Snipergirl's Web Log

“All you need is love” What a fuck­ing lie. The Beatles have more than their fair share of unhealthy mes­sages but that is one of them.

It’s not that love is not import­ant. It is. It’s the fet­ish­isa­tion that occurs in the media sur­round­ing wed­dings and babies and big houses and SUVs.

Fuck where can I start. Wed­dings and wed­ding pho­tos. What a fuck­ing waste of good money. Hon­estly what every­one wants from a wed­ding is a good time and a quick cere­mony and a few pho­tos. Not this trav­esty that a wed­ding has become where people one up each other about how much money they wasted on the fuck­ing thing while parad­ing their engage­ment, pre-engagement, pre-wedding, wed­ding, post wed­ding, hon­ey­moon, 1^st anniversary, 2^nd anniversary, 7^th anniversary pho­tos. Well, if they ever get to the 7^th one that is.

I can only ima­gine how unen­joy­able and bor­ing and tedi­ous their wed­ding day actu­ally was. Do these people even have sex? I doubt it. In fact most of these loud fuck­ers don’t even love the per­son they’re with. They’re just scared of being alone and don’t want to admit to them­selves that the reason they are mar­ry­ing is because they can’t find any­one bet­ter and this per­son seems vaguely suit­able to their par­ents. So they go on and on about how happy they are as some kind of delu­sion that they want to be con­stantly con­grat­u­lated on.

I have no desire to con­grat­u­late them on their impend­ing unhap­pi­ness.

But their delu­sion has arms that stretch far bey­ond them­selves. They then decide every­one else who is not like them must be unhappy!

Next let’s go on to the idea that a baby will make every­one happy and fix everything and make you feel loved. Here’s news– that feel­ing of empti­ness is NOT going to be solved by hav­ing a child. In fact that’s an easy recipe for post natal depres­sion. And your rela­tion­ship? If it’s crappy already, it’s going to get way crap­pier once you have a child. Hav­ing a child is stress­ful, dif­fi­cult and hard work. It is truly reward­ing if you accept this truth and are pre­pared for it but oth­er­wise, you’re kid­ding yourself.

Ooh, how about the “stay at home mum” racket? Appar­ently you are going to give up everything includ­ing your intel­lec­tual pur­suits in order to be a per­man­ent child rearer. What hap­pens after the kids go to school? Oh well, I guess that’s what soaps, knit­ting classes and SUV road rage are for.

Big houses and SUVs are firstly envir­on­ment­ally irre­spons­ible (oh but it’s only affect­ing people who live on small islands and we don’t believe in sci­ence any­way), secondly expens­ive and thirdly irrit­at­ing. People can’t afford the life­styles that they lead des­pite mak­ing a lot of money and then whinge in the media about how they want their child care benefits.

And what about the under­ly­ing idea behind this? That you can treat import­ant things as pos­ses­sions and that mater­ial pos­ses­sions are going to make you happy? Acquir­ing a spouse and a child is not the same as acquir­ing a new car. It’s a rela­tion­ship, not a pos­ses­sion. It requires work and love and strength. You can’t just chuck it in the shed or sell it when you’re sick of it.

This would all be sort of ok if it was primar­ily an upper middle class prob­lem. But it’s not. This is some­thing that deeply affects poor people who aspire to the above. No-one places value on edu­ca­tion any more. All that is import­ant is a ring on your fin­ger from someone and a baby and a house. But these things aren’t going to make you hap­pier or richer or feel bet­ter. They are going to make you poorer and if done for the wrong reas­ons, deeply unhappy. In fact they may even rob you of your abil­ity to bet­ter your­self if you’re not in a pos­i­tion to afford them.

We all won­der why we’re feel­ing unhappy and empty and lonely even though we’re sur­roun­ded by “love” of the “all you need is love” sense. Maybe it’s because no actual love went into the decision. Not even self love. And per­haps love isn’t the only thing? Per­haps con­tent­ment and peace and exer­cise and intel­lec­tual engage­ment are just as important.

It really drives me mad, read­ing those magazines that per­pet­rate this vicious cycle of social depriva­tion via “love” and “suc­cess” in ways that really have noth­ing to do with either love or success.

If and when I have a wait­ing room, all this shit is going straight into the recyc­ling bin.

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