Technologies of Persuasion

Dee Harvey

A gentleman of my acquaintance once dated a girl for five years. Towards the end of their courtship she began dropping hints that she might like to get married. I can only assume, given that this particular fellow picked up on these hints, that they were not subtle. He was both surprised and a little outraged at having been put in the situation of having to pretend not to notice what was being asked of him.

“What did you expect?” I asked him. “You were together for five years from the time you were in your mid to late twenties to early thirties. What did you imagine was going on?” Apparently the answer was nothing. He had given no thought at all to how the relationship was “progressing” or where it was “going”. He had never had any intention of marrying this woman and was bemused by the idea that she had likely been thinking about just such a happy ending for most of the time they were together.

Like many men today, to the frustration of just as many women, this man is resistant to relationship efficiency – he doesn’t understand that a relationship should be progressing towards the goal of marriage, and that time spent with someone who has no intention of marrying you is time wasted. Many words have been wasted, in many media, lamenting and puzzling over the seeming inability of many of today’s men to think of relationships in practical, goal-orientated ways. I say “wasted” because these many cultural artefacts are making a big mistake. That mistake is the assumption that human relationships should be thought of as projects. Giving a relationship a definite goal, a deadline, and thinking that it can be managed to reach the goal as quickly and efficiently as possible is stupid. It is stupid because to think of a relationship between two people in such terms is to fundamentally misunderstand the relationship itself and the purported goal (marriage & children).

Marriage has lost a lot of its traditional meanings – most people today no longer think of marriage as a union sanctified by God. It is no longer the only acceptable state for a couple who have children together. Few people in Western cultures get married for reasons of property or dowry. However marriage liberated from its traditional contexts is marriage freed from meaning entirely. When asked what marriage means, many people say that it is a commitment. Women who want to get married often say they want their partner to commit to them. Commitment to another person is a state of being, not an activity. You are committed to someone because you love them and want to be with them. Turning commitment into an action, something that is true because it is done, is foolish. In a relationship nothing is proven by an action that is not based on true feeling. Anyone can walk down an aisle and put on a ring. But that action doesn’t make commitment appear. It’s either there or it’s not. You can’t do it.

Commitment as an action that makes commitment exist is also apparent in the notion of the man who is “ready to commit”. There is a idea abroad that some men are ready to commit and some are not. Some indeed are commitmentphobes, who may be unable to perform the act of commitment at all. This is a dangerous idea for human relationships because it removes entirely the idea that commitment is something that one person has for another and turns it into an action that is done on an individual basis. I have even heard men excoriate women who didn’t want to be with them, because a woman should be grateful to find a man who was ready to commit; as though anyone in their right minds would want to spend their life with someone on the basis that they happened to be nearby when that person felt ready to perform the action of committing.

Of course the idea of a time limit on relationships, particularly where women are concerned, is not entirely spurious. There is a time after which women can’t have children, except in unusual or medically assissted cases. My Grandmother sometimes talks about a man “wasting a girl’s time” and by that she means a man who will hang about with a woman for years giving her the idea that marriage is on the cards, while never actually doing it: a man very much like my friend. She has no patience for such a man, and indeed she’s not wrong – to be wilfully blind to the wishes or needs of the person you’re with because it doesn’t suit you to recognise them and you’re in no rush is cruel. To spend years with someone without giving any thought to the permanence of the situation is callous. To be surprised when they want more from you than you’ve bothered to think about is disingenuous.

All this notwithstanding, things were different in my Grandmother’s time. Back then it would not do for a woman to ask a man what his intentions were. Society was structured so that a woman had to wait to be asked the question that would entirely determine her prospects in life. If you asked you were denied. That is no longer true. What is most surprising and disturbing to me is that in five years my friend’s companion never asked him what he was thinking about their relationship. If she had he would have told her. But the idea that the man should do the asking exists in the same meaning vacuum that marriage does, without the traditions that used to make sense of these customs.

And yet despite the emptiness of marriage as considered in terms of consumer culture, it is something that people continue to do. If it is something we are going to do, we should do it wisely and in ways that make sense and are good for us. When people talk about their marriages they talk about their spouse, and the connection they have, and the life they’ve built together. In a world where so much is judged in terms of efficiency and utility it is a place of resistance – it’s about love and familiarity and acceptance and commitment. Marriages and personal relationships are best thought about in terms of feelings, emotions, responsibilities, and day-to-day practicalities. They shouldn’t be shackled with the need to conform to ideas of effiency and goal-oriented activity.