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Office Hours: The Rant, Part 2 of 2

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I took off my glasses and rubbed my eyes.

"You don't want to talk about your parents any more."

"No," Russell said.

"Or why they cut you off."

"No. Even though it was stupid."

"But you do want me to tell you why a reasonable person might consider it wrong for you and Clovia —"

"Sylvia."

"— to cohabit without being married."

"Right," he said.

"And you don't want me to mention God."

"Right."

Putting my glasses on again, I tried to remember how I got into this. Then I remembered. It didn't help.

I sighed. "Are there any other things I'm not allowed to mention, Russell?"

"Like what?"

"That's what I'm asking you."

"If I think of any later, can I let you know?"

"Now or never."

"But you might —"

"That's right."

"You don't know what I was going to say."

"I have a pretty good idea," I said.

He frowned. "All right. Go ahead. But I don't think you'll convince me. If you don't get to mention God, there isn't any reason left not to live with —"

"Sylvia," I prodded.

"I remember her name," he snapped. "I was just thinking, that's all."

"About what?"

"About whether God might have anything to do with it."

"But I'm not allowed to mention that."

"I didn't say I wouldn't mention it," he said. "So what's the answer?"

"About God?"

"No! About why a reasonable person —"

"All right, Russell. But before I can tell you that, I have to ask you some questions."

"Why?" he asked.

"To keep us from wasting time. For example, is this conversation just about cohabitation?"

"I don't follow you."

"I mean, are you asking me why a reasonable person might think that there should be any limits on sex?"

He frowned. "No, I'm not asking that. I don't think you should do anything you want with anyone you want any time you want to do it, just because it gives you some kind of pleasure."

"Why not?"

"Shouldn't that be my question?"

"But I'm asking it," I said. "Go ahead and answer."

"I guess because sex should mean something. I'm not into hooking up."

"What should it mean?"

"Love," he said.

"What's love?" I asked.

"A feeling."

"Can you have that feeling toward more than one person?"

"I guess so."

"You said that sex doesn't mean anything if you jump from bed to bed just for the feeling of pleasure."

Russell said, "Right."

"Then why should it mean anything to jump from bed to bed just for the feeling of love?"

He hesitated. "I guess it wouldn't. But I don't do that. It's just Sylvia."

"Have you ever wondered why when people do get married, they promise before witnesses to love each other until death? Can you promise to have a feeling?"

"No, that's stupid. Feelings change."

"So if love is just a feeling, then the marriage vow makes no sense at all."

"No," he replied.

"What could make the marriage vow make sense?"

"Um — a commitment?"

"A commitment to what?"

"Maybe — to be good to the other person?"

"All right, that makes sense. Now what would you say is the outward expression and seal of such a commitment?"

"I don't follow you."

"I'll change the question," I said. "What would you say if two people were getting married, but when the big moment came, they refused to exchange the vows?"

"That they weren't really committed. They didn't mean it."

"So the promise is the outward expression and seal of the commitment?"

"You could put it that way," he conceded.

"And if they refuse to make promises, their commitment is a fraud."

"I guess so."

"Do they love each other after all?"

"No. That's a fraud too."

"Russell, I'm surprised that you've agreed with me so quickly. Haven't you refused the same promise?"

"Why do you say that?"

"You're not married to Sylvia."

"That's not fair. I haven't refused to marry her. We're going to get married."

"Are you?"

"I mean we probably are."

"Probably?"

"Anyway, we've talked about it."

"Have you?"

"Well, Sylvia talked about it. But I listened."

"Did you?"

"I didn't say no. Like you think."

I laughed. "Russell. Suppose you told me that on Wednesday we'd get together and you'd sign over to me the title to your car. Would the car be mine as soon as you told me?

"No. I haven't signed over the title until I've signed over the title."

"So an intention to do something isn't the same as having done it. Not even if the date is set."

"No." He looked irritated. "But look. By living together with Sylvia, I'm practicing having a commitment. We're trying it out."

"Could you practice riding a bicycle by scrambling an egg?"

"No," he replied, "that's crazy."

"Could you practice shooting a rifle by lacing your shoes?"

"Get serious."

"I am serious. Could you practice solving an equation by eating a chocolate bar?"

"Of course not," he said. "To practice something, you've got to do it. Or at least something like it. But living together is like marriage."

"That's exactly where you're wrong," I answered. "The very essence of marriage is having that binding commitment. The very essence of living together is not having one. Living together can't be practice for marriage, because in everything that matters the two conditions are opposite."

"But that's not true. People who've lived together with someone before they get married are more likely to stay together when they do get married."

