On Marriage

           So, so many weddings have happened in my life this past summer. I went to two within a few weeks of each other, and four other weddings happened at the same time within my social circle. On top of that, in a series of strangeness that was truly surreal, no less than six friends of mine became engaged in a month and a half period. I understand that summer is the prime time for marriage, but seriously, whoa! Six engagements? Jesus tap-dancing Christ! What’s going on? Isn’t our generation known for waiting for marriage until our late 20s/early 30s? Seeing as my engaged friends range from 19 (I know, right?) to 24, those stats apparently aren’t what you would call iron-clad.

            In the midst of all of these weddings and engagements, I’ve been asking myself (and a few others) the same question: What is the point of legal marriage in today’s world? I know the way I worded that makes it seem like I don’t believe in marriage in these times, but I’m actually completely and totally on the fence about it. It’s true that after being engaged to Socio-Narcissus, I have a great apprehension toward marriage, but that’s in regards to me getting married, not anyone else. The weddings I went to this summer were beautiful, the couples well-established, great together, and completely and totally in love. My own cynicism toward marriage isn’t toward them, or toward the couples in the two additional upcoming weddings I have on my schedule. If nothing else, marriage (in this country and era) is an ultimate expression of love, and I can’t possibly pass judgment down on couples who have made that choice just because I’m a chicken shit about it. My question doesn’t lie in the point of marriage as an expression of love and lifelong loyalty, but of the point of legal marriage-binding yourself to another human being in the eyes of the government.

            I brought up this question to someone I talk to a lot, someone with a background in working with domestic lawyers (as opposed to feral lawyers…hehe, no, divorce lawyers and the like) and who has been married for years. Their answer was simple: Spousal support. AKA, alimony.

When I pointed out that you only get spousal support when you divorce someone, they shrugged. “Happens half the time, anyway.”

We kept discussing and the idea of children in the mix came up. My companion had a very interesting thought on this topic. I asked why it’s better for parents of children to be together in a legal contract than parents who are equally devoted to one another and their family, but without the certificate of marriage. I’m paraphrasing here, but this is the gist of my friend’s response:

“No matter how great your marriage is, there are inevitable rough patches, and it’s much harder for a man to run from a family during those rough patches when there’s a legal contract involved.”

…okay. Taking all of that at face value…and taking away the insinuation that it’s always the dude who instigates the divorce (ahem) and that if they do they leave all responsibilities of child-rearing to the woman...(can’t speak on that, but I found this to be interesting. Maybe we think men don’t want custody because we have such a bias in our court that it’s a rare father who actually wins custody?)…I actually do kind of understand this, in a way. Most of us have been in relationships long enough to know that the honeymoon period doesn’t last forever and there are always problems. I can see it being easier to bolt during these times without the legal hassles of divorce in place. But honestly, if divorce were such a scare tactic and the marriage contract so binding, I’m pretty sure half of marriages in the US wouldn’t end in divorce. And is that really a benefit of legal marriage…making it difficult to get out of it? Honestly, that just seems to cheapen the whole commitment thing, doesn’t it? If you need the threat of a hassle with lawyers in order to keep your “lifelong” commitment, maybe you shouldn’t make that commitment.

I was unsatisfied with the answers I’d been receiving from those I asked (which on top of the above, included mostly religious drivel, love which I already talked about, and tradition), I turned to the Internet Gods for more information. Oddly enough, I found precious little. There are legal benefits, such as tax breaks, hospital visits, spouse benefits after one’s death (hence why I fully support gay marriage), and those are all great and valid reasons. They answered my questions about the legal benefits, and there are plenty…but for some reason, I needed a bit more convincing. I will absolutely concede that this was the moment where my question of the benefits of legal marriage ended. I found and acknowledged them! But I still found the thought of binding yourself to a single person somewhat terrifying, given how I personally had grown and changed in just a few years. Is it a wise decision?

As the stereotype in our society is that men are usually the ones whose, uh, resolve shrivels at the thought of marriage, I checked into websites geared toward men and found two articles illustrating why to and why not to get married. Not surprisingly, the Don’t Get Married guy sounds like a pathetic real-life version of Barney Stinson (self-involved much?) The very first reason not to get married was “Marriage will make her let herself go” and says “Men are just as guilty for letting themselves evolve into a chubby hubby and this gives women a get-out-of-dieting-free card.”

And now we know why the author didn’t post a picture of himself. If I ever met him on the street, I’d rip his tiny nuts off with some well-rusted pliers.

I still love you, Barney...because you're fictional.
And have changed quite a bit in the past few seasons.

