Modulo the time that it takes to implement contract termination, I suppose. That is, the situation where my husband gets to have sex with me whenever he wants unless I say “I’m terminating our marriage!” (at which point he no longer does) is different from the situation where he gets to have sex with me whenever he wants unless I have previously spent some non-zero amount of time obtaining a divorce decree. In the latter case, my husband can coerce me regardless of our relative valuation of the contract.
It’s also worth noting that, even if we posit that the marriage contract (M1) implies an obligation for sex on demand, it also involves enough other clauses as well that it is easy to imagine a second kind of contract, M2, that was almost indistinguishable from M1 except that it did not include such an obligation. One could imagine a culture that started out with a cultural norm of M1 for marriages, and later came to develop a cultural norm for M2 instead.
If that culture were truly foolish, it might even allow/encourage couples to sign a marriage contract without actually specifying what obligations it entailed… or, even more absurdly, having the contractual obligations vary as the couple moved around the country, or as time went by, based on changes in local or federal law. In such an absurd scenario, it’s entirely possible that some people would think they’d signed an M1 contract while others—perhaps even their spouses—thought they’d signed an M2 contract. There might even be no discernible fact of the matter.
When a contractual relationship gets that implicitly defined by cultural norms and social expectations and historical remnants, and gets embedded in a culture with conflicting norms and expectations, it becomes a very non-prototypical example of a contractual relationship, and it’s perhaps best to stop expecting my intuitions about contracts to apply to it cleanly.
When a contractual relationship gets that implicitly defined by cultural norms and social expectations and historical remnants, and gets embedded in a culture with conflicting norms and expectations, it becomes a very non-prototypical example of a contractual relationship, and it’s perhaps best to stop expecting my intuitions about contracts to apply to it cleanly.
When a contractual relationship gets that implicitly defined by cultural norms and social expectations and historical remnants, and gets embedded in a culture with conflicting norms and expectations, it becomes a very non-prototypical example of a contractual relationship, and it’s perhaps best to avoid getting entangled in that kind of contractual relationship. (Unless you are somehow sure that the contract is in your favor.)
Mind you in my experience actually telling a girlfriend that in the general case getting married seems to be a terrible idea meets with mixed results. Something to do with wanting to play dress-ups with white dresses and so forth. :P
Whether it’s best for me to avoid getting entangled in it depends entirely on the potential benefits of that contractual relationship, the potential costs, and the likelihood of those benefits and costs. (This includes both costs/benefits to me and costs/benefits to my partner, insofar as my partner’s state is valuable.)
Personally, I judge my condition after getting entangled in such a relationship superior to my state prior to having done so. I strongly suspect my husband does the same.
Modulo the time that it takes to implement contract termination, I suppose. That is, the situation where my husband gets to have sex with me whenever he wants unless I say “I’m terminating our marriage!” (at which point he no longer does) is different from the situation where he gets to have sex with me whenever he wants unless I have previously spent some non-zero amount of time obtaining a divorce decree. In the latter case, my husband can coerce me regardless of our relative valuation of the contract.
It’s also worth noting that, even if we posit that the marriage contract (M1) implies an obligation for sex on demand, it also involves enough other clauses as well that it is easy to imagine a second kind of contract, M2, that was almost indistinguishable from M1 except that it did not include such an obligation. One could imagine a culture that started out with a cultural norm of M1 for marriages, and later came to develop a cultural norm for M2 instead.
If that culture were truly foolish, it might even allow/encourage couples to sign a marriage contract without actually specifying what obligations it entailed… or, even more absurdly, having the contractual obligations vary as the couple moved around the country, or as time went by, based on changes in local or federal law. In such an absurd scenario, it’s entirely possible that some people would think they’d signed an M1 contract while others—perhaps even their spouses—thought they’d signed an M2 contract. There might even be no discernible fact of the matter.
When a contractual relationship gets that implicitly defined by cultural norms and social expectations and historical remnants, and gets embedded in a culture with conflicting norms and expectations, it becomes a very non-prototypical example of a contractual relationship, and it’s perhaps best to stop expecting my intuitions about contracts to apply to it cleanly.
When a contractual relationship gets that implicitly defined by cultural norms and social expectations and historical remnants, and gets embedded in a culture with conflicting norms and expectations, it becomes a very non-prototypical example of a contractual relationship, and it’s perhaps best to avoid getting entangled in that kind of contractual relationship. (Unless you are somehow sure that the contract is in your favor.)
Mind you in my experience actually telling a girlfriend that in the general case getting married seems to be a terrible idea meets with mixed results. Something to do with wanting to play dress-ups with white dresses and so forth. :P
Whether it’s best for me to avoid getting entangled in it depends entirely on the potential benefits of that contractual relationship, the potential costs, and the likelihood of those benefits and costs. (This includes both costs/benefits to me and costs/benefits to my partner, insofar as my partner’s state is valuable.)
Personally, I judge my condition after getting entangled in such a relationship superior to my state prior to having done so. I strongly suspect my husband does the same.