Does Marriage Make Sense?
I wrote this post a few years ago… and I this theme still repeatedly comes into my life. Many of my friends are now married, or want to be married… but I am still not sure about the idea. It seems like the modern marriage is what you make it and having someone around for the long-term and adopting them as family seems great… but I have seen so few marriages that I know that work well in practice. I think I am more open to the idea than I was when I wrote this though – since after living alone for almost two years – I realized… living on your own doesn’t make sense either!
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Marriage Doesn’t Make Sense
"Forget about the dog, beware of my wife!"
I saw this on a pick-up truck the other day.
"Wow – who would want to marry this jerk," I think.
"Well, maybe they have a laughing relationship, where they good-naturedly joke about these things"… joke about her being worse than a dog.
It makes me wonder – does marriage make sense anymore, given the way that the rest of the world has changed? Women can support themselves. Families are smaller. Loyalty and commitment are traded for individual well-being. Someone who worked at the same company for 25 years used to be celebrated. Today, it seems more like they were not brave or capable or they lacked other opportunities.
When people get married they stop being sexual beings. "Now I have to only make love to the contractually obligated person." was how my best married-friend described it. Something about that predictability and obligation makes each person less alive and vibrant. Some stop caring about how they look. Others stop living in the present and taking risks and lead an increasingly conservative life.
Married people move to the suburbs – suddenly they don’t seem to be living life to the fullest. I always thought that their priorities were simply changing – away from living their lives for themselves and creating their own destiny – and moving towards taking care of children and carrying the responsibility of land-ownership. I figured that there was a whole new fulfillment there.
It seems that the new fulfillment is just a myth. As I have been working in the suburbs for five years (commuting out from the city) I have been surprised to find that many married people are still vibrant inside and long for something else. They are good, nice, kind-hearted people – doing exactly what their parents would be proud of them for – but they are profoundly affected by the constraints of marriage.
A fundamental part of being a man is that when a beautiful woman passes, he turns his head. He wants to talk to her, look at her more closely, and touch her. I am a young, professional woman on the trade-show circuit – no matter what your looks are like, in this situation you get approached by married men. Of course I say "no" and feel embarrassed even if I really want to be with him. Situations like this make men bring their passions underground, with affairs, prostitutes and for the more decent ones, pornography.
A fundamental part of being a woman is that she wants to be noticed and appreciated. One of the most beautiful married women I know, doesn’t get noticed by her husband much less fully appreciated. Men send her drinks regularly, even across an NHL hockey arena once, but she has to instead go home and be ignored. Many talk about their love-affairs with their husbands as something in the past, rather than something they feel every single day. Others just totally let themselves go and all they have as proof that they were once beautiful is a smiling, well-polished wedding-day picture of themselves on their desks.
One reason many people get married is because it is much easier to raise kids together than alone. They talk about great benefits for kids who grow up in a two-parent homes with two people who love them, two income earners, two decision makers and two role-models.* This is a very natural and noble reason – but is it possible to really give up on your own needs altogether and be entirely fulfilled living only for someone else? Also – after kids have grown many marriages stay together. We celebrate 25 and 50 year anniversaries, but is it really an achievement? Isn’t it insulting that we have to congratulate couples on staying together because it is such a chore?
It is sad, that for many many people getting married is an end of something. Even the "good guys" sit on the couch and watch young, sexy women on TV all night. Even the "good girls" crowd around the single girl’s desk on Monday morning vicariously living through her weekend as she tells it.
So… if it makes people unhappy, why don’t we find another way? We all know that half of marriages end in divorce. Why do we insist on getting married just because that is what couples are supposed to do? Some people might have no confidence and think they can’t do any better. That is simply a sad case. What about the rest of us? Why don’t we let ourselves fall in and out of love naturally, and build our institutions around it, instead of sticking to something outdated?
It is difficult to find a substitute for marriage that still makes everyone comfortable and avoids pitfalls like jealousy and still does the right thing for children. It has perhaps remained an institution because people simply can’t think of a smarter way. Some say that serial-monogamy is the answer. Hopefully… one day we will find a better arrangement that fits today’s world. Marriage doesn’t make sense anymore. Maybe we should be the generation who finds something to replace it.
*There are many effective single parents in the world who have kids who grow up to be amazing (I say this as a child of a single mom.). This is just stating reasons why people get married. I am not at all insulting people who raise their children alone.
