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Thoughts on Marriage
I'm intentionally not married. I've been engaged twice, so I can literally say I'm intentionally not married, rather than simply lacking any offers and rationalizing it (which is not an uncommon accusation, believe it or not). People are always asking me why I don't want to get married. I have lots of answers. They think I'm weird. I think they're weird because when I ask them why they *do* want to get married, many people don't have any answer. (If you do have an answer, then clearly, I'm not talking about you).
People who want to marry for religious reasons, I understand that. I don't believe in religion, but I understand that other people do, and part of the belief structure often includes some kind of holy union with another person. OK, strange, but if you accept the first premise of some almighty god, then when he orders you to partner up with someone for life, you kinda have to give it your best shot. I get that. And now that society and god allows marrying for love, it's not even that terrible a deal.
People who want to marry for legal benefits, I understand that. I think they're crazy because the divorce rate is high enough that, statistically speaking, these same people who want financial and legal security through marriage are going to have to go through a shitload of trouble to untangle themselves legally and financially in a few years. I understand the desire to take advantage of governmental benefits and the idea that their love could someday fail is incomprehensible while still caught in the throws of happy brain chemicals and often an already-entangled life together. Getting an automatic permission slip to receive half of another person's medical benefits and lay claim to half his paycheck is a pretty nice perk. And when your brain is busy imprinting with the use of hormones, it's also understandable that people put themselves in the "exception to the rule" category, because, of course, no one who ever got divorced ever felt *this* way about each other! But, I digress. The point is, I get financial benefits.
People who want to make some sort of public affirmation of commitment in front of their friends, family, loved ones, and gods, I even understand that. Again, not something that I need to have, although I wouldn't mind an excuse to have a party where everyone is socially obligated to attend, pay attention to me and give me gifts! But seriously, I realize that some people gain something emotionally securing from making an announcement of commitment and future intentions. But this is a completely separate process from signing a legal document assigning rights and responsibilities to my relationship that can be regulated by law.
So many people don't give these answers, although they might use these as justifications when pressed. No, many people have only one answer to the question. The answer is "because we love each other". *This* answer I don't understand.
I had some TV show playing in the background while I worked on pictures. I have no idea what it was called, I wasn't actually paying attention at first. It was Valentine's Day and the girl was told by her sister that the girl's boyfriend was going to propose. She acted excited, but was caught consuming massive quantities of alcohol throughout the episode under a thinly-veiled excuse of being so excited that the wine helped her relax. At dinner, she makes herself a nervous wreck looking for hidden rings in drinks and food. Finally, he says he has something important to say, pulls out a jewelry box, and she jumps up and runs to the bathroom. The sister, hiding nearby, jumps on the boyfriend, learns that he's not going to propose and that he only has earrings. So she goes to the bathroom to calm the girl down and break the news, which should have been a relief since the girl reveals that she's not ready to get married. But, after dinner and stuck in traffic on their way out of town for a romantic ski weekend, the girl sulks because the boyfriend did not propose to her, even though she clearly didn't want to get married. They begin to argue. Here's the part that really caught my attention and sparked a journal entry:
Guy: I've seen my friends get divorced, my brother get divorced, even my parents are calling it quits after 30 years. Babe, I love you, but I just don't think marriage is for me.
Girl: Were you ever gonna tell me?
Guy: We've been going out a year, you never brought it up, I figured we were on the same page.
Girl: Evidently not.
Guy: Wait a minute, tonight when you thought I was gonna propose, you threw up! That doesn't exactly scream "be my Valentine".
Girl: That was when I thought about getting married *right now*. I still want to get married some day, to share my life with someone.
Guy: That's what we're doing right now! We love each other, we spend time together. Why change that?
Girl: I can't go on like this forever!
I stop here for a reason. That was the end of the discussion. She turns her head and stares out the window. He sighs and looks out the other window. There was no explanation about what the institute of marriage would bring to the relationship that would improve their relationship and what was wrong with their relationship currently that she couldn't "go on" in that vein.
