Episode 108: "Biblical" Marriage  ## Metadata - Author: [[Data Over Dogma]] - Full Title: Episode 108: "Biblical" Marriage - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/88d5b80a-e493-4642-816d-c0521e18e838 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Biblical Marriage as Property** - Biblical marriage was an economic and social institution, not based on love or equality. - Women were treated as property with limited agency in ancient marriage contracts. Transcript: Dan Beecher We're taking issue with biblical marriage. Dan McClellan Well, I understand that I have a biblical marriage. Don't you have a biblical marriage, Dan? Dan Beecher I mean, I know my lady wife in the biblical sense. Is that what you're talking about? She is known to you. Yeah. Dan McClellan Okay, well, the adjective biblical gets slapped on to so many things these days by folks who want to insist there's a right way and a wrong way to go about everything. And so there's a lot of talk of biblical marriage. And in short, you don't want a biblical marriage. But there are also many different kinds of biblical marriages, and you don't want any of them. Okay. All right. We'll get to that. Dan Beecher We'll get to that. One of the things that I did when I was sort of researching this for the show was I remembered that there's this thing that's happening in the U.S. Several states have already adopted this thing, and other states are trying to push for what they're calling covenant marriages. And what this is is a different type of, like, extra special marriage. When you file for your marriage license or whatever, you check the box. Supersize me. Yeah, for covenant marriage. And the idea is that it's a lot harder to get a divorce and you have to enter into the marriage. You have to have done counseling with a priest or like with some sort of religious person. It's not with a marriage counselor, but that's neither here nor there. Dan McClellan But it's got to be someone who's entirely unqualified to say anything at all about marriage especially if it's a you know if it's a catholic priest god someone who's not even allowed Dan Beecher To participate themselves i've heard tell yeah this is how this is how it goes and then and then it's like you know you you really can't get divorced unless it you know it kind of eliminates The idea of no fault divorce, which I think a lot of very right wing religious people have been hitting hard that like divorce is this great tragedy or whatever. And, and so what we do is we enter into this covenant marriage where it's much, it's, it's, it's, and they're, they really are trying to make sort of the, the end goal is to make some form Of biblical Christian marriage, the legal standard. Dan McClellan Yeah. And, and I, I think there are a couple of different reasons for this. The, the, the end of no fault divorce is something that I see a lot of Christian nationalists advocating for on social media, which is basically men saying, I should be able to be a garbage Human being, and my wife should not be allowed to take leave of our relationship. Because no-fault divorce was implemented precisely to give women access to a little bit more agency within marriages. And marriages for a long time, there has been a significant power asymmetry. And when we get into the biblical stuff, you're going to see that that's even more entrenched in biblical marriage. And so this is basically just men saying, I don't like women being able to make decisions for themselves. I should be the one in charge of them. And these are the same men who are out there saying every household should have one vote. It should be the man who decides. And it's fair because his wife is allowed to share her feelings with him before he makes the decision. Dan Beecher And he will listen to her about as much as those guys tend to listen to their wives. Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah. And so it's just garbage human beings who want their garbageness to be authorized by the state. To be enforced by the state. Enforced by the state, yes. Over and against the interests in the agency and the consent. These are the same folks who insist there's no such thing as marital rape, which is also something we will talk about when we get into our discussion a bit. The Bible kind of backs them up on that, unfortunately. Yeah. It definitely is a trump card in a lot of ways. If you think the Bible is an authoritative text and you accept the way it is interpreted by the garbage humans that are out there right now, you know, yeah, it's an issue. This is they use this word covenant because a lot of people think covenant is just this magical word that Christians and Bible believers can use because you've got covenant. Dan Beecher The word is all over the Bible in particular. It means more than just promise. It's bigger. It's more important than just... Dan McClellan And I think that's the other reason people are trying to do this is because now gay marriage is legal. And so they're like, well, I don't want to be a part of this anymore. I don't want regular marriage. I want extra super special plus marriage so that it is distinguished from gay marriage because I don't want the ickiness. Dan Beecher And I want something that excludes them. I don't want them to have. I want something