Negative Liberty in Stoic Marriage
Never always. Always sometimes.
I have been asked to talk about marriage in several contexts. Part of my problem is that my wife doesn’t want to. I’m the mouth of the family. But I did recently put up a minimal list. Then I noticed that two of the item seemed to contradict each other.
a. Separate bathrooms.
b. Three checking accounts, two individual, one joint.
c. Negative liberty rules.
d. Gossip with each other.
e. Sensitivity night.
That would be C and E.
If there’s one thing to life I have found to work well, it is that negative liberty works best. Defining negative liberty rule results in simple and practical benefits in life. Let me explain.
Everyone in my Catholic school was explained that the Ten Commandments were divine because they mostly told you what you must not do. Thou shalt not. If Moses was a more perfect or stoic translator, they would have all kept that form. People remember the ‘never do this’ better because of the implications they can imagine from ‘or else’.
But it’s also harder to follow instructions about what you must do. In relationships that usually takes the form of “If you truly loved me, then you would do X”. The implication is that the more or better you do X, the more love. Well who can say what amount or quality of X is enough for true love? And what if I just love you but not truly, for real for real? And what about Y and Z that I’m actually good at? This is a rabbit hole. There are millions of things people can do to show their love, men like me are always guessing (well I used to when I was single).
It’s far easier to confess limits and say ahead of time: “I know you love me, but please don’t ask me to do X. The very thought makes me ill.” That sounds more honest.
I often talk about definitions via negativa. Here’s what I know about men and women.
Men Hate
Men hate being told they are typical and useless. A man wants to make an impact on the world and he wants to believe that if he doesn’t do it, it will never get done. Or at the very least it won’t be done well, or with style and finesse in a manly way.
Women Hate
Women hate being told that they are repulsive and worthy of abandonment. A woman wants to be admired, not just from afar but the closer you get the more you want to be around her.
How many rivers of tears and tons of resentment have humans spent spinning themselves into oblivion interpreting that they have been told just those things? Even reverse psychology works on those accusations. Ask any drill sergeant. Ask any pimp.
So in the end the Stoic doesn’t want to fulfill innumerably unquantifiable open-ended promises. The Stoic wants to avoid the known dangers. Item C is about doing just that. It also has the advantage that over time, not doing X and not even thinking about doing X helps you to be incompetent at X in the first place.
Sensitivity Night
For the Spousal Unit and I, this was every Wednesday evening back in the late 80s when we met. I would put aside this, that and the other to spend time puzzling her out. Since I already knew that she had magnetized me it was my opportunity to make sense of things. It turned out to be magically simple. We created joy easily. We were at rest with each other.
That is about one of my other values which is discovery. There’s always something new to discover about your spouse. I’ve discovered that my wife enjoys simple things, whereas I’m often off the deep end of complexity. So when I dedicate myself to being attentive to her I am fishing. Fishing is not catching. There’s no guarantee, but the attention and patience are the valuable contributions. After thirty years of marriage it still works.
What’s not a contradiction is that the nevers are still in place. Now unspoken and practically never brought up except in jest. She jokes about time spent with ‘Mr Bowflex’. Now it is the SSID for our home wifi. I joke about ‘Little Miss Yoga Booty’. And yes we have two wifi networks. So we rest comfortably against a Wall of Never end enjoy the occasional sprinkles of Yessss.
There is no magic bullet of yes. We cannot contort ourselves endlessly to make the perfect meal or three point buzzer shot of marriage. Nor can we pretend that we won’t bend and eventually shatter from violations, or that we could easily get over it once the line has been crossed.
I have to say, your substack is one of my favorite. This is great.
Spot on with (a.). Our minimal list has "Prepare and share at least one meal together each day." It's a shared effort where we both want the same thing - a healthy and delicious meal - so the cooperation flows naturally and serves up a good model for all the other complicated shared efforts a marriage demands.