We have a couple here, or anywhere, who has a "good" relationship (although one could debate "good relationship" if they could date a year before discovering that they had different opinions on marriage - that's a whole OTHER post!). I give you a hypothetical couple. They enjoy each others' company. They spend regular time together. Presumably they have an enjoyable sex life (if they're abstaining until marriage, that tends to go along with having a religious reason for marriage which I've ruled out, so let's assume they have sex). They have plans for the future. They take trips together. They support each other emotionally. There is only one thing wrong with their relationship. One of them is enjoying themselves immensely. The other thinks their relationship is unfulfilling because they haven't gotten married yet.
If I ask them, what will change when they get married, the answer is always nothing. Especially now that so many people live together first and often have kids out of wedlock (or from prior relationships). When you already live together, love together, and plan for the future together, what does a marriage change? Remember, we have already ruled out financial benefits and religious reasons. Most states have domestic partnership laws now, so many couples can even receive health benefits without getting married. I've had a joint checking account with someone before, so I don't need to get married to entangle my finances. I don't want kids, but most non-poly people I know had kids before getting married, so clearly that's not a requirement either. You want to make some sort of public affirmation about your love for your partner? That can be done without the license too, as every homosexual couple and poly third+ lifemate can attest.
So, if nothing is wrong with your existing relationship, and nothing will change after a wedding, then what's the point? As I've said above, I get money, I get god (well, I get that other people do, anyway), and I even get making public announcements of love.
What I don't get is getting all tangled up in a legal arrangement so complex and complicated that most people don't ever even learn what all the responsibilities and benefits *are* when a person can't even give a reason to do so. I do not believe in doing anything just because "you're s'posed to" or "it's the way it's always been done". If a person chooses to follow a traditional path, but does so because they've evaluated the options and believe that the traditional path is the right one for them, then I stand behind that decision all the way, even if I would not make that choice. The problem I have with people who choose the "traditional" path is when they do it without even understanding why they do it. Then they wonder why it all goes wrong. It's because they never knew what was right for them in the first place.
There's something interesting about our society. We get punished for inaction. Although there are some exceptions, many women who seek permanent sterilization before age 30 or before having at least one child get met with strong resistance. It seems kind of backwards to me. We are not expected to have plans or even a reason for having children, a decision that will alter the path of life for at least 2 people - most likely a whole bunch more, but choosing *not* to requires a list of reasons long enough to rival Santa's good/bad list. Getting married, a decision that permanently alters two people's futures in ways they never even fully comprehend and even has an impact on the greater society around them, only requires the reason "because I love them". Yet choosing to maintain one's current financial and legal status that one already understands and has had to make intentional choices about for the duration of one's adult life, while still allowing for sharing one's life romantically with another human being, however, needs explanation and justification and *still* is met with disapproval.
There's something wrong here.
This should be another post, but this one is titled "Thoughts on Marriage" and my television seems intent upon continuing this discussion.
So, the next show includes an argument between an engaged couple. The girl finds out that her parents squandered away her "marriage fund". She's broke and his parents are broke. In the middle of her breakdown as she realizes that she might have to buy a wedding dress - *gasp* - "off the rack", the guy reveals that he has some money set aside and they can use some of that. When she finds out the total, she is jubilant because it's the exact amount needed for Wedding Plan A. He says "Now, hold on here, we can't spend ALL the money". Here's where the argument ensues. She (and her friends who are within earshot) want to spend his entire savings on the wedding. He refuses to spend all his savings on "a party". He'd rather have a smaller wedding and have something left over for their future ... y'know, house down payments, kids college funds, that kind of stuff. She is completely aghast at the idea of not having the wedding of her dreams, even though it means bankrupting them. As she puts it, "we can always make more money, but we're only going to get married once". He puts his foot down and refuses to spend the full amount on the wedding, and leaves the room.
I have to agree with the guy here. This is pretty fucked up. Yet I see this all the time. Men are supposed to spend, what is it now? 3 months salary on a ring? A year? The cost of a wedding can quickly add up to more than my entire college career! That sounds like a GREAT way to start a life together with someone ... in hock up to their eyeballs with no money for housing or transportation. Silly me, I thought the point of a wedding was to make a pledge before your god and your family that two people are now pledged to living a shared life. But apparently it's to start that life as ass-poor as possible. I suppose that's one way to ensure the couple experiences the worse of "for better or worse" and the poor of "richer or poorer" lines in the vows.