that is my own that they don't get. Dan McClellan Right, right, because this is about access to power and resources. It's about structuring power. So the garbage humans are on top, and everybody else has to smell their garbageness and be subordinate to it. Dan Beecher Well, let's dive into ([Time 0:02:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2dec128b-c81d-47e5-882e-7a72051c9308)) - **Covenant Marriages and Control** - Covenant marriages aim to restrict divorce and impose religious counseling. - They reflect desires to assert male control and exclude non-traditional marriages like gay marriage. Transcript: Dan Beecher Or whatever, you check the box. Supersize me. Yeah, for covenant marriage. And the idea is that it's a lot harder to get a divorce and you have to enter into the marriage. You have to have done counseling with a priest or like with some sort of religious person. It's not with a marriage counselor, but that's neither here nor there. Dan McClellan But it's got to be someone who's entirely unqualified to say anything at all about marriage especially if it's a you know if it's a catholic priest god someone who's not even allowed Dan Beecher To participate themselves i've heard tell yeah this is how this is how it goes and then and then it's like you know you you really can't get divorced unless it you know it kind of eliminates The idea of no fault divorce, which I think a lot of very right wing religious people have been hitting hard that like divorce is this great tragedy or whatever. And, and so what we do is we enter into this covenant marriage where it's much, it's, it's, it's, and they're, they really are trying to make sort of the, the end goal is to make some form Of biblical Christian marriage, the legal standard. Dan McClellan Yeah. And, and I, I think there are a couple of different reasons for this. The, the, the end of no fault divorce is something that I see a lot of Christian nationalists advocating for on social media, which is basically men saying, I should be able to be a garbage Human being, and my wife should not be allowed to take leave of our relationship. Because no-fault divorce was implemented precisely to give women access to a little bit more agency within marriages. And marriages for a long time, there has been a significant power asymmetry. And when we get into the biblical stuff, you're going to see that that's even more entrenched in biblical marriage. And so this is basically just men saying, I don't like women being able to make decisions for themselves. I should be the one in charge of them. And these are the same men who are out there saying every household should have one vote. It should be the man who decides. And it's fair because his wife is allowed to share her feelings with him before he makes the decision. ([Time 0:03:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/935e6b36-5a60-490d-83d9-c9705db1303e)) - **Unequal Biblical Covenant Roots** - Biblical covenants mimic Neo-Assyrian vassal treaties with unequal parties. - Marriage contracts involved men purchasing control over women's sexuality and reproduction. Transcript: Dan McClellan Because when you look in the Bible, there's a lot about covenants between God and humans. And the concept of covenants that we find in the Bible is actually derived from Neo-Assyrian vassal treaties. And so people tend to treat a covenant as a mutual agreement between two parties. But what is often glossed over, particularly by folks who want to appropriate the idea from the Bible, is the fact that in the Bible, these are not equal parties. Right. The vassal treaties are treaties that were struck between a sovereign nation and a subjugated nation. It was the one who was bigger and stronger and in charge, basically saying, oh, let's draw up a little contract. Wouldn't want anything bad to happen to this lovely little country you got going on over here. So here's what'll happen. You will give us money and you will send us troops to fight in our wars for us. And then we will protect you from ourselves. Basically, we will not destroy you. And so it's framed as S.R. Haddon was a neo-Assyrian emperor who framed it in terms of covenantal love. You will love me, and then I will, you know, eh. What do you say? And that's what's being picked up in Deuteronomy. They're basically copying what's going on in the vassal treaties of these neo-Assyrians. And so marriage is very similar in the Bible. It is not two equal parties entering into a contract. The way the legislation exists, particularly in the Pentateuch, but we find it hinted at in stories and things elsewhere, the contract was between two men. And it was usually the man who wanted a wife and whatever man had rights over the sexual availability and the procreative capacities of the woman. And usually that was her father, but it could be her master. She could be enslaved. And her father could sell her as a concubine or a sex slave. So there were different kinds of contracts that this could be. But basically, the man was purchasing, and the bride price was the price of the transaction, her sexual availability and her procreative capacities, which were not her own. Right. So those were commodities that, unfortunately, she went along with, and he basically had control of in the Bible, she went along with, it's