marriage anyone?

[b_em]

I'm not asking whether you personally want to get married or what time of life you think marriage is appropriate. I want to know why people think the human race has created this legal commitment.

Why do people feel the need to commit to one another? What is this basic human requirement to pair up? I'm not asking about sex because as we've seen there's a couple of thousand pages of debate devoted to it. And I'm not asking for a definition of love...I'm asking for something much deeper than that.

Why do we get married? What are your feelings about marriage? To those of you who ARE married, do you think it enhances your life? Do you think there's a difference between marriage and simply spending your life living and loving another person? To those of you who are divorced...how do you think it affects you as a person? Do you feel lessened to have broken the commitment for whatever reason?


I'm not after judgements so please lets not be flaming people for their views. I'm just interested in why we feel this game is better played as a couple.

[Dirt_Monkey]

im currently engaged. for some random reason my mate asked me to marry her. so (cus i had nothing better to do) i agreed :p

[Thoaar]

my guess is marriage is a legal way to claim ownership, or a way to legally get back at them (child support, alimony) if they break the contract. Well, there is also the other legal stuffs like who owns what after you die and who can transact what sorts of major purchases / sales. There are some society-enforced things that married couples gain advantage that life-partners don't -- which is probably the main push behind legalizing gay marriage.
Personally I could care less if society recognizes my marriage or not, except when it comes to the financial legalities of things.

My first marriage started out great then about 8 years in she cheated on me and left. Then she begged to come back and I divorced her.
Was that a good experience? Not really, but I learned from the experience, so it wasn't experience wasted. Plus I have a son from that first marriage - I wouldn't trade his existence. I'd do it all again 'cause of him. I wouldn't stay with her, though. She broke the commitment, and I don't trust her to not be capable of breaking it again. I got better things to do with my life than live through that hell again. My life isn't cheapened or lessened by her choice to cheat. It was her choice to break the marriage bond, I just followed through legalizing it.

I wasn't planning to marry again, but hey, life happens. The second marriage is going great, 6 years strong.

There is some comfort in having that one special person you are devoted to, and is devoted to you. There is comfort knowing that if I can't be home to take care of something, she can, and vice versa. There is always someone to talk to.

Is marriage required for a committed life relationship? No, I don't think so. I'm married this second time because it was important to her. I would be just as committed to her either way. As I mentioned before, in my opinion the marriage recognized by the government is a convenience for legal things.
I figure if it takes a marriage to force your partner to stay faithful and true to you then how secure is that relationship to begin with??
And, in my experience, exactly how effective is marriage in stopping infidelity?? it ain't.

[Elite Pie]

what he said

[Thoaar]

well, I did fail to mention the religious and/or cultural aspects of marriage. My previous post was my personal opinions and whether they apply to anyone else or not ... >shrug< Plenty of people live by marriage on religious grounds -- the union is blessed by God. You don't mess with blessings from God lest you suffer eternal damnation, nor do you unionize without God's blessing lest you suffer eternal damnation. Religion and faith are strong with many people, and really can't be dismissed. History tells us plenty about that ;)

My (severely) uneducated guess is that culture then religion established the ground rules for marriage... cultural reasons were probably to keep peace in the tribe because hurting tribal dynamics could mean the difference between survival and extinction. For example:
Og likes Ganna, Og bashes Ganna on head and drags her by hair to cave to make gruntgrunt. But Snork likes Ganna, so Snork sneaks some smoochy from Ganna. Og finds out, snaps Snork in two. Now tribe less one hunter and starves through winter.
Tribal leader Old Snarl thinks the gods punish tribe because of trouble between Og, Ganna and Snork. Snarl tell tribe this and decrees that pissing off the gods results in starvation. Now rest of clan sees that dent in woman's head means not to touch her otherwise they starve. A couple generations later everyone has forgotten the Og/Ganna/Snork incident, but they do know that the tribal rules are don't make gruntgrunt with women dented by another's club. Now its culturally ingrained. An couple more generations pass and everyone is taught that extradental gruntgrunt results in starvation because the gods are pissed off. It's religious as well as cultural.

it's 1:20 am for me I'm probably just tired

[b_em]

Thanks, Thoaar. If you werent married I'd marry you myself simply based on that last post :D


I know this is a difficult one...so many people have read it but haven't replied because it's such a shitter of a debate.

You see, my take on this is that you can sustain a perfectly wonderful relationship outside of marriage. Yet even today, society respects you that little bit less if you don't get married. It's still the 'norm' despite the horribly high divorce rate.

I've been with my partner for 4 and a half years now. We've been through ups and downs and I'll be honest and say there have been times I thought it wouldnt last. Heck, maybe it wont.

When we were in our first couple of years together I'd have swooned at his feet and shouted yes if he'd asked me to marry him...yet now I appreciate the realities of marriage. Although I consider it to be a purely legal icing on a relationship cake (punsville)...I don't want to jump into it. I'm happy to wait another five years or so and see if it works out.

I'd say my relationship views are fairly liberal, and I think those who know me would agree. So why is it that I feel compelled to respect this age old institution?

[Thoaar]

hehe thanky (blush)

could it be we feel compelled to respect the age-old institution because we have been raised from birth to respect said institution? That and our whole lives we've seen examples of good marriages and bad ones all around us?