This show ended on a less offensive note than the last one, at least. He recants and says she can have all his money. They can make do with only 2 kids and they'll flip a coin which one goes to college. Instead of the nice house with a yard and a mother-in-law suite above the garage, they can live in their current 2-bedroom apartment. When she discovers that he actually thought of their future together and was making actual plans by saving money for this future, she understands the true meaning of romance. She immediately softens and gives in, believing that he loves her and that planning for the future is a better start to their marriage than a big "party".
I'm just cranky today and I had to vent it somehow. I guess the marriage topic got it this time.
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Hope you cheer up soon.
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It's only been in the last century that the concept of marriage and the concept of love merged. Previously, marriage was a business contract and insurance that property got passed to heirs. And in lot of families, marriages were arranged to have best business or strategic prospects. Real romantic, eh?
I think if most brides really studied just what the elements of their dream wedding represented (ie. them being property that is being traded around) - I would hope most would think twice about it. But I'd probably be disappointed.
Commitments between two people don't happen in front of a group, or a minister, or a judge or otherwise. They happen while sipping coffee in pajamas, snuggled up in bed, over a casual dinner, playing video games, etc. If you're not already committed before going to the alter.. then you shouldn't be going. And when you understand that, you realize just how 'perfect' the party doesn't need to be.
For the first time in my life, I actually feel a intended lifetime partnership. Our 'ceremony' was held in private (well.. in public private) and spontaneously. We both reject the societal assumptions and tradition of marriage , and instead call it a unionization (taking after the civil union concept.. and the collective bargaining of a business union). No legal formatilies at this point, and unless there's solid reason to do so and the rights to do are available to all there won't be.. but our lives are already pretty intertwined. Joint credit cards, medical advanced directives and a business partnership which will be legally filed for soon, complete with a EIN so we can get a group insurance policy together. Now that's being conscious about the legal entanglements.
And we may just have a party to celebrate in the future with our friends and family.
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There is so much that we completely ignore about the whole marriage tradition. For instance, wearing white did not initially signify virginity, it signified wealth. Back before there were 24-hour laundromats and dry cleaning services, nobody could afford a dress that was only worn once, and wearing white almost guaranteed that you couldn't wear it again because it couldn't be cleaned. It wasn't until the Victorian age of purity that white became associated with virginity, and even still, white was reserved for the wealthy for a long time to come.
Little details like this drive me nuts. People enter into this arrangement that has long-lasting rights AND responsibilities that those who enter into it have no idea about. When's the last time anyone said "I love my boyfriend but I can't wait to get married so that I never have to testify against him in a court of law"? That's one of the automatic rights granted to married couples, that your spouse can't ever be called upon to incriminate you if (s)he doesn't want to, but no one ever thinks about it when they think about getting married.
And for the money thing, I've said it before and I'll say it again ... buying a ring you can't afford does not say "commitment", it says "here is someone who can't budget and I'm about to tie my future to his lack of financial ability". Signing up for a 30-year mortgage together makes a clear and definate statement that you intend to be together for at least 30 years - and it costs about the same as the ring does! Entangling finances, sharing medical benefits, forming a business corporation together - these all say "commitment". They entail legal and financial rights and responsibilities towards each other that both parties have to consciously and intentionally agree to because they're each spelled out individually by each contract. You know what you're getting into and you've made the decision to accept or reject each legal benefit. Congratulations to you both, I'm very happy for you. I wish more people were as aware as you two. There might be fewer divorces, or at least, fewer surprise endings.
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But the first 3/4 of the book are an excellent look into the 'tradition' of marriage and just what a short memory our culture has on 'tradition'.
And a great organization that I'll point you and your reader's to is the Alternatives to Marriage Project (http://www.unmarried.org). They're a great organization helping bring awareness to a lot of these topics.. and they cover polyamory too. When I get my activist energy back, it's an organization I fully intend to get more involved with.
