A Belated Response to "Marriage Is Not For You" and Other Such Nonsense

So there was that recent article going viral (like so many diseases), clogging up my facebook newsfeed, about how "Marriage is not for you."  The rather obvious bait-and-switch title makes the equally obvious point that in marriage, you should try to make your spouse happy.  I'm genuinely curious, did anyone really need to be told that?  When you love someone, don't you naturally try to make them happy?  He speaks against selfishness, he is preoccupied with selfishness, does he mayhaps struggle with selfishness himself?  (His aggressively self-aggrandizing "About" page would seem to so indicate).

This article feels like that wretched "How To Win Friends and Influence People," in that it reads like a text written by some Dexter-like sociopath who's trying to explain to other sociopaths how to mimic genuine human behavior.  What's that Mr. Carnegie, I should remember people's names and be interested in what they have to say?  You don't say! I regret to inform you that most people understand that intuitively--and most people make friends not to "influence" them, but because they enjoy their company.  Otherwise, they're not actually friends.

There are further, troubling problems with this "Marriage" article: I've known too many women (and men!) who've stayed in abusive relationships because they'd been guilted into thinking they were "selfish" if they couldn't "make it work", and articles like this will only exacerbate such toxic guilt; as my girlfriend pointed out, this article totally ignores childless couples, as though procreation were the only reason to marry; also, this brat is only writing at a year and a half out in marriage (most divorces peak at 5 years), so he's still in the honeymoon stage and really has nothing substantial to add to the discussion of marriage longevity (as though his middling, pedestrian prose didn't already give that away).

Frankly, arguments like these "Marriage Is Not For You" are as infuriating as the useless rhetoric of "hard work": all my life, I've been hammered at with many stale, Puritan axioms about how "hard work is it's own reward" and other such nonsense, as though working hard were intrinsically good.  Bah!  Hitler and Stalin were total work horses, but this did not sanctify the Holocaust or Holodomor, nor does it signify that they "earned" their dictatorships or the right to oppress others.  "I get to do what I want with my money cause I've worked hard for it!" is a fallacious, ridiculous argument I've heard far too often, often from the same sort of folks who wish to denigrate and oppress others less fortunate than they.  Hard work does not give you the right to look down on others!

"But if you want to accomplish anything worth accomplishing, you must work hard!" comes the reply.  You don't say, Captain Obvious!  Listen, when I sincerely believe in a cause, when I find meaning in what I do, then I will naturally work hard at it, without being told to or needing to be lectured.  It won't even feel like work.

In fact, when I'm complimented on my "hard work ethic," I'm actually insulted, as though the work was more important than the thing I believed in, as though I were some robotic drone that only found fulfillment in rote repetition and self-punishment.  If you need to lecture me on "the importance of hard work" to get me to do a task, then the task must not be very meaningful, and maybe shouldn't be done.

"Hard work" is not its own reward, meaningful work is!  The way to get people to work hard is not by telling them the importance of hard work, but by explaining why the task at hand matters!  What the super-majority of people crave is not work, but work that matters!  Real love will naturally engender selflessness; real meaning will naturally engender hard work.  If you have to force love or work, then it's obviously not real love, nor is it really meaningful work.  Quit putting the cart before the horse, it insults all our intelligences.