In addition to that there is something very powerful about vowing to commit your life to your partner. If keeping promises made is a virtue you hold dear in yourself, and one you expect from your partner, the ceremony of marriage is an incredibly intense moment in time where you pledge to be something together in the future that is as strong or stronger than you feel with that person prior to marriage. Your heart pounds hard as you feel the weight of such a heavy lifelong commitment - a commitment that carries through a future you cannot see nor predict. A commitment that depends not only on your keeping your vows, but trusting that another person also keeps those vows. A person that, no matter how well you know them, you know you can't read their thoughts nor know their innermost secrets.

(i use 'you and your' in the general sense)

[EasyTiger]

Originally posted by Dirt_Monkey
im currently engaged. for some random reason my mate asked me to marry her. so (cus i had nothing better to do) i agreed :p

Well I have to say that's the most stupid reason for getting engaged, i've ever heard.

[Cookies]

wow we have some deep people on this board now don't we!! Thoaar that was like one of the deepest posts i've ever read!! *have a cookie*

although i'm only young and stupid and haven't thought about marriage once, i think that marriage indicates a whole new level of seriousness it sort of proves your love for one and another. I don't think marriage is necessary, you don't need a legal document to prove that you love someone. Just my thoughts :)

[EasyTiger]

Without any personal experience I can just say that I think if you're going to get engaged, you need to be sure that this is the person you want to spend the rest of your life with.
You must be sure you want to be completely faithful to them the rest of your life, and be prepared to go through all the downs as well as the ups...

Getting engaged isn't 'cool' or something you do because you think it will be nice, it's something serious, and means that you are going to marry that person and be with them for the rest of your life...

[Flower]

i am currently in the process of planning my wedding.

I see marriage as a way of shouting to te world taht we are together. i am not taking his name - we are sharing it. its not a possesion thing really, just a statement that we belong together.

A few years ago we went to a wedding and I imagined myself making those vows, and thought I couldn't. A couiple of years after that we went to another wedding, and again, I put myself in the brides shoes, and i realised i couldn't wait to make those vows. i considered the fact that it would mean never sleeping/kissing another man, and to be honest, it really didn;tbotehr me, I was completely happy with the idea. Getting married just felt "right".

yes - there a few aspects that come from society. I would feel uncomfortable having children out of wedlock. I may be very old fashioned in that respect, but for me it doesn't feel right. (I'm not saying that if we had had an accident earlier i would have rejected it, but we aren't going to plan a family until after we get married). I also like the idea of refering to my other half as "My husband" though obviously that in itself isn't a reason to get married;)

And we are going to have a nice party and get loads of presents :D

[GorillaBearBear]

It is (probably) impossible to find out where the concept came from. I personally think that marriage is a nice ceremony etc. but utterly pointless. We can't know why we do it, it's as much a mystery as to why the Aztecs/Mayans/incas sacrificed people to Gods or what importance stone Henge had to the druids

[Thoaar]

tangent to the debate:

What I still fail to grasp is why in the hell would someone pay thousands of dollars on a wedding? Couldn't that money be better spent on the honeymoon?

(dollars or pounds - when you talk thousands it really doesn't matter what denomination, it is still thousands)

[b_em]

unless of course it's australian dollars and then to an american it's loose change.

i digress.



I assume that it's all about making sure you realise the importance of the commitment. You spend a shedload on it, you're not going to be racing to get married again. It's also going to be one of the biggest financial commitments you're going to make, so it surely must be more important. That said, that then makes being a homeowner the most important life step you'll ever take. Forget that point!

Interesting to note that in tinseltown, it's not unusual to find stars marrying for the fifth or sixth time.... they can afford to do it again and again. Perhaps the fact that there are so many failed marriages amongst the stars is more related to the light-hearted way marriage is viewed in that arena... it's all about who is marrying who rather than making a life commitment to another human being. Sort of devalues it.

I still haven't made up my mind on this one. I understand that some people just feel they naturally want to make a further step of commitment to their significant other....I just dont understand why we as a species feel this need to pair up with another for life? And if it goes wrong, does that somehow dehumanise us?

Forgive me, it's 11.41pm and I really should be writing a Technical Paper.

[PiesInTheory]

Has anyone read the book "Brave New World"? It is completely the opposite of our society. The peoples are more than encouraged to have multiple partners at a time, and if they don't THEN it's considered weird. It, of course, is a futuristic society with the lack of parents and childen (test tube babies to the extreme I suppose). However I just threw that in for debate because we as a whole have become accustomed to decided on "the one" and spending our lives with them. Marriage, down to it's most basic level is the legal proof of a couple of people who share (well...they might not) an intimate bond with eachother that they would like to legally bind. Now the whole love and all that stuff is the not legal counterpart to it. Actually having an intimate relationship in which the couple live together is marriage, just not with the fringe benefits granted to a legal couple. As far as I see it, it is a HUGE committment, but not so much as the committment to a person, but to you know, supporting your other half, it's a committment not to be a jerk as in cheating, tisk tisk, and yes as people have mentioned, it can easily become devauled. However the most important issue is not the documents, it's whether you are pledging your life to another individual or not.

[adam hh]

Kinda funny, but this has come up recently at many of the forums I visit -- this is the link I find most useful and rather interesting on the topic:

Conversation on marriage / monogamy (http://fascistforums.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=21&t=231&)

checkit!

[Flower]

I can't say for anyone else - but for us marriage just felt right. I think its our way of shouting to the world how much we love each other, and that we will be together forever.

And we will have a nice party, and a nice holiday, and can then step out as Mr & Mrs, grinning from ear to ear (I hope!).

It doesn't make our relationship any better than a couple who has lived togetehr for 40 years without getting married - but its what we want to do, and thats all that counts.