Family of Creation - Spouses

What is a family of creation and what differentiates it? What are the obligations and elements of a strong marriage?

I think that perhaps I begin to tread on dangerous ground with marriage and with child rearing, because everyone is strongly opinionated about what a marriage should look like, how children should be raised, etc.

However, as with every other topic here, I can only speak about my own experiences and observations.

If you don't find yourself represented here -whether when I talk about the good, or the bad, the things to look for and the things to be warned from, understand the limitations of perspective. Unlike many other things in life, I do not seek to garner more experience of additional spouses and romances - and I am limited in the types of children I will have and the childrearing it implies.

As I mentioned above, a family of creation is different from a family of origin by virtue of the fact that its existence is not inherent to simply having arrived into this world, and arrived to adulthood. We are the result of the family of origin; we are the agent in the family of creation.

Spouses

What is a marriage for?

I am limited in what I can say about spouses to what I have experienced directly, and to what I have observed. I've read and thought more about it than I think some people have (including doing some reading on what successful, many decade relationships look like), but I'm not precisely about to broaden my own experiences here. My wife would likely not approve.

I want to be very careful as I enter this section. I'm not trying to isolate everything that makes a marriage feel 'right'. I'm simply trying to identify (my perspective on) what it's for, how we can support that, and what the component elements are to maintain, examine, and enhance.

It's not exhaustive, it doesn't cover all the edge cases, and it may not grasp the actual raw connection of a marriage. However, the fact that we cannot seize the undefinable essence of a thing does not mean we cannot examine and maintain it otherwise.

What is a spouse to us? Well, I think there's two answers there, the pragmatic and the pleasant. To summarize, a spouse is a partner to stabilize our life with and reproduce, and a spouse is a pleasant companion of first and last resort with which we can enjoy spending our life with.

Hopefully they go together, but often they don't - and expecting them to seems to be a feature of time and place, not a universal one. Unlike a sibling, and unlike our parents, we are (generally) not closely related to our spouses, which means that the familial elements that result from similarity -- guidance and that close friendship -- are not guaranteed. However, there is much more day-to-day investment, and there is an obvious implication of being each other's fastness.

First the pragmatic. Let me take some fire here and say that, predominantly, our spouse is the person that we form a partnership with to continue to perpetuate our genes and/or memes. Whether this is actually what we seek consciously, or what we achieve, it seems to be the primary purpose for the cognitive faculties and tendencies that drive us to familial formation with a partner.

Oftentimes, this comes with the second part - a pleasant companion of first and last resort. A friendship of utility is already implicit in the familial partnership, so the other two aspects of friendship -- of pleasure or of virtue, of some combination of the three. This is contingent in time and place, as I said.

Romantic love seems to be nearly universal¹, though that's not to say that it doesn't develop (and in fact it most commonly seems to!). Despite the frequency of romance developing on top of a foundation of responsibilities, it is not universal, but the obligations remain the same regardless.

It is useful to be attracted to your partner - both because it encourages you to reproduce, but also because it keeps you devoted (which itself produces better outcomes for the family's purpose). These two things overlap, but generally speaking I think we can say that being attracted to your spouse makes life much more pleasant! Luckily, it seems that our minds bend to find the people we love more attractive, such that we are helped by our subconscious.

Finally, friendship develops as a result of close proximity, and shared experiences. But even the closest friendships cannot always be guaranteed to be ones that truly bring out our virtues, and neither is this the case for our spouses. If we're lucky, though, we can spend our lives with the deepest of our friends, someone who brings out who we truly are in the best of ways. I think there are elements of this present in both the reproductive/stabilizing and companionship parts of marriage, augmenting and enhancing them in their own way.

In the three elements of friendship, we find the utility in reproduction and the stability that encourages it, we find pleasure in a friend and a companion, as well as a healthy outlet for human lust (which itself is there for reproductive purposes), and if we are truly lucky we find someone who brings out our most virtuous self.

Once we have the model of the reproductive marriage - a structure designed to provide for reproduction of memes and genes - and the utility (stability, wealth, satisfaction), pleasure, and virtue that may come from it, then others may emulate it without the initial purpose of reproduction.

That's a long winded way to say that even if you're in a relationship that doesn't reproduce, you still seem to be emulating the structures that we developed to make sure that we could successfully reproduce. As such, many of the things that are good for those marriages are good for you as well.

Composition of a Good Marriage

I think that there are a few high level categories of what's important for a good marriage, and a few details as well. You'll note that I don't cover, with one exception, the same items as healthy family bonds both for the family of origin, as well as with children.

