Thoughts on Marriage!

So here it is - the marriage thread.

This could be a broad topic, but I'd be keen to know your individual thoughts on marriage - are you married / plan to get married / would like someday to get married? What's that about for you?

And on the other side, from more of a pan-social point of view, how do you see weddings and marriage and their place in society?

Most of my thoughts are pre-emptive responses to what I think other people think, so I'll keep those to myself for now. I will say that, in general, marriage is a good thing when it is honoured, but that some of the traditions and circumstances that lead to marriage, and how that marriage should look, are often not good at all. I support what I have come to perceive as a 'modern marriage' - one of equality, and one that comes about after a relationship has matured, rather than a reactionary decision based on pregnancy or pressure.

What do you think?

Quote from alakazam

I'm not married, I would love to get married someday, but I've accepted the fact that it will probably never happen because the chances of me finding a partner whom I would love and who would love me are almost inexistent.

That's quite a statement! Love is unpredictable - cheesy but true. When I broke up with my partner for cheating, I'd completely given up on love or that anyone would value me in that way. That was also the day I met my wife. I know there's nothing more irritating than someone giving you sickly-sweet messages of hope when you're feeling hopeless. But, well, I do pride myself on being irritating.

Quote from alakazam

Where did you meet her, if you don't mind my asking?

I'd just broken up with a girl and I was travelling back to uni (college). As I got off the train, I bumped into a friend. I was feeling empty and exhausted, like I just wanted to be on my own. But she managed to harass me into going out with her and her mates for a drink. One of her mates was Safron, now my wife. I'm not socially gifted. At all. Especially with girls and charm. But it was her who did all the work trying to chat me up. It was the weirdest experience - actually being chatted up? That was a first. Suffice to say, she didn't have to try very hard. Luckily for me, she was also a lovely person. And so here we are now.

Quote from LinkSkywalker

Do you mind if I throw the serious discussion tag on this thread?

Good idea. Congratulations, btw, on finding happiness. It's like escaping a desert.

On to the potential disagreements :^o^:

Wall of text, here we come.

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We don't really 'plan' to get married, but we agree that we probably will. The agreements we make will not be those of a typical marriage (neither of us believe in monogamy, neither of us believe in staying together 'forever.') But marriage is a very handy & inexpensive way to take care of a lot of legal agreements. It's easier to get married than it is for me to go to a lawyer and make her my medical proxy + the primary beneficiary of my will + etc. etc. etc.

Monogomy is a topic that confuses me. I used to be all for free loving. I mean, what is sexual restraint except a socially indoctrinated OCD? Just like ideas of etiquette, honour, or anything else that distracts from the simple goal of finding / giving happiness. But then whenever someone I've been with was involved with someone else, it hurts. It's not a sensation I associate with normal jealousy, like a child covets someone else's game. What struck me was that it hurt deeply even despite my free sex values. Especially when my previous fiancee cheated on me. I felt like I wasn't worth anything - which isn't a logical response. It affected me for a long time. So then I started thinking, maybe the desire for sexual exclusivity isn't socially learnt. What if it's inherent in our natures? Furthermore, there was a problem with my assumption that my emotions were illogical. That is, the thing which I am aiming for, by nature, is happiness. My happiness is largely determined by my emotional state. Thus, logic is a tool which should be used in the service of finding a happier emotional state. Logic is a tool which can help me achieve that. It isn't the other way around - to try and use logic to dictate my emotions is not only unrealistic, it's missing the point. So, I accept that sexual exclusivity is a condition of my happiness, and that it's probably the same for most other people.

That said, there seems to be a fraction of the population - some old friends of mine, and perhaps you too - that seem genuinely unbothered by it. It may be that these people's brains are wired differently, or that their response to whatever causes sexual 'jealousy' is different, I have no idea. But for these people, sexual unfaithfulness causes no misery, and so for them, it's perfectly moral. I suppose the difficulty would be if one of those people got with someone who was affected by it - it would then be a test of the former's discipline and trust in what their partner was claiming. But, if two people are happy in an open relationship where they have sex with other people, it angers me when society demonises them. It should never be enforced that what makes me happy should make you happy. People have always been intolerant of diversity. THAT is definitely a natural human vice. The dark side of the theory of self.

So, I guess I'm not for or against monogamy as a stand-alone concept, because each relationship is unique. But I do judge people harshly who cheat when they had reasonable knowledge that their partner would be hurt. Just like any act that causes suffering.

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Would I like to get married? I'm honestly pretty apathetic about it. It doesn't seem important to me anymore. I was passionate about getting married when I was a younger man, but I think that I only wanted to get married because marriage seemed like magic to me back then. Once you got married, you got to have sex! Except a sexual relationship actually works a whole lot better if you focus on your partner, rather than on a legal agreement. Once you get married, you know someone will love you forever! Except that's nonsense. People fall out of love all the time, and being married doesn't stop it from happening. All it does is, perhaps, encourage people to stay in situations that make them miserable because of social pressure.

