Chapter III. Family, love and marriage
Divorce is the cessation of love
Formally speaking, divorce is a judicial act that terminates the marriage relation between spouses. In other words, it acknowledges the disintegration of a social institution with termination of all mutual obligations between the family and the state. In actual fact, the cessation of marriage means also the disintegration of the family. The husband and the wife revert to their original states of man and woman; they cease to be relatives.
When there are children, the former spouses preserve their qualities of father and mother, on the strength of both the blood relation and the obligations to the children imposed on them by the government. However, the child or children staying with one of the parents still don’t form a family. The single mother or single father with children is not a family, for a family by definition consists of three elements: mother, father, and children. The absence of any one of these elements changes the essence of the integrity. It becomes fragmented into a qualitatively different integrity for which an adequate term hasn’t been found to this day. The essence, however, is this: the termination of the marriage means the destruction of the family. Therefore the philistine reasoning that marriage is supposedly just a “scrap of paper” is perfectly invalid. In this “scrap of paper” a whole complex of social relations is concentrated.
It is perfectly natural that religion has always opposed divorce, arguing that “what God has yoked together let no man put apart.” (Matthew, 19:6) Therefore any believers who divorce are dishonoring their God, and all their piety is simple hypocrisy.[1]
Divorce is also discouraged by all states. In the last few decades many states made the divorce process more difficult, especially the Western states where the problem of divorce is particularly acute. This tightening takes on different forms, including making divorce more expensive. Nonetheless, the institution of divorce exists, and this, too, is a manifestation of the state’s self-preservation instinct. Marriage that ceased to conform to its purpose must be dissolved. There exist many grounds for divorce; some of them will be discussed in the next chapter. At this point it makes sense to discuss the causes that are of objective character, so to say.
In theory, the main and the sole reason for divorce can be just one: the cessation of love between husband and wife. All the other motives: adultery, property disputes, and fights over so-called equal rights in the family – these are all consequences of the death of love. Strangely enough, many will agree with this thesis. The problem is this: everyone has a different idea of love itself. Hardly anyone ever has reflected on love in the same key that is used to research love in this work. In Russian dictionaries of synonyms the word “strast’ (passion)”, for example, is explained as “strong, deep love”; among the “old Russians”, the feeling of love is associated with pity, patience, etc. Similar definitions can be found in other nations’ dictionaries. Since they don’t have a scientific foundation for understanding this “non-scientific” concept, there is no clear criterion for evaluating it. As a consequence, the cessation or absence of love between husband and wife is not ground for divorce; at least it is not recognized as such by courts of law. In my opinion, I repeat, cessation of love is the sole ground for divorce.
Another problem is this: in many families marriage is not necessarily based on love. In the opinion of many, friendship, habit, convenience, children, etc. are more important reasons for forming a family and preserving the marriage than “fleeting love.” Some even manage to find happiness in all this. However, even if the family is not very happy or even not at all happy, one still must bear the “bonds” of marriage for the sake of the above-listed factors. Theologians go all the way in asserting that, since marriage is created by God, “some people will have to endure an unhappy marriage. This is a lesser evil than the wholesale breakdown of marriage we are witnessing in our own days.” (Christenson, 26) I allow the possibility that Christenson is correct, but still, unhappy marriage means unhappy children, it means unhappy spouses.
To the courts, a convincing argument in favor of divorce is adultery by one of the spouses. Even though it is a consequence rather that the reason, it is nonetheless an argument. It is much worse when spouses don’t divorce even when one knows that the other cheated. For example, modern women in “wealthy” families tolerate their husbands’ philandering – not for the sake of the children, of course, but usually for the sake of property. This kind of woman who turns a blind eye to her husband’s “shenanigans” not only lacks dignity – she simply lacks human dimensions. The same applies to the so-called husband who, surrounded by mistresses, still claims to love his wife. This “norm” of interrelations is characteristic of a certain stratum of society in which the preservation of “family” is tied primarily to the formal need to maintain a certain status that conforms to the standards of one’s milieu. In either case what we see is not family, but rather a perverted parody of family – an imitation, a surrogate. Such marriages should be dissolved.
In my opinion, one natural cause for divorce is disproportions in the spouses’ development. This is a very serious problem. It is the most frequent of gravely erroneous versions of forming a family when the man and the woman are at qualitatively different levels of development. It also happens sometimes that after the family is formed, one of the spouses shoots ahead in his/her development, while the other falls behind. Misunderstanding then begins, stemming from different levels of knowledge and intellect. In such a marriage interests and values diverge, which naturally leads such a “togetherness” to total collapse of meaning. The law of destruction works stronger in such families that the law of creation. Living with a person who doesn’t understand the essence of your activity is impossible, if only because this very activity must be fertilized by the other person. Otherwise the interaction in the family will be reduced to the household economy and the upbringing of children. For all the importance of these two functions, it is the main axis of the couple’s development that disappears: the formation of personalities. Naturally, this imbalance is recognized first by the “advanced” party who then usually initiates the divorce. Yet it also happens sometimes that the more advanced spouse is reluctant to initiate divorce (for the sake of the children, his own habits, the opinion of others, etc.) He stays in the family, and starts to regress: he eventually becomes the same as his other half, the less developed spouse. His personality degrades, and so does the family as a whole; it becomes inferior. There are very many such marriages; this is that case when the other meaning of the word “brak” in the Russian language applies, that meaning being “defect”; “brak s brakom” = “defective marriage.” The personality totally loses its quality in such a marriage, if only because it voluntarily chooses to be equal to a person with hoi polloi values. Aeschylus gives valuable advice on this account:
Wise in his counsel was he,
Whose heart was first to weigh this truth, whose lips first spoke it loud —
‘Tis best for a man to match with his own degree.’
Who wins his bread, is a full to wed with those whom a purse makes proud,
Or who boast of their blood’s antiquity.[2]
Still, in capitalist societies the main cause of divorce is property. I said already that it was precisely private property that became the economic cause for the emergence of the monogamous family. This thought was formulated graphically by the Canadian economic historian Harold Adams Innes: "Property, like incest, holds the family together." However, that same property destroys families, or rather marriages, just as incest leads to degradation of offspring. In any issue of any newspaper one can read dramatic stories of divorce cases centering on property. To the rich circles of Western society, this phenomenon is normal, yet these divorces have no relation to the true family which was discussed above. In those spheres marriage and divorce are practically a way of doing business, of joining and dividing capitals. In other words, a telling reflection of the decay of family, private property and the state.
Let us see how this takes place in practice.
[1] This applies to Christians especially, since Christ, in whom they supposedly believe, taught: “I say to you that whoever divorces his wife, except on the ground of fornication, and marries another commits adultery.” (Matthew 19:9)
[2] Greek Drama for Everyman, 54.
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On Love, Family, and the State
(Philosophical-sociological Essay)