not like, I mean, not, not in a sense of consent, But in the sense of physically, she was a part of the transaction because those things cannot be decoupled from, uh, from her. Dan Beecher Um, yeah, she was not, she, she was not given the choice to go along with it. ([Time 0:08:41](https://share.snipd.com/snip/64ca1aa1-56e7-486a-8c7e-2a756dad16dc)) - **Virginity Laws as Property Protection** - Deuteronomy 22 outlines harsh penalties for perceived virginity violations. - Women were treated as commodities whose value was judged by physical evidence of virginity. Transcript: Dan Beecher Remembering there was a thing about a virgin who was proven not to be a virgin, was stoned to death, that sort of thing. Something like that, yeah. Dan McClellan It starts in Deuteronomy 22, 13. Suppose a man marries a woman, but after going into her, and this is a euphemism for consummation, which is a euphemism for sexual intercourse. It's not much of a euphemism. It's pretty, it's pretty, it's pretty graphic. Nails it pretty hard. That's what I'm saying. That's another euphemism. But after going into her, dislikes her and makes up charges against her, slandering her by saying, I married this woman, but when I lay with her, I did not find evidence of her virginity. And this is authors of this part of Deuteronomy who do not have a remedial grasp of female anatomy and how that works. But basically the idea is because she's a commodity, she's expected to be in pristine condition. Yeah. Got to have that new wife smell. New in the box. That's right. And if someone else has already been there, then that is, for lack of a better phrase, tainted goods. And so the contract has been violated, basically. But here, the story is that he's made this up. He's looking for an excuse to get rid of her, but even more, to have her killed. And it says, the father of the young woman and her mother shall then submit the evidence of the young woman's virginity to the elders of the city at the gate. Good luck. Enjoy. Have fun with that. Yeah. This is presumed to be sheets that indicate there has been a hemorrhaging. Right. Dan Beecher Because everyone knows that there's no way for a hymen to be broken other than through the initial coital act. Dan McClellan Yes, yes. If the hymen is ever intact enough, integral enough that it is broken and there is any kind of bleeding. The father of the young woman shall say to the elders, I gave my daughter in marriage to this man, but he dislikes her. And now he has made up charges against her saying, I do not find, I did not find evidence of your daughter's virginity, but here is the evidence of my daughter's virginity. Then they shall spread out the cloth before the elders of the town. Because, you know, you couldn't fake something like that. No, how would you? Impossible. Yeah. The elders of that town shall take the man and punish him. They shall find him 100 shekels of silver, which they shall give to the young woman's father. Right. Because he has slandered a virgin of Israel. What happens when you slander a virgin? You pay the virgin's father. Right. She shall remain his wife. Oh, goody. Right. There's a lot of moments where it's like, oh, this marriage is going to be fun. Dan Beecher This is good for. Dan McClellan Yeah, it's definitely keeping her agency and consent in mind. He shall not be permitted to divorce her as long as he lives. And then it goes, but if it happens to be true they stone her to death because she yeah there's also this sense that like unlike marriage of today because you know a ([Time 0:14:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e4463900-7ef7-4514-a209-5c88a56b5c8c)) - **Ancient Polygamy and Sexual Inequality** - Polygamy was normative when financially sustainable; adultery definitions were unequal. - Sex work was prolific; men had sexual freedom that did not apply equally to women. Transcript: Dan Beecher Huge thing. Dan McClellan Yeah, it was normative. It was not the norm because you needed to be able to financially sustain multiple households. But yes, it was normative in that if you could do it, you would do it. And nobody had any concerns with it. And this raises such an interesting thing about adultery. Adultery was a very unequal requirement because a man could have intercourse with an unmarried woman who was not his wife that was not adultery and and that's why sex workers were um Dan Beecher Prolific yeah in this time period and and and it wasn't it yeah i mean there are multiple i remember oh gosh who was the the who, was it his daughter-in tricked him? Yeah, Judah. Judah, thank you. Dan McClellan The guy who was like, oh, that looks an awful lot like my staff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dan Beecher But like, she acted as a sex worker. He partook. And at no point in the story is that the bad thing. Even though presumably he's a married man. So yeah, I think that's a fascinating part of this. Dan McClellan Yeah. The sex in the ancient world was not a mutual act that was engaged in by two equal partners. It was something that an active sexual agent did to a passive sexual object whose agency, whose consent was really immaterial. And so as a result, any passive sexual objects who were not already claimed by another man were fair game. And later the idea would develop that the