There is no such thing as unconditional love. That terrifies us, so we try to find all these ways to pretend that love isn't conditional. But it is. All love is conditional, and I think we'd all be happier if we accepted that.

Love should never be unconditional. It often is, because it's outside of our control - most abused spouses still love their partners. but I'm getting off-topic.

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I can't quite figure out what you mean by this question that is distinct from other questions here. Could you elaborate on what you're asking for me, if it's relevant?

Nothing really. I was worried that people might answer 'Why yes, I do', to the first question, so I added that just to be sure.

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That being said, I think that the purpose of marriage is security. We've been fed a fairy tale that once you get married, the person you marry will love and support you forever, and you'll never have to worry about being alone again. It's a fairy tale that fell apart for a lot of us, given the divorce rate of the previous couple generations. But there's still a powerful emotional urge to believe it. Because, ya know, being loved and supported forever sounds pretty fucking awesome, am I right?

There's also the weight of history to consider. People from older generations tend to think that there's a "right way to do things." People who are my age don't tend to buy into that nonsense, but a lot of us have parents who pressure us to get married. In their eyes we're not really adults until we bind ourselves to someone. So there's that aspect to consider. Marriage is really important to older folks for reasons of propriety and tradition; and they pressure younger folks to adhere to their views.

If I may ask you: if the relationship has matured, what benefit does marriage add?

For us, becoming married was a formalising of what we already were. We were already behaving in all the ways expected in marriage - we lived together, shopped together, banked together, etc. We were very secure. I feel that, had we not gotten married, we would still be together for a very long time. So, from that point of view, nothing is added. But it does serve a few purposes. The legal thing, obviously. Also, it's a handy social statement. Calling yourself boyfriend and girlfriend has an air high-school immaturity that you then have to go to some length to elaborate on before people understand it fairly. Being married means you fall into a convenient social construct that more aptly describes the situation. There is also, admittedly, an element of pressure - we know our relationship will be more respected, and that family will see it as more permanent, because we are married. But we don't feel that we're promising anything we hadn't already committed to.

Psychologically, it created a new phase of our relationship. People love to categorise and name things. It was like saying, 'So we've done the meeting and the building, our relationship is mature and secure, let's sign that off and carry on.' Which is nonsense, because we're always working on being better partners for each other, but it was nice to stop, take a rest, and reflect on how far we'd come.

Propriety is something I'm not a big fan of, along with etiquette, chivalry etc. But marriage, I feel, is changing in ways the older generation did not intend. For a start, the whole 'no sex before marriage' thing? My father-in-law said, sardonically, 'These days, it's no marriage before sex!' But actually, he's right. And good thing, too. Getting married before sex is naive and hugely risky. I'm a firm believer in no marriage before sex. I'm glad he hasn't gotten his way on that point. And, my wife didn't take my name, I took hers. The thing to bear in mind is that no matter how much the older generation tries to claim ownership and authority over things like marriage, the concept of marriage predates any of their cultural constructs. It predated Christianity. It predates pretty much everything. And it has always been changing.

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This wasn't really relevant elsewhere, but since you so graciously asked what I think in such a broad way...=P

Muahaha it worked!

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As I've said before, symbols are important to me. I've come to respect that I am, perhaps, in the minority in this regard. When I see a father giving away his daughter on the altar, I see a statement that "THIS HUMAN BEING IS PROPERTY WHICH IS BEING PASSED FROM ONE MAN TO ANOTHER AS A BUSINESS TRANSACTION." It freaks me the fuck out that people are okay with that, and I don't ever want to be part of it myself. Buuuuuuuuuuuut I think most people really just see it as a quaint tradition with no real meaning anymore. Which is fine. You do you, ya know? Just don't ask me to participate. =P

-ALSO- there's the whole economic part of marriage to consider. The wedding industry is a fuckin SCAM. If you call a florist and ask for flowers, it costs $100. If you ask for wedding flowers, it costs $1500. It's seriously in the top 5 of corrupt industries in the U.S. Right up there with the death industry, and the prison industrial complex.

