It is not true that anyone is obligated to go above and beyond living out actual moral obligations and human rights in their marriage as would also be the case in the workplace and other contexts. That is, if someone is not sinning by doing or not doing something, they do not have to do otherwise even if their spouse would greatly appreciate it. Only that which is obligatory, owed to the recipient and mandatory for the doer, has to be done, if there is such a thing as morality. However, a lack of any and all morally optional expressions of love can, particularly when paired with already present mistreatment or pain, be crippling for marriage if there is a lack of attentiveness and communication, or if these issues are not handled rationally if they arise.
An early marriage might be especially vulnerable to being upset by the absence of supererogatory treatment (good/helpful but not obligatory) if there is not already a solid foundation of overt rationality, warm affection, proactive honesty, and genuine mutuality in other parts of the relationship. No matter how long each person knew each other romantically before getting married, a couple's early marriage is crucial. Everything up to egregious mistreatment and extreme irrationality can be forgiven and worked past, but what happens later in a marriage will always chronologically stand on what came before it. To neglect marital health so early on, or at any subsequent time, is to certainly jeopardize its future.
There is thus an inescapable gravity to how the first days, weeks, months, and years of a marriage unfold. Even on a personal and pragmatic level rather than for the transcendent sake of rationalistic truth and moral obligation, there are pains and desperation that can be avoided, though that pain can originate from things that are not irrational or otherwise sinful. There is unblemished oneness that can be pursued, and there are deep pleasures of interpersonal peace that can be experienced. More than just averting disaster that could have decades' worth of ramifications, intentionally contributing to a quality marriage in its early periods allows for otherwise perhaps inaccessible levels of relational flourishing.
No romantic relationship is guaranteed to last or remain healthy. The epistemological barriers to knowing other minds [1] pose one kind of difficulty to navigating dating or marriage and this uncertainty. How people treat each other, permissibly or not, is another type of factor. From relatively minor day to day interactions to utterly crucial crossroad events, a marriage can be elevated or damned by how its members choose to act. No one should seek perfection or go above and beyond in the early stages in order to simply become morally lax later on, and it would be utterly irrational and immoral for one spouse to demand that the other go above and beyond, but early marriage is vital. It either sees a thriving relationship with a high probability of being preserved or a troubled one that can be lifted out of its woes with effort. Whatever time of strength or wavering follows in the marriage, though, it will in one way or another stem from what comes first.
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