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There's a good strong case to be made for choice, and being in a situation that's easy to get out of but staying anyway. It's real security when the other person can walk away in a second, and they choose to stay again and again. But there's also a case for wanting to make and receive promises that are strong and binding, too.
And I have to say, much as I agree that "why should I?" is more important than "why shouldn't I?", they both should be asked. Because I have seen some folks who only ask the first one, and it's usually a method of avoiding something.
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This is why I hope to one day marry as well. While I admit I have some vague poly leanings (more thought process than anything) in the end if I am going to long term take someone into my life (and my son's - currently 3) then I want them to know that while there is a back door (divorce) I won't be giving it easy. To parapharse "They will have to earn their way out".
As for why to or not... my take on it is
"Never marry for love alone but never marry without it" <-- I don't know that I made that up but I have been saying it so long that if I did get it from somewhere else I have no idea where that is.
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And as was said above, I find much more security in the knowledge that my partner *could* leave at any time and daily chooses not to, than in the idea that my partner *wants* to leave but doesn't because I've trapped him. If my partner wants out, I definately don't want to keep him around. As my sweetie
But at least marrying for the purpose of chaining someone up is keeping in tune with its original purpose - property "security" (even though he could be broke-ass poor) without love.
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If someone's answer is "I want to make a solemn vow", well, that's an answer. That either falls under the religious reasons or the public declaration part. What I'm complaining about is when there *is* no answer. That's an awful lot of trouble to get into for "no reason".
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Refinancing the house to get rid of the joint mortgage, dividing up joint property, separating out our accounts, deciding who got custody of the cat, etc. - that's where the work to disentangle came in. And you don't need marriage to get those entanglements. Heck, I'm going through all that right now with a partner who I lived with for 6 years.. and we even consciously kept our entanglements to a minimum *knowing* up front that we weren't a lifetime partnership.
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Husband and wife get divorced. During the marriage, husband "accidentally" participates in an illegal tax shelter, discovers what his friend got him into, pulled out, then donated money to a real charity to "make it right". Several years later, he gets audited. The IRS insists on going back so far that they investigate the time period during his marriage and discover the illegal action. Now the ex-wife owes the government half of $75,000, even though she knew nothing about it and isn't even married to him anymore. All because of the shared property laws that extend even past divorce.
These are the kinds of things that people don't think about. Your life, even your freedom, become tied up with another person and all the mistakes they can make. And when a relationship is going "well", it's really easy to believe that your trust is not misplaced and that love will never end. Everyone who ever got divorced believed that too.
Although I would love to have a relationship with someone that I can consider a "lifemate", I know the odds. And I know that I can build a life with someone, I can entangle my finances, share a mortgage, even make a public declaration of my commitment, all without the government getting involved and mucking about in my life in the event that things go wrong. I like hoping for the best while making plans for the worst. I find things tend to go more smoothly all around that way.
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However, I think the real reason some people want to marry is a feeling of safety. Not actual security, but a feeling of emotional safety.
If you look at your TV example, there is a huge and serious problem there based on him not wanting to marry. It's not that she wanted to marry him, but he doesn't want to marry her because he feels relationships often don't work out and he isn't necessarily intending to be with her for life. I think a marriage makes people feel like they have an agreement about how they view their relationship (sometimes whether or not they do have one) that not everyone is emotionally able to get without a marriage.
Plus, a few other things: People in our culture, especially women, are raised with a huge social pressure about marriage being good. Marriage is where "happily ever after" starts. If you're in a relationship, it's leading to marriage, then marriage is where you start having the "real" relationship. This isn't sensible, but it can have a strong emotional pull. So, it can feel like you're constantly waiting and it isn't real yet. It's not really a person's fault if they pick up these things by their culture and can't shake the emotional effects, and I doubt most people would have the self-awareness to articulate it.
Marriage is currently in a transition. We don't need it for most of the things we used to, but the stories and attitudes haven't caught up; they're still stuck in older models. It's going to take time for the culture to work through it. People are just like that.