"How do you know that?"

"All right, so I don't have numbers," he said. "But everybody says so."

"I have numbers."

"Naaah."

"No, I do," I told him. "People who have cohabited are somewhere between 33 percent and 151 percent more likely to divorce. Different studies report different figures, but almost every study reports a strong increase in risk."¹

"I can't believe what you're telling me. What could cause a thing like that?"

"It shouldn't be hard to guess. The whole idea of cohabiting is to avoid having the relationship norms that marriage has. But that's a loss, not a gain. You don't know the rules, you don't know what to expect of each other, and you don't have the same investment in the relationship. Living together is more like preparing for breaking up than like preparing for marriage."

"Hold on a second, Prof. I'm confused about something."

"What?"

"We said love is a commitment to be good to each other."

"I might dress up the wording, but yes. Do you want to take that back?"

"Not exactly. But isn't something missing from that definition?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

He replied, "You could say that about every kind of love, couldn't you? Love of a pal for a pal, love of a parent for a child, whatever. They all want to do good to the other. But we don't say that those commitments aren't real without promises."

"Go on."

"So what makes sexual love so different that it needs promises?" he demanded.

"That's a good question, and it deserves a double answer. First, don't be so sure that other loves never involve promises."

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Haven't you ever sworn friendship with someone?"

"Nnnn — wait. Yes. When I was nine. Me and my best friend. We nicked ourselves with pocket knives and said we were 'blood brothers.' I told Sylvia about it. She thought it was disgusting. But she admitted that girls make promises too."

I laughed.

"What about my other example?" he asked.

"About parental love? You're right that a father doesn't make a promise to his child, but remember, his marriage isn't just something between him and his wife; it's a partnership with her in the possibility of family. When he exchanged marriage vows with her, he accepted his commitment to their future children too."

He shook his head. "Prof, a guy would think you'd never heard of birth control."

"One subject at a time."

"All right, Professor T, I don't want to sidetrack you. You said you had a double answer, though. What's the other part?"

"Marital love is different from other kinds of love because it's exclusive. Friend-love isn't diminished by having more than one friend. Father-love isn't diminished by having more than one child. But marital love is diminished by trying to have more than one spouse."

"Why?" he wanted to know.

"Because marriage is the mutual and total gift of self to self. You give yourself completely to your wife; your wife gives herself completely to you. Our bodies get it, whether our minds agree or not."

"I don't know about that," he said. "Seems to me that where our bodies are concerned, we're just animals."

"You wanted sex to mean something, didn't you?" I asked.

"Yes."

"I'm saying that it means something already, and you're ignoring it. A lot of the things that our bodies do mean something. Our bodies have a language of their own."

"Is that poetry or something? You're not going to convince me that way, Prof."

"I'm just reminding you of the facts. Wouldn't you agree that to crush someone's windpipe with my thumbs is to say to him 'Now die,' even if I tell him with my mouth 'Be alive'?"

"Yeahhh —"

"In just the same way, to join in one flesh with a woman is to say 'I give myself,' even if my mouth shapes the words 'This means nothing.'"

"C'mon. Are you saying that if I have sex with Sylvia I'm already married to her?"

"No. Not that," I told him. "What I'm saying is that if you have sex with her and you're not married to her, then your body is telling her body a lie."

"But it's sex, for cryin' out loud. It couldn't mean that much."

"You're the one who wanted it to mean something," I reminded him. "So now you don't want it to?"

"But we're just talking about bodies, Prof. Get it? Physical stuff. Protoplasm. Saliva and fingernails and skin. Not our real, inside, invisible selves. Just containers."

"I see the problem. You think we can separate ourselves from our bodies. I'm sorry, but it doesn't work that way. The body is the visible sign by which the invisible Self does its stuff, the medium of the language that it speaks."

"And you think my parents know all these things you're saying? That this is why they're all bent out of shape about my living with Sylvia?"

"Have they been married a long time, Russell?"

"Yeah. Since snakes had legs. Probably longer."

"Would you call them wise?"

"I suppose so, though I hate to admit it."

"Then they probably do know them," I answered. "They might not put them the same way. They might not even know that they know them. But it's likely that they do."

He pushed back his chair, stood up and stretched. "Well, Professor, one of us is crazy. If you're right, it's me, but I'm not so sure about that. Anyway, I know one question you can't answer."

C O F F E E  S H O P

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"What's that?"

"You say we have all this meaning already. Even our bodies. All right, suppose they do. So where do they get it all from, huh?"

I smiled faintly and waggled my head at him. "You made me agree not to say."