540. Accepting Obligations By Agreement Or By Marriage
The rational choice of a partner for a relationship is based upon long-term cost-benefit calculations with the result of the deal being advantageous for both partners. Such cost-benefit calculations use consent and realistic knowledge concerning costs and benefits not only for oneself but also for the partner to be.
The rational choice of a partner for a relationship is based upon long-term cost-benefit calculations with the result of the deal being advantageous for both partners. Such cost-benefit calculations use consent and realistic knowledge concerning costs and benefits not only for oneself but also for the partner to be.
Given sufficient intelligence, wisdom and maturity to accept the golden rule and the tit-for-tat principle, this implies to have accepted the costs as obligations, before deciding to start profiting from available benefits.
Any attempts to get long-term benefits while refusing to accept obligations are doomed. Accepting obligations and feeling bound by them once and for good is a part of what defines genuine commitment. Such obligations are an indispensable requirement for making a relationship a safe haven of reliability, predictability and trustworthiness for each other.
Any attempts to get long-term benefits while refusing to accept obligations are doomed. Accepting obligations and feeling bound by them once and for good is a part of what defines genuine commitment. Such obligations are an indispensable requirement for making a relationship a safe haven of reliability, predictability and trustworthiness for each other.
Unfortunately, there are substantial differences between the subjective definition of commitment and especially the perception of when it starts.
Serious emotional disaster for women is
caused by the unfortunate instinctive difference concerning the
emotional impact of the first act of physical intimacy or the lack
thereof.
Some men, who are not
jerks by feeling entitled to objectify women, are nevertheless caught by
their need for homeostasis in the trap of the fallacy, that their being
triggered to copulate with female bodies without emotional attachment
were based upon the reciprocity of mere objectification not creating
commitment.
Many women get emotionally attached and committed automatically by physical intimacy and their fallacy is to assume the automatic commitment to be reciprocal.
Many women get emotionally attached and committed automatically by physical intimacy and their fallacy is to assume the automatic commitment to be reciprocal.
1. Commitment by agreement
Commitment by agreement is the reciprocal acceptance of obligations which starts, as soon as a couple agrees to be committed. It is based upon both partners' full awareness of both fallacies and of the hazard of women's risk to be harmed and men's risk to be the one causing harm.
Commitment by agreement is the reciprocal acceptance of obligations which starts, as soon as a couple agrees to be committed. It is based upon both partners' full awareness of both fallacies and of the hazard of women's risk to be harmed and men's risk to be the one causing harm.
While this is the only viable basis for a long term relationship, it can only work given full consent and awareness about what creates and constitutes commitment in the experience of the partner.
Commitment by agreement is intrinsic commitment, the obligations accepted are to the partner as someone, whose needs are an expression of the individual personality.
2. Commitment by legal marriage
The signature at the town hall as the act of legal marriage is also an act of implicitly accepting obligations. But these obligations are based upon the marriage laws of the country. Legal marriage means accepting standard obligations, which are not a conscious choice based upon the recognition of the partner's real and individual needs.
Commitment by legal marriage is extrinsic commitment.
3. Comparing both commitments
Commitment by agreement is a deal between two persons. While it is based upon the real needs of both partners, it depends entirely on their deliberate choice to continue to fulfill the obligations. The partners have no legal power over each other. (Any use of usurped power by physical or situational advantages is a transgression and breaking the agreement of two equals.) The only power they have is leaving, when the other fails or commits transgressions.
Commitment by legal marriage is a twofold deal with society as represented by the country's laws.
It is a deal between each partner and society, and the focus of the legal obligations are financial and they do not matter, unless they are claimed and backed up by the power of the enforcing law. Therefore legal marriage has the most impact not when there is harmony, but when there is failure.
Commitment by legal marriage is also a deal between both partners and society as a power to give practical benefits, when being together is otherwise as problem, because both partners do not share the same citizenship.
4. Which commitment for whom?
4.1. When a couple is compatible, bonded by the shared need for intellectual intimacy and companionship and their focus is upon the immaterial benefits of being each other's safe haven, then commitment by agreement and cohabitation are all they need. Legal marriage brings no further benefits to the quality of their commitment.
4.2. In the case, that both partners are not from the same country then sometimes legal marriage is needed to enable being together. But in this case, legal marriage cannot be a substitute for having been bound first by the agreed obligations of commitment.
Commitment by legal marriage is also a deal between both partners and society as a power to give practical benefits, when being together is otherwise as problem, because both partners do not share the same citizenship.
4. Which commitment for whom?
4.1. When a couple is compatible, bonded by the shared need for intellectual intimacy and companionship and their focus is upon the immaterial benefits of being each other's safe haven, then commitment by agreement and cohabitation are all they need. Legal marriage brings no further benefits to the quality of their commitment.
4.2. In the case, that both partners are not from the same country then sometimes legal marriage is needed to enable being together. But in this case, legal marriage cannot be a substitute for having been bound first by the agreed obligations of commitment.
5. The refusal to accept obligations without legal marriage indicates commodification
Some men consider legal marriage as the only possible and binding form of commitment. They do not feel any obligations to a woman until marriage, while they do not hesitate to use her body at their convenience. This is big red flag of commodification.
Commitment by agreement as a deal with a woman requires the perception of her being significant as a partner with a mind. A man, for whom a woman is a commodity or utility, is unable to perceive her as a person to make a deal with.
No man makes a deal with car about how to use it. If a man makes a deal about the car, it is with the owner as how to use it and for what costs.
When a man refuses to accept any obligations other than by legal marriage, he is like someone leasing the woman from society. Legal marriage is such a man's deal with society for the goal of getting control over the commodified woman.