act of sex comprised the act of marriage. So they could just be like, hey, go to the bar, have a few drinks, take somebody home, boom, married. Because that was the sealing of the deal, so to speak. And there was absolutely ([Time 0:24:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/720c4568-2dde-4b2b-bb83-d70f625fbca5)) - **Biblical Sexual Assault Laws** - Biblical laws on sexual assault emphasized property and social status over consent. - A rapist might be forced to marry the victim to reimburse her father, ignoring her agency. Transcript: Dan McClellan And the crying out is actually unrelated to the unmarried woman. The crying out is if it is an engaged woman. So the betrothed woman, yeah. So in between betrothal and marriage, and betrothal could last for like a year or more. Betrothal was basically the man and the father inking the contract, basically. Right. But then there was a period. Hammering out the details, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, yeah. Entering into the negotiations and everything. And then there could be like a year or more period of betrothal. And at that point, she's—in the eyes of the law, she belongs to her husband, even though it has not been consummated yet. And so the Deuteronomy 22.8 is like, well, let's see what happens if a betrothed woman is sexually assaulted. And it's like if it happens in the city, then they're both stoned because she should have cried out. And, you know, obviously somebody would have come and stopped it. Right. But if it happens in the open country, then obviously she did cry out, but nobody was around to come and stop it. So she didn't do anything wrong. So only he is stoned. And then we get to the the woman who's neither betrothed nor married. And that's where if he grabs her and lays with her and and a lot of apologists want to try to insist that that the verb tafas there in Hebrew means it's just a taking hold of. There's no force implied, 100% false. It is entirely about grabbing someone against their will and restraining them. And in that case, what happens is the man must marry her and then pays the father an elevated bride price. And the idea there is that, again, by rendering her tainted goods so that she cannot enter into proper Israelite marriage, he has deprived the father of the income from the bride price. And so the restitution, the first restitution that is mentioned is 50 shekels to the young woman's father and she shall become his wife. Again, obviously not really worried about what the woman thinks because what she thinks doesn't matter. It's the people who are writing this law are trying to make it sound like they're covering all the bases. We've accounted for that. He has to marry her. He can't divorce her for the rest of his life. That way we're taking care of her. She can be a good contributing member of society as a wife of her rapist. And ([Time 0:27:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ba02c215-af47-4b9f-8997-e184d0a5a3d5)) - **Jesus on Divorce and Protection** - Jesus refines Torah laws on divorce to protect women from unilateral divorce abuse. - Divorce was limited to cases of sexual immorality, emphasizing marriage's sacredness. Transcript: Dan Beecher And what is the chapter and verse for this week? The reading this week comes to us from Matthew chapter 5. Dan McClellan From the gospel according to Matthew. We're going to be in, yeah, this is the Sermon on the Mount. We're going to be in chapter 5, verses 31 and 32. Concerning divorce is the section heading that we generally see in Bibles that add section headings. If I were putting this section in a book of mine, I would have to give it a song title or song lyrics or something like that as a name. Concerning Divorce. There are not a lot of songs about divorce, are there? Dan Beecher No, there should be. Yeah. Or if there are, the word divorce is not in the title. Dan McClellan No, no, it's not. There are a lot of country songs. I can think of some Toby Keith songs. My wife left me and my dog left me and my truck left me. Now I'm sad. Yeah, I think there's a song, That Ain't My Truck, in the drive or something like that. So from the NRSVUE, it was also said, and this is Jesus, who's basically saying, here's what's written, and I'm overruling that. Dan Beecher Or yeah, here's what's written. Yeah, in this case, here's what's written, and I raise you. Dan McClellan Well, and that's what's going on in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is, because Jesus says, unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. So a lot of people are thinking Jesus is replacing the law of Moses with the law of the gospel. No, not in Matthew. Matthew is a Judaizer. Matthew is saying, I see your law of Moses. I raise you. Don't even think about it. And here he says, it was also said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, her to commit adultery and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery and so that Dan Beecher Is bonkers to me first of all first will you walk me through something because i when i first read this uh passage my brain immediately assumed that it knew what sexual immorality was, And then I thought, you know what? This is the Bible. I might not know what that's referring to. I don't think I should just automatically assume that