The Sanctity Of Marriage

I think the idea of marriage as a lock, guarantee, obligation, or logical stepping stone in a relationship's progress is a sham. I don't buy it.

Some people get married because their relationship's in trouble and I don't see the logic in it. If you have troubles before jewelry and the debt associated with a wedding, you're going to have them afterward too.

Some people get married because they think it will guarantee success, that their partner will never roam. It's just a ring, folks. What you're looking for is a chain bolted to the floor in your basement. That's the only guaranteed way to keep your spouse from roaming.

Some people get married because they got pregnant/got someone pregnant. How is this fair to anyone? There are going to be an awful lot of bad feelings floating around the household and there are really no good endings here. I recommend someone in this position to go find a lawyer, settle on an amount of child support and try to establish a relationship with the child individually instead of trying to force a marriage to work too. There may be some stigma but in the end I think all parties will be far more happy.

Some people get married because they think it's just what you do after you date for a while. This is the one I have the most beef with. Some people don't want to get married. Some people shouldn't get married. Some people have mental complications that associate the wedding ring with a tourniquet that cuts off the freedom you used to have (pssst: it's still there) and end up sabatoging a relationship that might have had a far greater chance of survival if they had just been dating long term or became "life partners."

I think that this comes from the pressure of our parents and the ethics they were raised with. I don't agree with them (most of them, anyway) and in no way is that a knock on our parents, their beliefs, their religions, etc. I think that we're all different people and I think that this is something that should be re-evaluated. Marriage statistics show that there's a scary possibility of failing. So many marriages are failing nowadays and I think that it's because they were entered for the reasons listed above.

I say there's no need to get married but that's probably just me. There's no shame in living together for a long period of time and if I had it my way, we'd get rid of marriage all together and replace it with common law marriages based on the state you live in. I see nothing wrong with gay marriage, straight marriage, I just see something wrong with marriage. Not that I feel bad about being married, it's just that, even if we weren't married right now I'd be fine with that too. I think that's the best route to improve statistics. I mean, let's say that most failed marriages fail within the first ten years of marriage. But imagine if the state you were living in said that if you lived with a person for ten years and declared that you were in a relationship you were legally married. By then, you've proven that you can stick together for at least ten years and the odds of future success go up quite a bit.

I know some people will think it's a bit too much, so maybe a change in mental outlook will help: It took me something like 30 days to get my marriage license. That's a waiting period to make sure we don't back out of it (30 days?!). But if the waiting period was ten years...

I think it would work.