I think this is because both of those are about maintaining relationships that are, in a way, unseverable. You cannot undo who your parents are, you cannot undo who your children are. You can, in an absolute worst case scenario, disown them, but that is a more drastic step than a marriage ending.

As such, the bonds of a marriage are somewhat different from the bonds of those we are directly and necessarily related to. It still contains many of the same elements - for example, there is a day to day investment and fastness (for example, if a spouse loses their job!) that is assumed, and doesn't need diving into.

However, a lot of it's the same as what's important for a good friendship, and elucidating this helps expand that as well. Respect -- acknowledgement of the other as a thinking, distinct, person -- is the one shared across all these relationships (and perhaps all healthy relationships in general).

Communication is about making sure you know what they are thinking, and that they know what you are thinking.

Respect is about acknowledging their agency, preferences, and personhood, as well as showing investment into the relationship itself.

Homemaking is about having a shared home, but also the elements that support that (finances, taste, shared willcarving)

Romance is the spice that makes it more than just a friendship. This includes both the passions, but also tamer urges. Lust, connection, charge, yearning. It doesn't need to be sexual, but you still need romance.

Finally, a healthy bond requires people who are healthy as individuals.

Communication - Where we are and where we're going

Talk to your spouse. Even if you are extreme examples of masculine and feminine energies not sharing mutual comprehension, be able to understand what they think and how they relate to it.

You don't need to know their every thought about their every project. You don't need to hear every piece of gossip about every person in their social circle. But you do need to make sure you're traveling in the same direction, that you perceive your relationship in compatible lights, and that it is reciprocated. That you have mutual acknowledgement of each other's agency. This means, of course, that you should also have some idea of where you are going and where you want to be going, which means planning.

Frankly, I wasn't sure where to put discussion of financial matters and investment in a marriage. It's critical, but 'planning together to make lots of money' is not necessary to a good marriage, and neither is necessarily having shared finances (there are reasons not to, there are reasons to, it depends on the couple). What is critical is having shared knowledge of your own and your spouse's financial and career perspectives, and having a shared financial plan.

You may not get precisely the same things out of your marriage, but you should be on the same page as the direction that you want to move in. Much of this has to do with reproduction - do you want to have children or not? How many? How will they be raised? All the questions relating to passing on genes and memes are important to be within each other's margin of negotiation, and to not rely on the other person's opinion changing later.

There's other questions like economics, geography, culture, and so on - but many of these will resolve when untangling the decision around reproduction.

Having similar goals are not just about your desired outcomes, but your priorities. Even if you consider your relationship to be the highest priority, you may consider different elements within it to be different priorities - for example, simply spending time together vs maintaining passion. Talk about both the goal priorities of the relationship, the goal priorities of shared tasks, and your individual goals priorities.

Respect  - Acknowledging Agency and Showing Involvement

You need to respect your partner. They are a person with their own thoughts, hopes, and dreams. Like you, they will likely have to trim some of the sharp and unusual edges off of those plans to make them fit with yours.

You do not always see the compromises that your partner makes inside their head to work with your own needs. You can certainly feel when you make those compromises, but it can be easy to feel your own and not theirs.

Living, developing, growing, planning with even one other person can be a tremendous task. I do not say that it is difficult, as objectively most of the human race has done it successfully, but it will consume much of your life. Having a healthy respect for the other mind that you grow around will reduce bitterness on both your parts.

You need to respect yourself too. This is one that I think is neglected, sometimes, if only because it seems rather obvious. Your partner chose you, and in a healthy relationship relies on and loves you (even if 'romance' isn't present). You need the confidence to do what needs to get done, and you also need to not insult them by indicating to them that you think their judgment is shoddy. You're worth it. They chose you.

Much of what I've pointed out is about some kind of game theory, or self interest, or at the very least trying to break down into very pragmatic and actionable terms my perspective on relationships.

However, there are elements that will be unique not just in details but in broad strokes, and more than that they are irreducible and irrational. However, I think these - despite indicating respect - perhaps fall more into 'Romance'.

Homemaking - The Monument of Partnership

The home itself isn't a bond, but it's the result of your bond. The creation of your home, the monument to your partnership, the environment your domestic life takes place in.

Homes can be humble or palatial. Homes can be incredibly private hermitages, or they can be designed to host grand parties. What they should be, however, is intentful, welcoming to their owners, and shared.

We can't always choose the domestic environment that we want most. Loving our partner doesn't generate extra money from nowhere, after all. We can shape it to fit our needs, though, and when we have some options (which not everyone has) we can pick the environment that is closest to our needs to start with.