I understand what we mean when we say sexual immorality. Dan McClellan And that's a hurdle that you have cleared that probably 95% of Bible believers either struggle with clearing or just refuse to even try to clear. And that's a wonderful point. So the word here should be pornea. Let me just make, yes, porneas, logo porneas, P-E. So porneia refers to, like, sexual immorality is a fine translation. The word is most closely related for the term for a sex worker. And so the two, like, central kinds of sexual indiscretions that were associated with pornea in this time period would have been sex work and adultery. Now, we talked just a minute ago about how sex workers were prolific in ancient West Asia in the first half, probably most of the second half of the first millennium BCE. A little more stigmatized in this period. They're not quite as prolific. Polygamy is not outlawed within Judaism, but most folks are like, eh, we don't really do that that much anymore. So that's not really going on. But so adultery, sex work, and then anything else that was considered sexually immoral by whatever group is using the term. Okay. So you can't go back and find a list of everything that constituted pornea. It was basically, again, another example of choose your own adventure. It was whatever the group decided was problematic. Dan Beecher I think that that's a really interesting and useful point. I think it's useful to point out that even within the Bible, the mores change over time and it becomes a and and so like to say that the bible says x about how how marriages should work is Ignoring the fact that that has that actually modifies itself even through through the bible uh as as you as it as their society progressed through time. Dan McClellan Yeah. And when you look in the Bible, you brought up polygamy earlier. Like if you just go by the numbers, it's like a thousand to zero. There's no part of the New Testament that prohibits or even badmouths polygamy. Right. And there are a bunch of passages that treat it as normative, that presuppose its normativity. And yet Christians will be like, oh, no, no, no, I can't do polygamy. That's against the rules. It's like, that's not a biblical principle. I mean, at best, you've got a passage in the pastoral epistles that says an overseer will be the husband of one wife, which could mean monogamy. If you want to be an overseer, then you have to adopt this higher law. Or it could just mean they didn't get remarried after divorce or after the death of a spouse or something like that. So even that, which is the best they have, is not crystal clear. So yeah, it's not univocal. And if you're going by the numbers, polygamy way outweighs opposition to polygamy. And so the, yeah, this probably is a reference to, I mean, somebody in the first century CE heard this, their assumption probably would have been, oh, adultery. But yeah, it could include other things. Dan Beecher And again, adultery in this case, because I mean, we talked earlier about how adultery didn't mean what we assume it to mean now, at least in older times. What does adultery mean in this case? Dan McClellan By this time period, there's a lot more parity so that a man was not supposed to engage in sexual intercourse with someone else because polygamy is kind of on the outs a little bit. Right. That was not ([Time 0:37:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/54baf9c8-0603-4381-a2e0-58dd9e703281)) - **Unilateral Divorce Authority** - In Deuteronomy, men had unilateral power to divorce by giving a certificate of divorce. - This legal power often disadvantaged women, creating social vulnerability. Transcript: Dan McClellan Yes. And that's, we don't have a piece of legislation in the Hebrew Bible that's like, and now we're going to talk about certificates of divorce. But we do have in Deuteronomy 24, 24-1, suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman, but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her. And there's a lot of debate about what this means, if he had to have really good reason or if he just didn't like the way she cooked or something. We don't know. Presumably, he could have gotten away with just about anything. And so he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house. Then she leaves his house and goes off to become another man's wife. Then suppose the second man dislikes her, writes her a bill of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house. Or the second man who married her dies. Her first husband, who sent her away, is not permitted to take her again to be his wife after she has been defiled. I imagine the verb there in Hebrew is ana, but I did not look this up. Dan Beecher We're all very disappointed in you, Dan. Dan McClellan Verse 4. Oh, no, it's not. It is the hotpail of Tamah to be unclean. So she has been rendered unclean, excuse me. For that would be abhorrent to the Lord, and you shall not bring guilt on the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a possession. And again, we're going back to this idea that these actions generate some kind of metaphysical contamination that gets out onto the land. And it's the land itself that cannot tolerate these things because it's going to barf you out. It's going to get all Bartholomew um on you hopefully you you get that movie um