There's also a huge cultural cachet that goes with marriage. I remember the first time I truly felt it and how bitter I was at it. I'd been in a relationship with my boyfriend for over 3 years, and it was a very serious and important thing. A huge part of my life. We lived in different states and seeing each other was difficult, and I needed to skip a class at college to go meet him at the Greyhound station (a class I was doing beyond well in and got an A in (the school didn't give +/- grades, so I couldn't do better)). I remember thinking how engrained in the culture that I was the statement, "I need to miss a class to meet my boyfriend at the Greyhound station" felt irresponsible and like people would judge me negatively. Whereas the statement, "I need to miss a class to meet my husband at the Greyhound station" felt responsible and like I was being a good person. And there was no difference between the two that should matter. Not everyone can live with saying something other than wife/husband and constantly bear the weight of other people's negative judgements. Although that is part of why I do not wish to marry, because only by not marrying can I make a real effort to help change it.
And we have all of these assumed power struggles... if a couple isn't married, the woman is seen as more of a failure for not being able to get him to marry her. In a way, the male is seen as "winning". It's crap; it's such total crap, but you still have to live with it.
I have, at least twice, been in relationships where I knew the man would marry me if it was what I wanted. One I am still in and hope to continue to still be in for a very long time. It'll be ten years this coming February, and we're hoping to have children together in a few years, which is certainly a massive entangling of our lives. But I choose not to marry, for many reasons. But I can understand how some people would take the easier path.
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The other cultural cachets that you speak of are also reasons why I speak out. We, as a society, are holding on to these pressures that "marriage" is a "good thing" even though the the "good things" that marriage provides are no longer available only through marriage. That's why I'm posing the question "why". When every answer they give can be met with "but you already have that", I am hoping to point out the dissonance between our old-fashioned beliefs and our modern and still-evolving practicalities of adult life.
I, too, have felt the pull that a "husband" would somehow validate a given relationship and make me appear "good" in the eyes of strangers and people I don't like, even though there would be no beneficial change (i.e. we already lived together, made plans together, shared finances, loved each other, etc.) and several non-beneficial changes (like my credit rating going down thanks to his poor financial judgement in the past). My realization of the futility of holding onto these unrealistic expectations in the face of more realistic financial and legal changes has given me a greater sense of freedom and a more fulfilling sense of my relationships and I hope to give others the opportunity to re-evaluate their own relationships and realize that the only thing wrong with their lives is that someone else told them something was wrong with their lives.
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The male character in this show is suspicious of relationships lasting indefinately, yes, but he indicated (which you possibly couldn't infer since I didn't exactly quote the conversation - more like quoted as closely as I could remember) that he intended to stick around for the long haul with her. His argument was that their relationship was already marriage-like in that they intend to be together, they make future plans together, and they're currently happy together. Some people also see other relationships of people in their lives that appear to be just fine until the couple got married. Suddenly the pressure of the wedding and the expectations of married life affect the quality of the relationship and some people blame the institution (and societal pressures) of marriage on that breakdown, and this observation may also play into his disinterest in marriage. Being a 30-minute sitcom, we can hardly expect to get really into the character's brain and see what exactly is going on there. But my impression of the character based on the argument was that he was not afraid of commitment, he felt committed to his relationship already and either saw the institution of marriage as a negative influence in marriage or he recognized that relationships often don't last forever and did not want the over-complicated hassle when it came time to dissolve the partnership.
And in this day and age of living together, joint checking accounts, co-signers on mortgages, they can make the kinds of agreements and entanglements that say "long-term" in a practical sense while still retaining their ability to keep a vindictive ex-wife from getting her hands on all your money when she decides she's entitled to it 15 years from now and avoiding an IRS audit when she find out her ex-husband sucked at filing taxes 10 years ago.
Recognizing that most relationships do not last forever (in addition to the 50% divorce statistic, many married people did not marry the first person they ever dated) while still intending to commit to a long-term relationship is not incompatible, IMO. When I bought my house, I fully intended to stay there for a long time. But people sell houses well before their 30-year mortgage is up. I don't see that recognizing this fact is necessarily indicative of a fear of committment, even though it could have been in the case of this character.