What makes a home? What makes a good home? I think these are deep questions, and I can't answer them in full. I can answer them in part, at least as it pertains to a representation of your marriage.

The majority of the home should reflect the overlapping agency and will of you and your spouse - and to some (much lesser) degree, your children. The home is not purely the domain of this spouse or that, no matter how strong their preferences. Certain rooms may 'belong' to one spouse, either as a focused environment (such as an office) or because they have an activity that takes up an entire room that the other isn't interested in (cooking, workshop, etc). However, that doesn't mean that (for a common example) all of a man's preferences should be relegated to a 'man-cave'.

A home should be the base for all the other activities conventionally considered under homemaking - taking care of clothing and possessions; having a shared environment to read or consume media; having a space to eat together, the most fundamental of shared human activities; preparing foods that you, your guests, your children love, and passing down the legacy of family recipes.

Homemaking should be a living project. As you change your home should change with you. Communication with your spouse, planning, investing into your space and building skills around it, these are all healthy bonds of domesticity, and make life more pleasant from the built environment as well.

These are all guidelines, but I will say that the only real one is that your domicile should feel like home - the abstract concept of the default place that is always welcoming when you return to it, that emotionally belongs to you, that is secure, that IS WITHOUT SO WITHIN but for both you and your spouse.

Romance - The Spice of Marriage

How do you break down what comprises romance? Is it reducible in the first place? I'm not sure. How do you define romance without self reference? As I sometimes do, I went for inspiration in old dictionaries, and unfortunately the modern usage of the term is not covered - though I found some inspiration all the same.

I think that romance is the expression of spousal love - with varying levels of lust, as discussed - that gives it extravagance and distinctness against the background of life. It is about engaging with the combined physical and emotional urges that are distinct to our reproductive systems as humans, and treating them as special and more than routine.

I started writing this section, and in my effort to understand a bit more about whether or not I was doubling up on my slight breakdown, I went and reviewed work by Mark Solms - the neuropsychologist (and regular partner of Friston, who is also a small inspiration for my writing and probable future larger inspiration).

I don't know if Solms' taxonomy (itself taken from Panksepp's seven emotional command system) is valid. I can't make a claim as to the legitimacy of psychoanalysis, let alone neuropsychoanalysis². But, given that they were trying to give a taxonomy of fundamental emotional urges, it at least covers a lot of the ground. You can read a bit more here.³

Once again, note that I myself didn't engage with these emotions using this framework, but I'm using it to try to break down something that is not made of discrete elements at the level of perception.

Lust

Lust is fundamental. It is not necessary - for it can fade, especially with age - but its presence is part of what makes romantic relationships distinct from friendships. It is the (generally conscious) urge to engage in reproductive activity with a person.

People have varying levels of this, both on their own and per partner. It can rise and fall depending on circumstances. Completely aside from other elements, I think it is worth cultivating this with a partner, at least insofar as you each have lustful tendencies in general, because I think that it binds your relationship to your subconscious urges.

I am not convinced this is easy to do, and luckily it's not something that I've had to excessively overcome. However, there do seem to be guides. I can't fully endorse it, as I haven't practiced it (like many things, I have references for this that I haven't explored yet), but the Modern Tantra blog⁴ is a resource for couples to learn about Tantra without needing to go into the spiritual elements of it.

Even falling short of that though, it is worth dwelling (perhaps meditating) on your attraction to your partner. Your physical desire for them. Reach back into when you first met them and how they made you feel. Remove their presence in your default assumptions of the world and recognize your lust for them.

Charge

Tied into lust, and I do struggle to directly describe it, is what I call 'Charge'. Charge is about the 'feeling' of lust without the explicit sexual element. Does that make sense? If not, let me try to identify why I call it charge.

I was a competitive dancer for a number of years, and part of competitive ballroom dance is properly conveying the 'characteristic' of the dance to your partner, to onlookers, and to judges. Now, you know that your partner doesn't actually want to have sex with you (probably! dance teams do not always stick well to their own rules). The last thing on your mind is having sex with them, because you're trying to make sure the pressure is on the inside three toes and your chest is out and your chin up and you have the perfectly crafted sexy smirk on your face and the music is starting and STEP.

However.

When you whip her towards you and her hand presses against your chest, and you roll your bodies towards each other, there is _electricity_ in that gap of inches between you. You have created, from emulation, the same electric feel the first time you get when you reach to hold a girl's hand. You've created the electric feel you get when your crush leans against you and your shoulders brush.

