Here's a suggestion. Don't get married until you've gotten tired of dating. If you are not tired of picking strangers up at bars late at night, you do not need to be thinking about getting married.
With longer life spans, you can have kids when you are in your 30's or later and still live to see grandkids. If you have kids when you are grown up, you will enjoy them a lot more than the kids who are having kids do.
Oh, yeah: And try to marry someone you like, not just someone you love.
Divorce is not a necessary part of marriage, no matter what Hollywood or the daytime talk shows want you to believe.
Letter to his brother George and sister-in-law Georgiana, John Keats, 1818
The possibly emotional, legal, financial, and/or religious partnership between two (or more, if you're open-minded) individuals. While this encompasses the definition of marriage, it does not in any way sum up marriage itself.
The state of matrimony can best be described subjectively. It can be worse than "Marriage is when two people love each other so much that they want to spend the rest of their lives driving each other crazy." and better than wanting to spend the rest of your life with someone just to make them happy.
It occurs to me that these could be good things to keep in mind for any relationship.
a.) a piece of paper b.) a convenience c.) an excuse for holding onto one particuliar person d.) a war e.) an acceptance of what cannot be avoided F.) a gift g.) a torture h.) a song broken up into two parts pulling together in reels i.) the scariest thing to be had besides perhaps death j.) a promise k.) a deal, a pact l.) a fairytale m.) a nightmare n.) a forgiving o.) a Mexican stand off p.) a brilliance q.) a stupidity r.) a grievance s.) an enlightenment T.) a hate u.) a love v.) a creation w.) a demolition x.) a misunderstaing y.) an understanding z.) something rich and strange....
Or more easily, more clinically "It is an appointment, it is a disappointment."
Federally granted legal marriage rights: Assumption of spouse's pension Bereavement leave Immigration Insurance breaks Medical decisions on behalf of partner Sick leave to care for partner Tax breaks Visitation of partner in hospital or prison
State granted legal marriage rights: Assumption of spouse's pension Automatic inheritance Automatic housing lease transfer Bereavement leave Burial determination Child custody Crime victim's recovery benefits Divorce protections Domestic violence protection Exemption from property tax on partner's death Immunity from testifying against spouse Insurance breaks Joint adoption and foster care Joint automobile insurance Joint bankruptcy Joint parenting (insurance coverage, school records) Medical decisions on behalf of partner Medical insurance family coverage Certain property rights Reduced-rate memberships Sick leave to care for partner Visitation of partner's children Visitation of partner in hospital or prison Wrongful death (loss of consort) benefits
Principled reasons NOT to get married (in addition to the numerous practical ones mentioned above)...
Most of the people I know say they will NOT get married. They apparently want to continue the crazy bachelor lifestyle they are living. Or think they are living. Or wish they could be living. No one I know is a super stud and I can't think of one single instance in the four years I've known these people that one of them went home with someone, or got a number that they actually called, or was actually called by someone who took their number.
I point out these things to them, when I tell them that they will be married some day. Yes, they will, because they don't want to die alone anymore than anyone else does. They don't want to whittle away their golden years watching CNN and hoping that when the phone rings it might be a relative. They don't want to be the weird aunt who never got married and was cool for a while, but now wears too much lipstick, has too many cats and is always trying to pawn off strange, glass-like candies on her nephews.
And neither do you and neither do I.
Because that is what it is all about. Someone being there, beside you when most of the world doesn't consider you worth sitting next to. Someone who will look at you, and won't see a wizened, old, toothless prune...instead they'll see you at twenty-five. And under their fingers you'll feel like twenty-five because you and he or she together make something more vibrant than you'd ever be apart. Someone to touch you, hold you and love you when the world wants nothing more than to deny your existence.
When you can't recall anymore the little details, the two of you can pool your memories and everything will stay vivid. The children. The love making. The pain. It's the time you will have shared that will prop you up against each other when your bodies want to lay down and decay. You will protect each other and keep each other young. Marriage bonds people psychologically in a way that living together seldom does.
In dying the one who goes first will die near the one they love, and so they needn't be afraid...the one who dies second, passes on with the knowledge that they needn't fear the unknown, because their spouse is there, waiting.
It isn't perfect and it isn't always like that in the end, people grow apart and they move on, and they hate and have too much pride. But somewhere, there are two people, shriveled and spotted, who are looking at each other, and all they see is beauty.
If you are trying to decide whether or not to get married, one popular method of assessment is to draw up some kind of chart to weigh the pros and cons for each side. Charles Darwin did this in a memorandum to himself, apparently composed around July 1838:
The document has two columns, Marry and Not Marry, and above them, circled, the words "This is the Question."
On the pro-marriage side were "Children--(if it Please God)--Constant companion, (&friend in old age) who will feel interested in one,--object to be beloved & played with." After reflecting for an unknown period of time, he modified the sentence with "better than a dog anyhow." He continued: "Home, & someone to take care of the house-- Charms of music & female chit-chat--These things good for one's health.--but terrible loss of time." The issue of marriage causing a loss of time and infringing upon his work was addressed further in the Not Marry column. Not marrying would preserve "Freedom to go where one like--choice of Society & little of it.--Conversation of clever men at clubs--not forced to visit relatives, & to bend in every trifle--to have the expense & anxiety of children--Perhaps quarelling--Loss of time.--cannot read in the Evenings--fatness & idleness--Anxiety & responsibility--less money for books &c--if many children forced to gain one's bread."
The pro-marriage forces were victorious, however, with final thoughts at the end of the Marry column: "My God, it is intolerable to think of spending ones whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, & nothing after all.--No, no won't do.--Imagine living all one's day solitarily in smoking dirty London House.--Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire,& books & music perhaps." At the bottom: "Marry-Marysic-Marry Q.E.D."
Sources: Frederick Burkhardt and Sydney Smith, eds. (1985-91) The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol 2, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wright, Robert. The Moral Animal, New York: Pantheon Press, 1994.
Mar"riage (?), n. [OE. mariage, F. mariage. See Marry, v. t.]
1.
The act of marrying, or the state of being married; legal union of a man and a woman for life, as husband and wife; wedlock; matrimony.
Marriage is honorable in all.Heb. xiii. 4.
2.
The marriage vow or contract. [Obs.] Chaucer.
3.
A feast made on the occasion of a marriage.
The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king which made a marriage for his son.Matt. xxii. 2.
4.
Any intimate or close union.
Marriage brokage. (a) The business of bringing about marriages. (b) The payment made or demanded for the procurement of a marriage. --Marriage favors, knots of white ribbons, or bunches of white flowers, worn at weddings. --Marriage settlement (Law), a settlement of property in view, and in consideration, of marriage.
Syn. -- Matrimony; wedlock; wedding; nuptials. -- Marriage, Matrimony, Wedlock. Marriage is properly the act which unites the two parties, and matrimony the state into which they enter. Marriage is, however, often used for the state as well as the act. Wedlock is the old Anglo-Saxon term for matrimony.
© Webster 1913
Mar"riage, n.
In bézique, penuchle, and similar games at cards, the combination of a king and queen of the same suit. If of the trump suit, it is called a royal marriage.
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