"They're in it just for the sex and that's not normal. Why do they even bother to get married? It's the fault of the schools...the parents...the government.
Again and again the audience made plain their utter contempt for the younger generation in general and, more specifically, for what they saw as a complete lack of God-fearing behavior in modern relationships. And while it was mostly the women, so great was the fever pitch in the studio that even a few of the men spoke out against kids today. Things, as you might suspect, had been far better in the past.
I'd been invited to take part in yet another of those afternoon TV shows where a crowd of citizens armed with nothing more than their opinions get to express their righteous outrage. The naive assumption behind such nonsense is that all opinions are created equal and that everyone is entitled to at least one. My purpose in this popular charade was to provide an air of legitimacy while pretending to shed some light on the psychology of Love, Sex and Marriage. I say pretending because any serious attempt at so ambitious a task would be doomed from the start. The evolutionary roots of sexual desire and the chemical underpinnings of love can alone fill most of a semester at a university. Then throw in a brief history of marriage as a social convention and you're talking the rest of the term plus an extensive reading list. Suffice it to say, I know how the "TV Expert" is supposed to behave and that's why I get invited back.
So I begin by pointing out that Mother Nature never intended for sex, love and marriage to be part of one big package. The other guest, some sort of mental health nurse, then expresses her dismay and quickly follows up with a: What is the world coming to? The audience gets even more involved and the morality play begins. It's time to cheer the hero and hiss the villain. To further establish my role as the villain, I toss out something about only little girls and naive adults buying such Happy-Ever-After fairytales and the hooting, hollering mob goes wild. At that point, the show's host usually signals for a commercial, during which my would-be attackers (oddly at leisure during the middle of a workday) are wrestled to the ground by Security.
But at this point, a woman shouts something about romance and knights in shinning armor. That caught me off guard. Surely even a group like this couldn't believe that. Anyway, here's the way it really was - verily - back then.
According to historical accounts such as those found in B.W. Tuchman's A Distant Mirror despite all the bawdy talk you may have heard at your local Renaissance Faire, Medieval life was far from an unfettered orgy. According to the Book of Sidrach, it was not murder, robbery or assault that was the most heinous of sins but sodomy. And that covered a lot of territory. Homosexuality along with the use of an unfit orifice or an unfit position; spilling one's seed according to the sin of Onan; auto-erotic emission and intercourse with beasts would all result in damnation. Similarly, marriage was not the bed of roses idealized in tales of the "...and they lived happily ever after" genera. Indeed, the Dunmow Flitch tradition points to quite a different reality. Any couple traveling to Dunmow (in Essex, UK) and swearing that after a year of wedlock they'd do it again, would received a side (a flitch) of bacon. Considering the value of a pig at that time, it may be assumed that not that many couples got to bring home the bacon.
As for being swept off one's feet by a brave knight in shining armor astride a thundering stead that was at least half-right. Clad in 55 pounds of plate and carrying a lance 6-yards long, crashing into an opponent at full gallop and then having to deal with that self same sword wielding, battle-ax swinging gentleman on foot would have made today's average case of road rage a mere fillip. In days of olde they do most certainly appear to have been bold. But forget the being carried off part. Contemporaries understood Romantic Love as love for its own sake. Unassociated with property or family, it must of necessity focus on another man's wife as marriageable maidens were obviously going to be ruled out. It was justified as a means of ennobling a man causing him to show goodness and courteous manners, to be well groomed and valiant. The woman, in turn, was seen as an inspirer of male glory; a sure step up from a mere breeder of children and conveyor of property.
Romantic Love began with the knight worshiping from afar before declaring his passionate devotion. This was followed by deeds of heroic proportion and met with virtuous rejection by the lady in question. On moans of approaching death from unsatisfied desire, the knight might eventually win his true love's heart. Endless risks and subterfuges in the hopes of gaining a few stolen moments together followed. Of course, any such liaison was considered both a sin by the church and a crime by the state. Furthermore, on learning of this affair, the lady's husband, who was also a knight, would be expected to kill both his unfaithful wife and her lover. Romance in the time of Chivalry was not the gay and elevating pursuit it's thought to have been by modern day readers of Romance novels. It invited dishonor and lead to a tangle of irreconcilable fantasies and conventions. By comparison, today's most rootin-tootin, huffin-puffin, orgy is going to come off as being a decidedly more romantic event. But you just try explaining all that between commercials on an afternoon TV program!