THAT is charge. And I think you can cultivate it with dance. I'm sure there are other ways, but dance is the one I will call out.

Yearning

You don't know what you have until you lose it, as the saying goes. Well, if we look at the taxonomy I linked above, separation from a caregiver is felt as 'panic'. While I might be unenthused about describing a spouse as a caregiver in the common sense of the term, I think that the lesser form felt when we are unable to be with those that we love taps into some of the same feelings.

Yearning is about a couple things - the subconscious aversion to losing a caretaker that I mentioned, the actual lack of the things they provide. It is missing someone with a distinct romantic tinge.

When we miss someone in a small way - while they're at work, or traveling - it is normal to suppress it. However, I think that it's worth indulging in, just a little bit. Not letting it control you, not pining fruitlessly and letting it get in the way of your work, but feeling it and being aware of how it makes you feel.

This person is critical to your life! You miss them in ways you would not miss a friend. Your reproductive (or similar) partner is gone, and you _yearn_ for them. Tell them. Be familiar with it. And when you reconnect, indulge in the positive flush you get as that yearning drains away to be replaced with...

Connection - Nurture and Play

Rites, rituals, objects, gestures. Things that emerge both from the immediate world of us and our partner, but also from our subculture, our culture, our nation, our history. With our partners, we draw on elements from a cultural library that we have a mutual engagement with, and use it to bring color, spice, and taste to the marriage.

Why flowers? Why chocolate? Why jewelry? These are, like most tastes, arbitrary - but fulfilling them can arbitrarily show our partner how we care. That we're willing to take the effort to go to the next step. Anniversaries, mother and father's day, all of these things that are not in themselves an immediately pragmatic action show our investment.

I'm not saying that you have to fulfill other people's expectations. Maybe your partner has no interest in flowers - she'd much rather you bring her breakfast in bed sometimes. Maybe she, like my wife, has no interest in luxury accessories but simple flowers make her smile. The point is to fulfill the little arational ceremonies, for rational reasons.

Likewise, have a sense of playfulness. Tease your spouse. Dance with them. Goose them occasionally. Come up behind them and dip them, grab them random gifts. What you need to do is show that you’re thinking about them not just at the important, formulaic points (which, as established, are important), but that they’re dancing through your mind as you live life.

Coindependency

Coindependency is the property of being able to individually tackle the challenges of life, but doing so much better as a partnership. It's my word - or at least I independently invented it.

I don't think you can truly have absolute coindependence, simply because we grow to have an emotional and intellectual dependence on those closest to us, and also because with all the daily tasks of life, we split them up with our partners. This is especially true for large families! I take care of more home maintenance, my wife makes food for our daughter more often. I would be an emotional mess if my wife passed or left me, but I would still be functional. Perhaps that's the important part - what level of functionality requires the presence of the other.

Everyone has a different view on what the partnership in marriage should look like. Even thinking about healthy marriages I've known, this is not a property that they all had. One of my physics professors in college utterly fell apart when his wife died. He nearly collapsed in on himself, and even though he didn't pass away out of heartbreak (as you sometimes read about) he was never the same. Was he coindependent? Perhaps or perhaps not. Even if he wasn't though, to love someone so deeply, and for so long (they were married for 50 years) is worth envying, regardless of a shared dependence.

All that said, I think that the type of marriage that I personally prefer is one where I know that we are not together out of an inability to not survive without each other, but because we grow, thrive, and succeed so much more with each other. Not avoiding a negative cost, but pursuing a positive reward.

Closing

If families are the only unit of history that truly persists, by necessity, then spouses are the people that we forge the next link in the chain with.

Our lives are better when they are our friends, but we cannot confuse the obligations a family creates with a good marriage and deep romance. We need to understand where these come from so they can be cultivated, so that we can live this part of our life with skill like the rest of them.

Your spouse shares more obligations with you than a friend, but is more contingent than the family of origin. You can have the happiest or most miserable days of your life, spending every day with the person you chose to pass down your legacy with.

Seek companionship, grow the relationship like a crawling rose on a canopy to make a home for children, and magnify each other’s voices to leave your wills, dancing, carved deeper into the universe.

1. Here's a link to the paper 'A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Romantic Love' - caveat that it's an anthropology paper and I haven't deeply vetted its method), but even today, there are cultures where expecting love to be necessary before marriage isn't common.

2. it's a thing!

3. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2018.00294/full#note8a

4. https://moderntantra.blogspot.com/2013/09/welcome-to-extraordinary-passion.html