For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for August 29, 2012

Lighten up would you El

In my highschool in the 80s the double standard was the other way around still…girls who slept around were ‘easy’ and called other names, which i won’t name here…boys were still ‘the man’, macho and so on. Haven’t seen the opposite yet…

People seem to have always preferred being married by clergy even though there are a number of civil authorities empowered to perform marriages as well. Back in the 1800’s in the US, a clergyman of some denomination might find himself responsible for a large area. So he would “ride the circuit”, staying in a single location for only the relatively short time to perform the backlogged baptisms, marriages, etc. Then he might not come back to that location for a while.

It sometime happened that a man and woman would live as a couple for some time before the clergyman would get to where they were on his circuit. Life being what it is, some of these de facto unions didn’t last. People in essence were married and divorced before the clergyman ever came into the picture to formalize things. I have records of several guys in my family tree who “inherited” small children from previous cohabitations. As nearly as I can tell, there was nothing judgemental about it. It was just the way life was.

Nowdays people of a certain age seem to believe that they are the first to discover sex. They almost certainly talk about it more than people did in the past. But there is very little new under the sun.

Elly’s right – the double standard – two sets of rules, one set for men and one set for women!!!

He could be Joe Biden.

You’re really stretching the rules of logic… Wow, calm down. This one is sure getting everyone riled up today. I’m sure someone will post Lynn’s notes on this.

Huzzah!!!!

Hey, there wasn’t any chance of HIS getting knocked up and abandoned. :-P

Dali Lama, Dali Lama, Dali Lama……

Definitely a conservative, they get disgusted at everything. I am not going to say I would move in, but I am not going to get upset or gossipy if someone else does.

Generally, for the ladies, cohabitation is a lose/lose situation. I know several cohabitating couples in which the woman wants desperately to get married, but the lousy bum she’s living with won’t man up and follow through. And doesn’t have any guarantee of security. But the guy, the guy gets what he wants and if he gets tired, he can just leave.

Most of these cohabitating couples aren’t afraid of getting a mortgage together or get a vehicle loan together. That’s a legal and binding contract, right? So why the fear of marriage?

And that myth that you should live with each other to test the waters is entirely false. I had neigbors that shacked up together for years and things were just fine. So they got married recently, marriage ended three months later in divorce.

Phil’s what? In his early thirties? Seems to be the point is moot. He’s old enough to do what he wants, doesn’t need his parents or Elly’s permission.

No, he doesn’t need permission – but it makes for peace in the family. Back in the early ‘70s my ex and I were refused apartments because we weren’t married. Forward 20 years later and my elderly parents were still very upset when I ‘shacked up’ with my boyfriend – and I was considerably older than Phil. It all depends upon the individual’s upbringing, religion, and even where they live. Today it’s so commonplace few people think twice, but this was a different time . . .

How times have changed – more freedom for both.But at least in the 60s, we didn’t have to have grade-schoolers vaccinated for VD – ie the HPV shots rec. for all now.

As a side note: HPV was “discovered” by mathmeticians before the microbiologists? HPV? So many 3-letters out there, they are easy to confuse?

I’m not into much literature, but in the “Scarlet Letter” weren’t only women required to wear a red A? How was this done without men being involved?

Wow! People sure take the funnies seriously! (Rollin’ my eyes!) Do some of you even get that Ellie’s response is supposed to get a laugh? And it’s because most of us recognize that inequity exists between brothers and sisters in how their parents treated them, with boys “getting away with” staying out late with friends and other activities while girls were forbidden. The logic was that boys were better able to take care of and defend themselves than girls, so the girls needed to be kept home where they’d be safe from the dangers of the world at large (oh, and their own secret desires, which could bring the consequence of pregnancy and usher in far greater restrictions on her liberty than her parents’ rules ever did). So of course the girls resented their brothers’ comparative freedom to come and go and, in a lot of cases, not be judged as harshly as the girls were.

I think @Nabuquduriuzhur was just trying to get a reaction. :-p

Double standards are always skewed and always wrong.

I’m an old-fashioned Christian. I believe a couple shouldn’t live together until they have that piece of paper saying they’re married.

Hound, tomcat.

Maybe for some — but not for all! My husband and I will be married 24 years this coming December. Believe me, if either he or I had changed that much after the wedding, neither one of us would still be married to each other! He had an ex-wife from hell and was never going to go down that road again and I was a first-hand witness to the miseries of a marriage where the husband and wife pretty much couldn’t stand the sight of each other but stayed married anyhow until my dad died 10 years ago. They should have just done my sister and me a favor and gotten divorced . . . maybe then, we’d have ALL been happy back then. Having lived through that whole mess, it’s a wonder I ever got married at all, let alone stay married for as long as I have. So believe me, if there had been that much change after the wedding, we’d have both gone our separate ways a long time ago.

It appears that there is still a lot of sibling jealousy in that brother/sister relationship. Methinks that she is sometimes thinking that brother dear is much freer than she is – as it always was…….

She is Absolutely Right!! It also doesn’t hurt that he’s younger than her.

And yes, women promote the double standard just as much as men.