What the community used to give us was a sense of belonging, a sense of identity, and a sense of continuity.
But not much freedom.
Basically, there was not much freedom. You were what the community was, told you to do, and you abided by the rules.
I don't know many people who want to give up their freedom. But they would like to find a little bit more security back.
They would like to feel more anchored. A lot of people are feeling rather alone.
I think some of us are going to gravitate towards more freedom, and some of us are going to gravitate towards more community, more communion, more belonging,
and that by definition means a restriction, a frustration, a compromise, of our individuality.
By the end, what we're seeing still answers the same need: We need to connect.
To live, to survive, we need connections. How these connections will manifest, how flimsy they will be, how long they will be, how solid -
We are in the midst of this.
I look at the way that we are wired for connection, and the multiple ways that we create partnerships in order to experience that connection.
We've always done it, but we are doing it always with a slight twist.
There's a few key changes that are easy to map.
For most of history, marriage is an economic institution.
It is primarily in order to gather assets. We wanted children, we wanted family, and we wanted social respectability.
And all of those went into this alliance called marriage.
So now we marry for love, and you're choosing me as part of our romantic ideal, and I choose you. And I am "the one."
This promise that I will never again feel lonely, never again fear abandonment, never again be left grappling with existential aloneness.
Very different from most of our grandparents for whom intimacy was we work the land together, we raise the kids together, we share the burdens of the everyday, and all of that.
So in a way, one could say that I want from one person what once an entire community used to provide.
I want from you the rootedness, the dependability, the stability, the security, the safety, the reliability, the predictable.
And I want from you to also give me novelty, and adventure, and mystery, and excitement, and surprise.
I want you to be my anchor and I want you to be my waves.
And this model is kind of 'mother's milk' at this moment, as if it has always been this way.
And when it doesn't work, it's not because the model may be excessive, it's because I chose the wrong person.
And next time I'll do better.
People are seeking commitment no less than they have always needed it.
But they are not necessarily willing to forego the idea of self-fulfillment. And so that's the new negotiation.
It is true that fifty percent of first marriages end in divorce, but sometimes these marriage have lasted twenty-five or thirty years.
So I don't know that we want to just keep the criteria "funeral home" as the sign of a successful marriage.
These are long relationships, these are systems that are complex, that have accomplished a lot together.
And maybe they are not meant to last forever, but that doesn't mean by definition that they were a failure.
I think what's going to happen is all kinds of explorations - from blending families, to polyamorous families, to consensual non-monogamous families -
Various exercises around the boundaries that are going to, in some way, be variations of creations of new forms of community.
I think when we say it like that it sounds very off and disturbing to a lot of people. But in a way, I think the word "community" is the one that needs to be reintroduced in that.
Gay families have practiced these communities. They have all kinds of families of choice.
They have uncles, they have other adults that are being brought in.
It's actually much more flexible, and in some way, more adaptive.
Rather than just: There is this model, and if it doesn't happen, you lose the key members, and they never get replaced.
Most adults in the west today are going to have two or three committed relationships in their lifetime.
Some of them are going to have one to leave the home with, one to raise a family with, and one to live the post midlife with.
The fastest growing partnership in America today is the "LAT" - living apart together.
Now, will there be a kind of softening of the commitment? Will I not be there for you when you have your Alzheimer's because I'm not living with you,
because I don't have thirty years with you, because I don't have the same devotion or loyalty to you?
Or, will I develop a different sense of caring and partnership? Or, will you rely not on me but on a family of choice?
I don't think we know this.
The fundamental commitment is still going to be children.
I may never see you again if we don't have kids.
I will probably see you forever if we do have children. That is going to be the bottom-line link.
Now, I may have more than one partner help me in raising my children.
It becomes rather extended.
People often think of that as chaotic and messy.
But, it also in some way begins to create an extended family.
We will find a way to anchor ourselves, that will not leave.
But we may not develop this anchor only around the concept of sexual exclusiveness, because we are going to have some relationships
that are defined around exclusiveness, and some relationships that are defined around uniqueness.
Uniqueness is not what you can't do elsewhere but "what is special that is ours."
It is a different system.
If we were talking about premarital sex not too long ago, we would have thought "unthinkable."
If we would have talked about gay marriage, we would have thought "unthinkable."
If we would have talked about gay families with children, we would have thought "unthinkable."
So, this is for some people still unthinkable, the idea that boundaries are being renegotiated. They already have!
It is not that this is this thing that is going to happen thirty years from now when we do future predictions.
It's happening.