents, as Mr. Walter Lippmann said.Co-operation in the rearing of children is by no means a forceful thing for married couples of natural affection and reason, even after their passionate love has waned.I can cite a large number of well-known facts to prove this point.As for saying that these parents "think that the relationship between husband and wife is just a responsibility", it is because he does not understand the love of his parents-as long as this kind of love is sincere and passionate, it will last long after the lust of the body has decayed. The unbreakable bond between husband and wife.

Mr. Lippmann has probably never heard of France, where families are very stable and parents are very conscientious, although they enjoy considerable freedom in the matter of adultery.It is precisely because Americans have very weak family values ​​that the divorce rate there is very high.If family values ​​are strong, the divorce rate will be low, even though divorce is legally easy.The current phenomenon of easy divorce in the United States should be regarded as a stage of transition from a two-parent family to a purely maternity family.Of course, this is a stage that can be extremely damaging to a child.Because in the current society, children hope to have a family with both parents, and before the parents divorce, the children may already have a deep relationship with their father.As long as the two-parent family is still accepted as a standard model, in my opinion, divorced parents are really not fulfilling their parental responsibilities, and of course those couples who divorced for major reasons are excluded.I think that legally binding married men and women is probably not going to help.What is really needed, as I see it, is: first, to make marriage more acceptable by giving each other a degree of freedom, and second, to recognize the importance of children, as St. People's attention is misdirected to sex.

Our conclusion seems to be that, although divorce is too difficult a thing in many countries, England among them, easy divorce is not the real solution to marital problems.A strong marriage is important for the benefit of the children if the marriage is going to survive.But the best way to get a solid marriage is to separate it from a purely sexual relationship, and to focus on the physical rather than the romantic aspects of conjugal love.I dare not assert that marriage is free from legal obligations.Under the system I propose, no doubt people can be released from the obligation of sexual fidelity between husband and wife, but they should still have the responsibility to control jealousy.Although a happy life is inseparable from self-discipline, it is better to restrain the narrow and hostile jealousy than to restrain the rich and broad love.The mistake of traditional morality is not that it requires us to restrain ourselves, but that it does not require ideas.

(End of this chapter)