Yes, it is a scam. We got around a lot of that by finding a venue that was lovely and cheap (jackpot), who charged not much above cost. She also picked out her dress from a charity shop for £30. The dad giving away the bride is something that troubled me. Ultimately, I went along with it because it's what she wanted. I feel like I failed a little, because I think weddings should be updated to reflect the 21st century western values that we uphold. But I let Safron have her way because I felt it should be more her day than mine. that a wedding day is one of the few things aimed at women that men respect. Women are always 'proving' their equality by stating how much they like that one guy-ish film, or sometimes wearing guy-y clothes, or reminding us of that one woman who loves Call of Duty. Bringing women into all the things considered masculine. Essentially, bringing them towards us. That's not equality. When's the last time a guy went out in a dress purely in support of gender equality? Or tried to convince anyone they liked chick-flicks more than Star Wars or Lord of the Rings? So, a wedding day is something, in many ways, quite girly - all the wedding-themed movies, the pretty dress - a feminine event that is held up on a pedestal. Given all the shit women still take, they deserve a day like that.

And finally, as a celebration, it's nice to celebrate our relationship publicly.

Would I be right in saying that it's not weddings you disagree with, but the form they take? Is there a 'version' of a wedding and/or marriage that would better celebrate or express your vision of love?

Quote from LinkSkywalker

Put concisely: the fact that I get sad about my ex having sex with other people doesn't mean that the sex is the thing that makes me sad. The sex is a symbol of something deeper.

I agree with that. What I don't know if I could ever see sex with my wife as anything other than a symbol of something deeper. Do I feel the need for the sex to be exclusive because it was the agreement when we got together? Or is it pre-determined in my neural makeup (and maybe not in other people's)? So, from a values point of view, if I had entered the relationship as a sexually open one, a) would we have bonded quite so strongly and b) if we had, would we get to a point down the line where I/she started feeling the need to make the sex exclusive? Does the exclusivity of sex make us feel romantically dependant on each other? And if so, there's potentially a big debate about whether that's a good thing or not. The unifying point in all that, for me, is that there's just too many unknowns. Sexual exclusivity starts to look like a very safe bet. In the end, is it inevitable that sex will become a symbol of something deeper? So -

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I'm not trying to talk you out of monogamy or anything. If it makes you happy, I support it. But I think my experience provides a relevant counterpoint to your argument.

Not necessarily. Firstly, if you're right that the sex is a psychological symbol of something deeper, does it make a difference in practical terms? If the symbol cannot be separated from the action, then in practice, don't the two become almost synonymous? Secondly, you and I may simply be wired differently - maybe if I somehow experienced the same relationship you are in, I WOULD be bothered, for reasons that are more genetic than psychologically traceable. I'm not trying to degrade your choices, as I'm sure you know, but to the overall question of the value of monogamy, they seem like relevant questions. They are questions I find difficult to answer, and that uncertainty is part of what leans me toward monogamy, because that's safe. And such a long-standing and healthy relationship is something I like to keep as far away from risk as I can. Not that we couldn't handle it, but if it made us permanently less happy in some way we couldn't overcome, it would be a big price to pay to satisfy my curiosity. And to add to that uncertainty -

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That's a totally different thing. If my girlfriend goes out and fucks somebody, then comes home and tells me how great the sex was and how he did this thing with his finger that she wants me to try, that doesn't bother me at all. BUT, if my girlfriend tells me she never wants to fuck anybody else but me, then she goes out and fucks somebody else anyway, and tries to keep it secret? That's a totally different thing. That's a lie. A betrayal. Not the same.

I'm sorry you had to go through that.

My need for sexual exclusivity may be a semi-traumatic response to that experience. It could also be socially learnt. It could be hardwired. It could be something that's built into this particular relationship. So many possibilities, only one option that works for all of them.

I think at this point, I'd like to clarify the discussion by separating monogamy as a value (holding it as morally superior) from monogamy as a practice (a behaviour or preference). If we're talking about the former, I agree that it's silly. With the latter, well, with so many uncertainties, who knows, quite frankly. I have a theory that a great deal of the world's ills are caused by people's tendency to confuse preferences with morals. But I guess that's another topic.

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Do they really feel love for their partners, or do they feel trapped?

Well, that's true for a lot of people. But my ex was shitty (details skipped for now, I'm not trying to appeal to emotion), and I loved her regardless, convincing myself there were reasons for her behaviours and that she was a good person at heart, like an addict rationalising his addiction. Even now I sometimes find myself trying to persuade my wife that it wasn't an abusive relationship, when I know it was. That would in fact support your view against marriage, in that it would make it more difficult for the abusive relationship to end had we gotten married (we were engaged). Having a long relationship before you get married helps somewhat, but to resolve this aspect of marriage we'd have to have a very lengthy discussion about domestic abuse. Solving the problem comes down to two avenues - dissuading marriage, or developing better means of detecting and intervening in abusive relationships. I opt for the second one.

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See, I'm way too eager to fight about this kinda thing. I usually shy away from confrontation, but if someone actually tries to call me out on my life choices I will take pleasure in verbally annihilating them with all the rhetorical skills life has given me. To paraphrase Sargon of Akkad: when I'm done there is not be a place for birds to perch away from the ground.