that one i got okay good thank you and and so we have this weird thing where they're basically saying she leaves One guy goes and marries another guy she can't go back to the first guy because she's been, you know, she's tainted goods all over again or something like that. There's a lot of debate about all the different aspects of this. But we get this idea of he can be like, all right, look, I'm writing you a certificate. Take it and go. But one of the things that this kind of contributes to is the idea that the man had unilateral authority over divorce. And even in the New Testament, it is the woman who is the victim of this. And in fact, a lot of ([Time 0:48:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2ebfb6b0-0e87-464b-9817-951fe29b3deb)) - **Balanced View on Divorce** - Do not view divorce as universally bad or good; evaluate individual circumstances. - Divorce can save lives and relieve trauma, especially when marriage is harmful. Transcript: Dan Beecher Not have been. So don't, it's a very strange position to take. Well, certainly divorce causes a lot of trauma, particularly for children. Dan McClellan And a lot of people are never the same a lot of people never get over that and at the same time divorce saves lives yeah um in a lot of instances and so because marriage often causes trauma Dan Beecher Yeah because people not everybody marries somebody who is good at marriage yeah and and not all marriages are, you know, like, you don't know if you're going to be, if your marriage is Going to work. The only way to test whether your marriage is going to work is to get married and then it's too late. So, uh, there's no, there's no way to know for sure. I, I think it's, uh, I think, I, I think I personally feel like divorce is, if I were a believer, I would think it was a gift from God because there's so many people for whom it is the savior Of their lives. It literally makes their lives tolerable again. Dan McClellan Yeah. And, and to try to, to try to compel people or try to make it seem like you're not a real Christian or you're not really married or you're not a real American unless you enter into this double Super secret covenant marriage like that, that's so ridiculous. And really, it's really doing one over on the marginalized groups, and particularly women, who have always had a lot less power when it comes to marriage and particularly divorce. And so I think divorce serves the interests of women far more than it does the interests of men. But I think that is something that people need. They need that available. And maybe people make the wrong choice by it, but yeah, just as many people make the right choice by it. And I think even if there's trauma involved, who's to say that the trauma would not have been multiplied had a couple stayed together? Right. Yeah, so I think the retreating to kind of blanket counsel for all people, divorce is unilaterally a bad thing or unilaterally a good thing, I think is more ideological, is more dogmatic ([Time 1:00:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ee082fd3-7fe8-4a77-92af-c135be4faa5d)) - **Hosts' Personal Divorce Stories** - Dan Beecher and Dan McClellan share personal divorce experiences positively impacting their lives. - They illustrate that divorce can coexist with ongoing love and positive relationships post-separation. Transcript: Dan McClellan Very little connection to divorce. My parents are still married. However, all four of my grandparents divorced and were with other people. All that happened before I was born. So I only got, you know, I got to know four different sets of grandparents. Have you had any interactions with divorce? Dan Beecher My parents divorced when I was in my late teens, and I've been divorced. Dan McClellan So yes, I've been touched by it in many different ways. Okay. So some of us are, 50% of us at least, are speaking from direct experience. Yes, indeed. Okay. I just wanted to, to just in case anybody was wondering if, if, if any of us had any, any leg to stand on in that regard. Absolutely. Well, and, and, and sorry to, to out you if, if that was not something that. Dan Beecher No, I mean, I, my, I'm, you know, I think you, you felt okay doing that because you know that I'm kind of an open book about these sorts of things. But yeah, I mean, I had a previous marriage. My wife was part of a previous marriage, so I guess I'm causing her to commit adultery. I just realized that, according to Jesus. That's a little... Dan McClellan It's quite a pyramid scheme. Yeah, it is. It is. Dan Beecher There's a whole bunch of adultery happening apparently. But yeah, I mean, for both of us and I think, I won't speak for our former partners, but for both of us, divorce was absolutely the right thing and a very positive step, even though we both Continued to love our partners. It wasn't that, you know, but it was, and my wife, her ex is one of her best friends. She loves him. So, you know, it doesn't have to, it can be this horrible, traumatic, very difficult thing. It can also be just exactly the right thing and what is called for. And I don't think that any one, as you say, I don't think that any one rule can encompass what this thing is. So there you go. ([Time 1:03:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/36c96309-b0b6-4f7e-8a54-72a9683c596d))