Are marriages relationships where resentment is bound to develop no matter what?

[RockyBalboa]

I guess I'm a sucker where I'm one of those idiots, that in spite of a terrible marriage that fell apart,,,,,there's that hopeless romantic in me that still hopes it's possible and that I find someone who feels and acts likewise.

[JohnnyLingo]

Arch is just projecting his own failed marriage onto the entire world. Interesting how he feels he can say all women are a certain way when there are billions of them.

I thought he was smarter than that, but we all have weaknesses, I guess.

Either that or he's trolling. Hard to tell.

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by RockyBalboa

I guess I'm a sucker where I'm one of those idiots, that in spite of a terrible marriage that fell apart,,,,,there's that hopeless romantic in me that still hopes it's possible and that I find someone who feels and acts likewise.

Sisyphus.

Use his lesson in existentialism as a guide.

[marsupial]

Awhile back my mom and I were talking about why she always avoided my dad's family's get-togethers. Well, she finally coughed up the reason. It was because of something my dad did long, long ago way before I was even born. She has 45 years of resentment built up.

I try to follow the 24 hour rule with everyone, not just danimal. That is, if someone does something that bugs me, I either deal with it quickly or let it go. My goal in life is not to be my mom.

[YOhio]

One Arch post that stuck out to me was a list of places he has seen divorced papers served. It may give us a little insight into where he is coming from.

http://www.cougarboard.com/noframes/...tml?id=1088340

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by marsupial

Awhile back my mom and I were talking about why she always avoided my dad's family's get-togethers. Well, she finally coughed up the reason. It was because of something my dad did long, long ago way before I was even born. She has 45 years of resentment built up.

I try to follow the 24 hour rule with everyone, not just danimal. That is, if someone does something that bugs me, I either deal with it quickly or let it go. My goal in life is not to be my mom.

Your mother is the norm for women and if you stick to your guns, you are the extreme, infinitesimally small exception as to women. Women tend to internalize affronts and therefore recall them with lightening speed.

I hope you are earnest as I would like to believe that not all women are hateful, resentful human beings, but as women age, they tend to harbor stuff. The older women become so undesirable; perhaps that's why we developed nursing homes to warehouse them, so that we wouldn't have to spend time with them, perhaps not.

[RockyBalboa]

Originally Posted by Archaea

Sisyphus.

Use his lesson in existentialism as a guide.

Any philosopher whose name closely resembles an STD I'll stay away from thank you very much.

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by RockyBalboa

Any philosopher whose name closely resembles an STD I'll stay away from thank you very much.

Here's a summary:

Sisyphus

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Sisyphus by Titian, 1549.


In Greek mythology, Sisyphus (Σίσυφος) (IPA: ['sɪsɪfəs]) was a king punished in the Tartarus by being cursed to roll a huge boulder up a hill throughout eternity.
Contents

[hide]

• 1 The myth
  • 1.1 "Sisyphean task" or "Sisyphean challenge"
• 2 Interpretations
• 3 See also
• 4 References

//
[edit] The myth

Sisyphus was son of the king Aeolus of Thessaly and Enarete, and the founder/first king of Ephyra (Corinth). Later sources say Sisyphus was married to many people such as Danaus, Perseus, Gorgun, Bellerophon, and Melampus. The only woman he married was, a divorced goddess of Zeus, Hera. When Hera saw him flirting with men, she ran away crying but Sisyphus soon found her and cut her up into pieces.Then he ate up her whole body as pieces. Hera's soul was very mad. So she undressed him and tied him with his other husbands who were also nude.Sisyphus had his husbands testcales going into his mouth and he could not get them out! All the men had to pee, so Sisyphus was forced into drinking it! That is how he died.
Sisyphus promoted navigation and commerce, but was avaricious and deceitful, violating the laws of hospitality by killing travelers and guests. From Homer onwards, Sisyphus was famed as the craftiest of men. He seduced his niece, took his brother's throne and betrayed Zeus's secrets (specifically, Zeus' rape of Aegina, the daughter of the river god Asopus; by some accounts, the daughter of his father Aeolus, making her either Sisyphus' sister or half-sister). Zeus then ordered Hades to chain Sisyphus in Tartarus. Sisyphus slyly asked Thanatos to try the chains to show how they worked. When Thanatos did so, Sisyphus secured them and threatened Hades. This caused an uproar, and no human could die until Ares (who was annoyed that his battles had lost their fun because his opponents would not die) intervened, freeing Thanatos and sending Sisyphus to Tartarus.
However, before Sisyphus died, he had told his wife that when he was dead she was not to offer the usual sacrifice. In the underworld he complained that his wife was neglecting him and persuaded Persephone, Queen of the Underworld, to allow him to go back to the upper world and ask his wife to perform her duty. When Sisyphus got back to Corinth, he refused to return and was eventually carried back to the underworld by Hermes. In another version of the myth, Persephone was directly persuaded that he had been conducted to Tartarus by mistake and ordered him to be freed (Bernard Evslin's Gods, Demigods & Demons, 209-210).
The Greek Underworld Residents:

• Persephone
• Hades
• Minos
• Aeacus

• Rhadamanthus
• Charon
• Cerberus

Geography:

• Acheron
• Cocytus
• Tartarus
• Lethe
• Elysion

• Styx
• Phlegethon
• Asphodel Meadows
• Erebus

Famous inmates:

• Ixion
• Sisyphus

• Tantalus
• The Titans

Related:

• Greek mythology

• Greek religion

[edit] "Sisyphean task" or "Sisyphean challenge"

As a punishment from the gods for his trickery, Sisyphus was compelled to roll a huge rock up a steep hill, but before he reached the top of the hill, the rock always escaped him and he had to begin again (Odyssey, xi. 593). The maddening nature of the punishment was reserved for Sisyphus due to the mortal's hubristic belief that his cleverness surpassed that of Zeus. Sisyphus took the bold step of reporting one of Zeus's sexual conquests, telling the river god Asopus of the whereabouts of his daughter Aegina. Zeus had taken her away, and regardless of the impropriety of Zeus's frequent conquests, Sisyphus unmistakably overstepped his bounds by considering himself a peer of the gods who could rightfully report their indiscretions (Edith Hamilton's Mythology, 312-313). As a result, Zeus displayed his own cleverness by binding Sisyphus to an eternity of frustration. (Some say that Sisyphus even tricked Zeus again in that, though his task was difficult and endless, the leisurely walk back down the hill was still his own.) Accordingly, pointless or interminable activities are often described as Sisyphean. Sisyphus was a common subject for ancient writers and was depicted by the painter Polygnotus on the walls of the Lesche at Delphi (Pausanias x. 31).

[Archaea]

On top of the Sisyphean challenge, here's a link to French existentialism, including the reference to Camus.

http://www.friesian.com/existent.htm

The starkness and hopelessness of this problem is portrayed in an essay, "The Myth of Sisyphus" (1942), by another great French Existentialist, Albert Camus (1913-1960). In Greek mythology, Sisyphus, who had once deceived the gods and cheated death, was condemned for eternity to roll a stone up a hill. Every time he was about to complete his task, the stone would roll free back down to the bottom of the hill. Sisyphus would then have to start over again, even though the same thing would just happen again. Thus, the punishment of Sisyphus is a punishment just because it is an endless exercise in futility. Sisyphus is stuck in an eternally pointless task. Now, if the world and everything in it are also pointless, the lesson is that the task of Sisyphus is identical to every thing that we will ever be doing in life. We are no different from Sisyphus; and if his punishment makes the afterlife a hell for him, we are already living in that hell.
Presumably, Sisyphus is unable to escape his condition through suicide. So if we can, why not? Arguably, there is no reason why not. But suicide is not the typical Existentialist answer. What can Sisyphus do to make his life endurable? Well, he can just decide that it is meaningful. The value and purpose that objectively don't exist in the world can be restored by an act of will. Again, this is what has struck people as liberating about Existentialism. To live one's life, one must exercise the freedom to create a life. Just going along with conventional values and forgetting about the absurdity of the world is not authentic. Authenticity is to exercise one's free will and to choose the activities and goals that will be meaningful for one's self. With this approach, even Sisyphus can be engaged and satisfied with what he is doing.
Now we can answer the question why "hell is other people." If we live our lives just because of the completely free and autonomous decisions that we make, this creates nothing that is common with others. If we adopt something that comes from someone else, which could give us a common basis to make a connection with them, this is inauthentic. If it just happens, by chance, that our own decisions produce something that matches those of someone else, well then we have a connection, but it is likely to be volatile. As we make new decisions, the probability of our connection with others continuing is going to decline. We are isolated by our own autonomy. The values and decision of others, whether authentic or inauthentic, will be foreign and irritating.

[Archaea]

If you haven't read Camus and Sartres in a long time, you owe it to yourself to do so.

This sense of estrangement from others is found in another classic of Existentialism, the novel The Stranger (1942), by Camus. Like many of Camus' stories, this one is set in Algeria. It is about a fellow whose mother dies but who can't stand sitting up at her wake. He leaves, and offends the community by his evident disrespect. Later, he kills a local Arab. This is not something that the French colonial judicial system would ordinarily take very seriously, but local French opinion is so unsympathetic with our "stranger," just because he left his mother's wake, that he is condemned for the killing of the Arab. The absurdity of all this is the point of the story. An Existentialist is always a stranger to others and is certainly going to have no patience with conventions like wakes for the dead or, for that matter, laws about murder.
The isolation produced by Existentialist value decisions also explains why few Existentialists are self-identified as such. Calling someone an "Existentialist" imposes an essence on them, telling them what they are. This violates their absolute autonomy and freedom and makes it sound like they actually have something important in common with some other people, other Existentialists. This is intolerable.
Sartre himself felt the moral loss involved in all this. Traditional ideas about moral responsibility disappeared when there was nothing meaningful to be responsible about. Sartre consequently tried to compensate for this by introducing a new, strengthened sense of responsibility. His view was that one is "responsible" for all the consequences of one's action, whether it is possible to know about them or not. He illustrated this in a short story about the Spanish Civil War. A young Republican partisan is captured by the Fascists. He is told that he will be executed unless he betrays some other Republicans who are considered more important. Not knowing, in fact, where they are, he makes up a story that they are hiding in a cemetery on the edge of town. He is then put in a cell. Later, the Fascists return and release him. What happened? Well, it turned out, just by chance, that the Republicans he pretended to betray actually were hiding in the cemetery, and were captured. So it's his fault.