Your Locus of Control Is Where!?

Here's a juicy one: Love.

oh, relax. As if I would ever propose to blog about that hopelessly saturated topic. Believe it or not, not all female journalism students are aspiring to be the next Carrie Bradshaw. However, we do keep reading about love so I suppose I can't knock anyone for abiding by the law of supply and demand. Anyhow, this isn't about love, at least not directly.

And I will explicitly state that the subject of this blog is not intended to occur again--ever. But it was just that juicy and elicited that strong of a reaction from me (and others) that it has spurred me to crawl from under the blanket of blog-inactivity I've nestled beneath since my return home.

So here it is:

Is the success of a marriage a product of hard work or largely a gamble?

It was one question among a handful presented in my boyfriend's Organizational Behaviour textbookto determine where my locus of control was.

locus of control - A theoretical construct designed to assess a person's perceived control over his or her own behavior.

• Someone with an internal locus indicates she feels in control of events
• Someone with an external locus indicates that others are perceived to have that control

I laughed. "pfff...imagine? A marriage of luck!?

I answered A without hesitation. I mean, isn't it obvious? Are not we living in the 21st century where we are independent and crusaders of our own destiny?

Isn't that essentially the driving line behind some of the biggest marketing campaigns to hit the market in the past decade? Microsoft and "Where do you want to go today." Nike's Just Do It? Burger King's Have it your way? What else could be the inspiration behind cult sensations like Survivor and every single mass-produced self-help book, audio cassette, magazine article and rags-to-riches story available?

Aren't we masters of our own destinies?

Apparently not, at least not for people like my long-term boyfriend with a suddenly very obvious external locus of control.

I could feel it, hitting me square in the forehead like an evil pinprick: "And you thought you had him figured out, HA!" But little more was said. I was stunned into a quiet state of shock, my mind racing:

A gamble? A GAMBLE!?
Every fibre of what I had learned, witnessed and come to believe about the institution of marriage subscribed to the idea that it was about hard work, committment and sacrifice. And suddenly I was hearing someone liken the supposed "sanctity" of marriage to a corrupted habit favoured by sleazeballs and waysiders.

[Obviously, there are exceptions to the rule. I understand gambling is not akin to the Devil's past time and that there are plenty of perfectly honest and wholesome individuals who gamble. And, I also acknowledge that in life, in particular, we gamble all the time--I mean, we smoke, we pick Door #1 in stead of Door #13 and some of us even vote NDP.]

But can we really incorporate the idea of gambling into what the trusty ol' (and oh-so-politically-correct) Oxford Canadian Dictionary defines as the legal or religious union of two people ?

...til' death do us part, anyone?

So, can we?
Back to Oxford:

gamble. v. (gambles, gambled, gambling) 1. play games of chance for money. 2. a. bet (money etc) in gambling. b. lose (assests) by gambling 3. take great risks in the hope of substantial gain 4. act in the expectation of n. a risky undertaking

Okay, so far as I've heard, no one is going to pay me if I have a marriage to someone that works or does not work. Scratch #1.

And aside from the jealous ex-girlfriends and those unfortunate souls who don't believe in love, hopefully no one is betting on the success (or demise) of your marriage. Scratch #2

And as for 2b, I suppose marriage does mean the loss of certain assets like the freedom of singledom and the chance to ever marry Brad Pitt if you happen to run into him and he falls hopelessly head over heels...oo, Brad Pitt. Who wants to take THAT gamble? Jennifer lost out--or did she win?

That leaves #3 and #4. Is marriage a risky undertaking or a calculated risk? Is marriage a great risk we subject ourselves to in hopes of "substantial gain?" And is it still kosher to consider marriage a committment "for better or for worse"--or is it even still hip to consider that a substantial gain?

I'm not naive to the current divorce rate trends, nor to changing (and often negative) attitudes towards marriage. Not every marriage can work and I have no qualms about the necessity divorce can play in certain situations. However, destiny is not entirely out of our hands--at least not how we react to it. But surely the success of a marriage is riding on more than Lady Luck.

She may be pretty, but is she all we hopeless romanctics have?
I wonder if she's single....