All aggression aside, it’s obvious that the pathetic excuse for a functioning adult who wrote this isn’t a man equipped for writing an article about the subject (the end of options? Bitch, please, like you had any to begin with.) There were only a few points that even came near ringing true for me: One was about compromise. Marriage is a constant compromise, it is true. The money you make and the location of your home directly affects another human being, and therefore they get a say in it. If you’re not able to do that (like me), you obviously aren’t ready for marriage. And the final point this asshole made, that marriage is forever, also rings true for me. Looking back on my life now…I’m not even the same person I was two years ago. Fundamentally, I’m the same, obviously; I’m still a sarcastic freak with twisted tastes and a mean streak, but so much has changed. I wouldn’t be caught dead with any of my ex-boyfriends, and not just due to how the relationships may have ended. They’re just totally not my type any more. What happens if I got married and five years later my husband was no longer my type? Everybody changes, and if you’re married, what if you both change in ways that make you not right for each other anymore? It happens to married couples constantly. Would I ever want to take that risk?

The article about the reasons to get married is far more insightful, and funny, but equally flat in my opinion. Yes, those are all benefits, but like the Don’t get married article, most of them can all be applied to a committed relationship and not Marriage. I also wasn’t thrilled about the reason that was essentially “Get married or nobody will love you when you’re old and ugly,” though it did make me laugh. I’m not sure getting married because you’re terrified of dying alone is a viable reason to enter into an agreement where two people essential become one legal unit to the government.

So after all this putzing around on the internet, what have I learned about marriage? Well, I’ve learned that a couple becomes a single unit, as I just stated, which is an extremely powerful and extremely serious commitment. You earn income, make legal and lifelong decisions, do taxes, and sign leases as a single unit. Aside from food preferences, a few hobbies and guys/girls nights out, pretty much every facet of your life, of who you are, blends with your spouse. That goes so far beyond the whole “You don’t love a man until you’ve spent fifteen years watching him floss” argument that I can’t even fathom it.

You see, the main point I’ve been fed since childhood about marriage is that the hardest part is the mundanity (bite me, Microsoft, that’s a real word) of living and dealing with someone else’s quirks and habits: like the way I never finish food, always leaving one bite left on the plate when I could easily finish it, or the way the Boyfriend leaves toothpicks in every conceivable place in the apartment, for instance. Seriously, I’m waiting to find one in our fireplace…but I digress. I personally have had nothing but long-term relationships in my life; the shortest was in high school, and that was a year and a half. I’ve now lived with two boyfriends. I think I’ve sufficiently proven to myself that I can handle the day-to-day of living with a spouse.  I can easily handle the mundanity of life with a hubby. It’s the becoming one person in the eyes of the government thing I don’t think I’m equipped to handle at this point in my life. Five or ten years down the road, who knows, but as for now, the very thought turns my legs to jelly, and not in the way Johnny Depp and Nero Bellum do.

Mmmm, marry me, Ner--hey what whoa, wait a sec...

If I’m being unabashedly (oh, terrible adverb…I can hear my old writing professors grabbing their torches and pitchforks) honest with myself, at the tender age of damn-near-twenty-five, there are only two reasons that marriage sounds appealing to me:

 So I can say ‘you’re mine and mine alone and I have this piece of paper stating that we are together in the eyes of the law.’ So basically a security blanket for my own emotional baggage of having been cheated on in the past. This dude is MINE and nobody else’s. See the paper? And if he tries to get away, there’ll be lawyers to deal with!

The second reason, and honestly the absolute most tempting one: I love weddings. Love weddings. I am the Empress of Customization, and the idea of planning a huge party where me and my hubby are the focal point, where I get to customize everything from the venue to the clothes to the colours to the food, sounds like such a ridiculous amount of fun that I even planned My Big Fat Fake Wedding (explained a teensy bit here, I promise I’ll mention it in detail at some point) to Jack Napier, right down to the flowers in my bouquet, just for funsies.

Neither of these reasons are a viable reason for the colossal commitment that is marriage, but honestly, my reasons are shared by many people who have made the rush to the altar.  Nobody I know personally has, thank goodness, but there’s a reason that half of marriages end in divorce, and if one of your guilty pleasures is watching Bridezillas (don’t judge me), you can see that quite a few women rush to the altar just for the wedding itself, and there are so many men out there for whom marriage is the equivalent of a dog pissing on a bush.

                                             

If these are the reasons I’d fathom getting married at this point in my life, it’s pretty damn obvious that I’m not marriage material. Maybe someday I will be, like my friends and family who have taken the plunge. Maybe one day I’ll be brave enough for that. But for now, marriage to me will be a binding commitment from which I will flee.

The Boyfriend can breathe easily for a few years.

If he doesn't kill me for that marry me, Nero joke...