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.
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.