What the commodified woman wants and needs herself does not matter and is insignificant. Such a man accepts as a price, whatever social norms, gender roles, religion or the political system behind the marriage laws in his country demand. In his mind, he deals with society, which supplies a woman to him for the purpose of homeostasis and for other services, and he accepts the price demanded by society as his due.
It is not enough to rely on a man's claims of wanting commitment, it is a fallacy to mistake a man's willingness to get married as an expression of commitment. If there can be any valid indication of a man's attitude towards women, this can only be his acceptance and recognition of explicitly described and defined obligations.
A wise woman never allows a man to touch her unless he accepts that this is the begin of commitment and of having obligations.
A wise woman never marries a man, unless his behavior before marriage is
very unequivocally guided and restricted by his acceptance of and full
compliance with agreed upon obligations.
If a man cannot commit in his behavior without marriage, it cannot be
expected that he will agree upon any obligations beyond those imposed by
the marriage laws. He will not behave any better after being married than before.
4 comments:
Maruli? Is it not conceivable that a woman could cause harm to a man? you seem to think it is only a one way street? Verbal abuse and even physical abuse Woman/on.Man happens all the time.Doesn't it?
I am in a public library right now and don't have an email address yet, could you respond on your website blog page? Thank you. Have a nice day.
This is a personal blog. I am writing it for the purpose of finding a mindmate. This is not a relationship advice page. Therefore I am presenting my view as a woman and I have no reason whatsoever to consider other women's behavior. (Only in the case, that my mindmate to be found has special sensitivities from his own past, this is a topic to find a shared workaround).
I can myself be provoked to outbursts of verbal 'abuse' after my dignity has been hurt beyond my endurance by a man's commodification, domination, bullying, and after too many of my attempts to influence him to end this degradation and indignation had been futile.
Provoked reactive verbal 'abuse' is a sign of the relationship being doomed to end soon. But I am not even sure, if my being provoked by someone's inappropriate behavior until I call him an idiot or a**hole is a form of abuse. Because when I am driven to such an extreme outburst, I am also driven to mean it. The more serious problem is not such an outburst by itself, but that it happens, when I have lost all respect for a man, having started to despise him as unworthy of me.
While I am powerless to stop a man from hurting and commodifying me, if he choses to use whatever power he has to do so, mistaking his apparent and superficial success as a proof to be justified in how he treats me, I nevertheless feel very strongly the outrage and indignation. This is the cause of the spiral of his destroying my love by hurting me, and this spiral unavoidably leads to my love being replaced by loathing, despising, detesting the man.
I want to prevent these dynamics. There is only one method to achieve this, which is to never start the spiral by finding a partner, who does not hurt me and who accepts the importance of not hurting me.
Therefore, along with other criteria mentioned elsewhere, my mindmate is someone, who does not hurt and harm me.
This is a non-negotiable criterion, nothing to bargain about. It is better to remain alone rather than to be hurt and harmed in a relationship.
Compatibility means that both partners' needs are equally met in a relationship and nobody gets hurt, harmed or bullied. Otherwise they are a mismatch.
To assess the matching of the needs requires knowledge and awareness for the needs of both potential partners.
One important blog topic is therefore the explicit and elaborate description of how I want and need to be treated and what I perceive as harm, to which I do not want to expose myself.
My intention is to enable a man to recognize reciprocal suitability or the absence thereof.
Any man reading this blog with the interest of checking if we could be matches is advised to ask himself a few simple questions for each of the behaviors mentioned:
- Would his spontaneous habitual way of treating a woman harm and hurt me or would it coincide with how I wish, need and deserve to be treated?
- Does his spontaneous habitual way correspond with his own innate inclinations and personality predispositions or not? This checks the possibility of some man's hurting behaviors being a fallacy due to gender roles, social norms, prejudices and projections, while he may not hurt me, would he follow his own true wishes and needs.
- How would he feel, would he be himself the target of the behaviors, which are hurting me?
Anybody, who disagrees with what I expect as appropriate behavior from a partner, is not suitable for me.
But suitability is a reciprocal requirement. He also has to ask himself these other questions:
- Would treating me as I need to be treated impede him from getting sufficient fulfillment of his own needs?
- Would the relationship not be beneficial for him unless he enforces his convenience by hurting and bullying?
I am not suitable for a man, who cannot get from me, what he needs without hurting and bullying. I am not suitable, no matter, if this is fact or his subjective evaluation.
Thank you Maruli for that clarification. I was also impressed with your considerations of a man's incapacity to conform to
'revised' or feminist/socialist gender roles? Although i don't really understand what you are suggesting. While I understand the general meanings of the word feminism in the American and probably the EU sense, i am not exactly sure of what you might expect, day to day from me or perhaps some other man if we passed the initial process of 'screening' and were actually able to meet with you in person, either in Germany or in some other place. If you had to tell someone what any given day of the last week might have been like for you with your ideal soulmate, how would have that man accommodated your needs during the last 168 hours? I apologize for i am not sure that my English is even clear here, although English is my first language. Again, I am in the library here. Thanks for your reply, i find your Blog very interesting and you seem to be very interesting also. Cheers.
This checks the possibility of some man's hurting behaviors being a fallacy due to gender roles, social norms, prejudices and projections, while he may not hurt me, would he follow his own true wishes and needs.
- How would he feel, would he be himself the target of the behaviors, which are hurting me?
To the commenter above:
I read your comment as if you are asking for recipes how to behave. In entry 543 I am explaining the fallacies of such recipes.
You are welcome to continue reading this blog. Maybe you discover and understand the principles so that you overcome the need for recipes, which I am not providing.
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