I received this comment on on the catholic subreddit and was wondering what you all here would think of it. Is it true?
“First of all, marriage isn't about being happy.
It's about the continuance of society and the raising of children. It's about reining in men's destructive, and women's seductive, capacities , and channeling these into a well-ordered good.
There is no "one" - there is simply the one you choose to live with. The whole idea of selecting your own mate is predicated on the idea that dictating your preferences will somehow give you a greater chance of happiness (read: satisfaction) than to live with someone to which you were assigned, or who won you with some means related to skill or power.
This is demonstrably false. I (and I'm sure most people) have often been more pleased with things I wouldn't have chosen for myself (e.g., colors of clothes, flavors of foods) because of habit or errant preference, only to discover via someone else's choice (gift) that what I thought I liked or didn't like wasn't true at all.
The idea that you choose your way into a marriage, more often than not (though admittedly not of necessity) leads to the idea that you can also choose your way out of it. No, you can't. You can't trade it in or get a refund. We've spent the better part of the past century advertising 'try before you buy' and nothing got better - it got far, far worse.
This is because everyone goes from trial to trial and never commits. You want to try the other model, the next edition, glutting yourself on 'new experiences' instead of taking what you have to the fullest. The more serious and permanent a commitment, the more seriously you're supposed to take it. You can research, think about it, ask advice, but the deep dark secret of humanity is this: confirmation bias is real, it's strong, and the only thing that it requires is for you to want it to exist.
Yeah. The mere act of deciding that you're stuck with something puts you into a continuous mode of post-hoc justification. You can literally brainwash yourself into being satisfied with what you've got. Of course, this can and often is an excuse to avoid self-improvement, but this powerful weapon can be turned in any direction.
What we did with divorce culture is take it out of the relationship equation because we stopped expecting satiety from anyone. The entirety of advertising is geared toward arousing jealousy and dissatisfaction. We are obsessed with acquisition as a means of feeling fulfilled. If you don't instill loyalty, honor, or duty into anyone, if you don't reinforce their commitment with peer pressure and societal expectation, more will fail than not, because no one minds if they do. Just having a steady boyfriend or girlfriend for a year is considered a great achievement these days.
If there's no limit to the test drive, if you never have to bring the car back or sign a paper (or you can tear the paper up at will), who the hell is going to lay out actual money for it??
They are getting fewer and fewer.
The bottom line is that God told the Church how to run things because He made us and He knows exactly to what depths we'll sink if given even an inch of rope. You see no problem in 'tiny' concessions that look 'good' on the surface but they all add up to total destruction..
Do not look at marriage as if it is supposed to make you happy, because once you decide how happy you're 'supposed' (read: expect) to be, everything falling short of your yardstick is deemed inadequate payment due, and then you feel slighted, which then justifies stinginess on your part, and you have a vicious cycle of passive aggressive vengeance that ends in misery for all. Pass that person on to the next unwitting test driver; rinse and repeat.”
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