Libra Thoughts on Marriage - AKA, I'm a weirdo, lol!

As a Libra, I naturally think relationships and Marriage are awesome and totally worth it. I think that when two people meet and feel a spark, they should immediately plan out their next step, such as moving in together or even getting married. It seriously frustrates me whenever I watch a show - or know a couple in real life - that take FOREVER to admit that they like each other and want to be together. I do believe in love at first sight AND in death do you part.

That said, I am a weirdo, lol! I have always been poly in my heart, planning out how awesome it would be to have a husband AND a wife, and I would seriously love it if my beloveds had girlfriends and/or boyfriends of their own. My motto would be the more the merrier if we could find people that would actually fit into our little family without causing strife. I mention strife specifically because my hubby has a temper and is the most likely one to cause strife, so really, we'd need to find loved ones who can either handle a temper gracefully, diffuse it easily, or just plain ignore it and wait for it to blow over. I absolutely do not want to be part of a family that does nothing but hold shouting matches!

Okay so, that out of the way, here's what I suddenly realized the other day. Our ancestors may have known more about what they were doing than we give them credit for! I'm talking about the ones who arranged marriages for their kids. I'm also talking about a time when it was so common that it was almost expected for the bride to be young and the groom to be old. I'll give you a moment to shudder over that because you probably have some ugly preconceptions in mind of perverted old men raping teenaged girls in the name of creating heirs.

Okay, you good? Shuddering done?

Good!

Here's why I think our ancestors may have known more about what they were doing than we think. Let's start with the common scenario of an older man marrying a younger girl. For ease of math, we'll make him about 40 and her between 16-18. That makes him approximately 20 years older than her. Ironically, it would be even better for her if he was even older, but I'll just go with this for now.

Our older man probably has at least a little money, because that was a big thing that parents looked for. They wanted the husband to be able to take care of their daughter. HE wanted his new wife to be young enough to easily have babies to inherit his money some day. It seems like a match made in heaven to everyone except perhaps the outsider wondering why the poor girl can't marry for love.

Here's an odd phenomenon: The more you spend time with someone, the more you love them. This means that people you hate can grow into good friends, and people you kind of like can grow into passionate lovers. So long as a man is not abusive - and really, most men aren't - his wife will either grow to love him OR love her children and be grateful to the man who gave them to her and takes care of them - her included. A lesser form of love happens. She's probably happy, even if she had already fallen in love with someone else, and if she's not 100% happy, she'll probably take a lover on the side to meet her baser needs.

Okay, so fast forward 20 or so years. Our younger wife has had her husband's heirs and he's gotten older and - assuming he's indulged in bad habits his whole life - he's now closing in on death. Let's say that he dies while she is still in her late 30s to early 40s. She's still young enough to get married again and even have more kids if she wants. He probably left her a little something to live off of in his will (though most of it went to his eldest son), so now SHE'S in the position to take care of herself and possibly a much younger man.

So she marries a man in his early 20s, one who is just getting on his feet and doesn't necessarily want kids yet, but needs love and support. She supports him - maybe having kids, maybe not - until he is in the position to take over and support a family. This really is a love match and makes her so incredibly happy! He's there for her as her health declines, and then one day, he's the 40 year old man who wants a younger wife. Especially if his first one didn't give him children. He's now fully on his feet and capable of supporting a family.

So the cycle starts over. Yes, I made it a little to cut and dry, assuming that the older person would die while the younger one is still young enough to move on and marry again. But think about it, THIS way, a person has the opportunity to have 2 loves in their live. One which is more like a good friendship and the other which is more passionate. Hell! They could both be passionate! But more importantly, it is a very supportive system, making sure that younger people are taken care of. (And you know, in my poly world, the older one wouldn't have to die before the younger one married again, lol!)

Some of the fun of marriage is struggling at first and then overcoming all obstacles and challenges. I get that, I really do, but in my opinion, overcoming challenges is less stressful if done in a supportive environment. Also, when two people want to bring children into the world, I personally think that it is just better all around if at least one of them can financially support the entire family. YES, I KNOW that is strange coming from me considering that I am on welfare and cannot support my family. Yes it does contradict my belief that having kids is just part of life and should not be planned or saved until a couple has "enough" money, but if given two choices - having kids with money or having kids without money, I think most people would agree that having kids WITH money (as in you have money, not the kids, lol) is so much easier all around :-)

What made me think about all of this? You might wonder. Well, I reread my story called Jocelyn's Decision and it got me thinking. Jocelyn starts out as a 13 year old, and as teenaged girls are wont to do, she grows infatuated with an older man. Her infatuation grows into full out love over the years, and if she had lived in an earlier time, he could have simply married her and they could have lived fairly happily ever after.

Unfortunately, they live in a time in which - and I could never really understand how this happened in just the last hundred years - any man over the age of 18 (especially over 21) literally CANNOT fall in love with and marry/have sex with an under aged girl. Thousands of years of biology telling us to have young/old pairings, and suddenly now it's wrong. I shake my head in disbelief.

Don't get me wrong, I really do understand that a girl should be able to choose her husband and whether or not she is READY to get married. I do not think that we should go back to a time when young girls were literally FORCED to get married to old men they didn't want anything to do with. I am NOT trying to advocate any form of rape here. All I am saying is that we as a society need to stop being so anal when it comes to age. Teens can and do fall in love. Real love, or at least they think it is real. Even if adults know and can prove that it is simply the result of teenaged hormones, it literally is real to them.

Our society shuns and shames the older lover, saying that he (or she) should know better. We call them perverts and label them as sex offenders and try to send them to jail. It is automatically assumed in any case where an adult has any sort of sexual relations with a minor, that the adult forced, raped, molested, or coerced the minor into sex, but I remember being a teenager... I KNOW that teens often want sex with adults! I'm just saying that if we stopped being so anal about it and just let love - real and true love - take its course in any form, EVEN young/old, then maybe the world would be a better place. Shrugs.

Good night all :-D