{"id":10538,"date":"2020-03-30T12:02:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-30T19:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=10538"},"modified":"2020-04-05T12:05:37","modified_gmt":"2020-04-05T19:05:37","slug":"marriage-going-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2020\/03\/30\/marriage-going-away\/","title":{"rendered":"Marriage Going Away"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

from AEON<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is marriage over?<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Marriage is practised in every society yet is in steep decline globally. Is this it for longterm intimate relationships?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Edited by\u00a0Sam Dresser<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=jTmcxDXEqYE\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At 17, John Humphrey Noyes thought a lot about women. An awkward teenager with a gangly neck and slouching shoulders, he fretted over how good looks were the key to success, especially when pursuing women. And he was shy. \u2018So unreasonable and excessive is my bashfulness,\u2019 he wrote in his journal, \u2018that I fully believe that I could face a battery of cannon with less trepidation than I could a room full of ladies with whom I was unacquainted.\u2019 Little did he know that he would go on to have sex with dozens of women, fathering children with at least nine in a ten-year period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Noyes was born in 1811. His father was a Congressman for Vermont. His mother worked to instil in her son a religious reverence, hoping that he would become a \u2018minister of the Everlasting Gospel\u2019. In 1831, her wish seemed likely to come true. Noyes, then 20, announced that he would devote himself to the service of God\u2019s truth, and entered a seminary in Andover, Massachusetts. Rather than accepting his teachers\u2019 doctrine, however, he became consumed with the revivalist furore sweeping the northeast like a prairie fire. He left Andover for Yale University and started an uproar when he began preaching Perfectionism, the heretical notion that a religious life must be free of sin. Argumentative and charismatic, Noyes became a local celebrity and attracted small crowds of supporters, opponents and gawkers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was around this time that Noyes met Abigail Merwin. He was 22; she was 30. It\u2019s hard to find details about Merwin, other than that she was smart, beautiful and modest, and had dark-grey eyes. Many of Noyes\u2019s descriptions of her are saturated with ecstatic religious imagery. During a period when he stopped eating and sleeping and instead wandered manic through the streets of lower Manhattan, he envisioned her \u2018standing, as it were, on the pinnacle of the universe, in the glory of an angel\u2019 (although, in his mania, he wondered whether she was actually the devil incarnate).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Merwin was Noyes\u2019s first follower, and he loved her. In his\u00a0Confessions of Religious Experience<\/em>\u00a0(1849), he admitted that \u2018she was undoubtedly the person to whom I was attached more than any other person on earth\u2019. He was drawn to her beauty, modesty and boldness but, just as importantly, he drew inspiration from her company. \u2018Abigail Merwin was my first companion in the faith of holiness,\u2019 he wrote. \u2018It was natural that I should regard her with peculiar interest and confidence.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[ click to continue reading at AEON<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from AEON Is marriage over? Marriage is practised in every society yet is in steep decline globally. Is this it for longterm intimate relationships? Edited by\u00a0Sam Dresser At 17, John Humphrey Noyes thought a lot about women. An awkward teenager with a gangly neck and slouching shoulders, he fretted over how good looks were the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art","category-weirdness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10538\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}