Hi there. I enjoyed reading your post. Coincidently, I wrote about this very same topic today on my own blog NOW in this post The Path Of Surety. My take on how I came to choose single parenting.
Nice to find you on MyBlogLog and nice to meet you!
I think your perception of marriages are accurate, but I think those sad people with sad lives are merely because they chose the wrong person.
I’m not yet married but i’m fully confident I’ve met people who would let me be me, and I would let them be them. Married people can appreciate each other and make each other feel special or sexy.
Part of the problem too, I think, is that people are looking too much at superficial things. 2 very applicable phrases are that beauty is only skin deep and beauty fades.
Of course, on the other hand, marriage really isn’t for everyone, but these people are the minority.
Well i’m all for not getting married these days, it just doesn’t have the same meaning and pureness it used to. I have been with the same fella for 10yrs and marriage isn’t even a thought for us, we are happy just being us we don’t need an expensive piece of paper to allow people to look at us like we have done right by each other and our parents etc, we have chosen each other as people we wish to stay with and tolerate for as long as we can lol we have agreed on not staying together for your children as i believe that can be more detrimental to a child than divorce, we already have one child and neither of us would ever want to hurt him in any way shape or form and as for that initial comment of “forget about the dog beware of my wife” thats exactly what my partner and i are like, we can put crap on each other and laugh because we are honest and accept each other for who we are and at the same time we love a good laugh so if he wants to call me a bushpig in a loving way he can and if i want to tell him his penis makes my hands look big i can because we know what each other are about and we respect each other, and to be honest it is just great i couldn’t ask for much more even the good sex is still there, but i will let you know how i feel in another 10 years time lmao.
Reading this made me think of the quote you had in your Big Brother post -
“We believe that people willing to trade freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both.”
Too often, people marry out of the hope that they’ll find a safe place in this big scary world, I think, and it takes a while to learn that we need to rely on ourselves for security, happiness, fulfillment, etc. Some of us take a verrrry long time to get that, too!
It’s interesting that despite all the failed marriages and otherwise unhappy marriages, there seems to be no shortage of people wanting to get married, including people on the fringe that have expended great time and expense fighting for the right to marry.
Domestika’s comment on the relationship between freedom and security might be right on the money. How many people get married in an attempt to remedy some perceived lack in their life?
It might also be true, though (and this is more troubling) that people grow in different ways and at different rates, and people may very well simply grow apart – especially when the marriage contract can last up to 65 years or more.
Thanks for the comments. I think that people want to get together somehow… but getting together in the form of a life-long marriage contract is becoming less and less what people are looking for. Meanwhile, the marriage business is booming, with people spending more and more on larger and larger weddings. There is an excellent book about that called “The Meaning of Wife” by Anne Kingston.
Being a veteran of a failed 11 year marriage, maybe I can shed some light. Your post actually speaks to some of the very things that concern me about peoples’ impression of ‘what marriage is’. I never thought of divorce as an option (but obviously my ex did
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My ex came from a home that had been through multiple divorces. I came from a family with no divorces. The differences in perception were obvious when our marriage started having problems. She made up her mind that it was time to divorce, I thought it was time that we worked on our relationship.
I’m not putting my ex down at all. In fact, I joke that I’m “happily divorced”. But the difference in perception of what marriage was was simply startling. I never thought of it as disposable, but she did. It really shocked the heck out of me.
We live in a world where we are pushed to find happiness outside of ourselves everyday… bigger house = happy, more money = happy, better job = happy, married = happy, kids = happy, divorce = happy…
We have forgotten that happiness is something that is found inside and not outside. You can continue seeking happiness your entire life and never find it… because you’re not looking for it within.
Don’t look to marriage for happiness or to improve your life, your lifestyle, etc. Look to marriage when you’re ready to commit your life to working on that marriage. Marriage isn’t a solution, in many ways it simply brings more problems.
Look in an elderly couples’ eyes that have been married for 50 years + and you’ll see what marriage is really about. The undying commitment, love and sacrifice that has led to successfully sharing your life with another human being. It’s the marathon of marathons and they made it!
You can’t find a better friend than that, can you? Can you think of anything more fulfilling as you end your time on Earth? Is there anything more romantic?
I’ve not given up on marriage.
Warmest Regards,
Doug