Nobody actually questioned the seriousness of our relationship before we were married. In many ways it was a self-inflicted pressure based on the assumption that people would take us more seriously. It was a bad reason to get married. Luckily, it wasn't the only reason.

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I super don't understand banking together. Do you have individual accounts that you both have access to, or do you actually pool your money? I think my girlfriend and I would breakup in a week if we did that. x'D

A bit of both? We have separate accounts, but also a series of joint accounts for various purposes. We didn't at first, but when we started shopping together, instead of taking turns or trying to split it, we set up a bank account to store our shopping budget. More convenient to pay by card. Then when we lived together, we had a budget for the rent. Before long we were planning all our finances together. When we were saving hard for the wedding / honeymoon, we had to account and plan for every penny. And now that I stay at home and look after the kid, I'm not earning any money I could call my own if I wanted to. And now we're saving for a house. We still have our separate accounts, but we've been working together for the same goals for so long that it feels strange to think of my money or her money. It's just money.

Quote from LinkSkywalker

I can see the value in taking time to gather the people we love and say "Hey. I'm serious about this. For reals. Now eat cake."

Yes, that's what I was trying to say! Amazing.

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On the other hand, the prevailing idea seems to be that marriage is the end goal of a relationship. But really, the marriage isn't the important part, and if you actually let yourself think that marriage is the "end" of anything, then you're probably going to fuck your marriage up pretty badly. Relationships need maintenance, as I'm sure you know.

I suppose, as with so many many things in life, the ritual can be great. The problem really arises when people start to focus more on the ritual than they do on the people.

*coughreligioncough*

Ahem.

Fully agreed. Marriage can be an achievement and a milestone, if you're into that. Some people get married because they think it will magically fix their relationship. Bad news.

I haven't talked religion in years! I got myself quite the notoriety once. Good ol' days... :I<3U:

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Compromise is a big part of a relationship. So if I was getting married and the lady I was with wanted to be given away by her father, I'd tell her I wasn't a fan of that tradition, I'd tell her why I wasn't a fan of that tradition, and I'd be interested in having a discussion about it. But, like you, I think I'd concede immediately that if it's something she wanted, then it's something we would do.

But I certainly wouldn't merely turn the whole ceremony over to her. I mean, what we're talking about is a ritual celebrating a relationship, and symbolically making it a permanent bond. If the entire thing is orchestrated by only one half of the couple, then I feel like it's failed at being an effective ritual. The ritual should represent both of the people participating in it. It should be two visions coming together to create a singular event, the same way two minds are coming together to create a single life together.

BUT THAT'S JUST ME BEING ALL ARTSY FARTSY. Like I said, I have a thing for symbols.

In other ways, the wedding was tailored to me. I think it leant slightly towards her ways because it was her childhood fantasy, not mine. But to bring it back to the bigger picture.

Weddings are changing. I don't know what it's like where you live, but around here, our sort of marriage (non-religious, woman not necessarily losing her name) is pretty common. Before long, the kind of wedding symbolism that you're talking about may become a minority choice, not a mainstream representation. It may even become a thing of the past (and good riddance).

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For sure it's not equality if it's an act. But if a woman actually likes those things, then it's just a shared interest.

If it's an act then that's weird, lying behavior. If Morrie someday told me she hates video games I'd be just as hurt as I would be if she cheated on me. That's fucked up.

I mean, I know a lot of guys who wear dresses. And I suppose that in some ways they know they're making a statement. But mostly they do it because they like dresses.

Ah, no, not that. What I'm trying to get at is a social habit. What follows is my own observation, which is hard to quantify, maybe it tallies to yours, maybe not. Take a woman who likes some things which are considered masculine, like 300, but also a lot of feminine things. If someone makes some sexist remark, like "women like such girly things", she's likely to respond with "That's not true! I love watching 300 with my boyfriend" or some such objection. What she's less likely to respond with is "yes, that's right, I am girly. I like lots of girly things. And you know what? That makes me equal to you." Or when someone tries to argue that men and women are not so different after all, they're likely to do so with examples of women breaking their stereotypes rather than examples of men breaking their stereotypes. It's like men don't need to break their stereotype because we're already considered good enough.

Our equalitarian society still looks up to the male sphere as the ultimate social role-model. That needs to change.

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In the end, a marriage I could accept would be a marriage that doesn't look any different than the relationship that came before it. And a wedding I could accept would be a public affirmation of that relationship. One which focused on the individuals binding themselves together. No officiant or anything like that.

Makes sense. I have nothing to say on this. But you answered my question, and it was what you closed your post with, so it seems somehow ignorant not to acknowledge it. So, uh, there we go. Good for you!