Marriage as we know it today is an invention of the Government. The idea that you need to go to the Government to confirm that you love someone is a manufactured idea. Previously, people lived together as a way to preserve clans and family relationships. Parents betrothed their children to their friends, and when these kids came of age, they held a ceremony between the families to celebrate the union. What they celebrated was not love but instead the union of two families. The couple moved in together with the expectation of having kids and prolonging the family lineage. This is why the men took second wives if the first wife had difficulties bearing children. The main purpose of that union was procreation to extend the lineage, not to love or find companionship.
When God invented marriage, for him, it was to find a companion for the man. God’s idea of marriage was all about soothing the man, he was not thinking of the woman as an individual entity. He saw the woman as someone who was to solve a gap identified in the man; “it is not good for the man to be alone, I will make him a helpmeet”. If God saw the man alone and thought it was good, there’d have been no need for him to create the woman. His definition of the man having a woman in his life as a helpmeet is what he called marriage, and it seemed to be rubber-stamped once the two of them lived (“cleave”) together. It did not need parental blessings nor government approval, and it did look like the women could leave at any time they feel like, just like the men could marry someone else whenever they felt like it.
I am a learned Physicist, Systems Engineer and Management Consultant. I am trained to see things differently and question the status quo. Recently, there was a viral clip from the footballer, Cristiano Ronaldo, where he was asked why he hadn’t married his girlfriend after many years of living together and a couple of kids, and he said he was waiting for the “click”. Of course, this led to so much discourse, but it made me ask, what is Giorgina (Ronaldo’s girlfriend) missing out on that a paper from the government will give? Apart from the societal expectation, what is she missing? The world today has changed drastically. What really does marriage, as it is defined today, solve? Today’s definition of marriage seems to be having a paper from the government that certifies that you are married. Today’s definition of marriage has nothing to do with love, having children or companionship because you can get all these things without going to the government for approval. If anything, the statistics show that getting the government’s approval for marriage increases your chances of missing out on these three things.
If the statistics show that more than 50% of “government-approved” marriage fails, why are more people making the jump from LCC (love, children, companionship) to marriage? More LCCs last than marriage does. LCC solves more problems than marriage solves. I cannot think of a single problem that the paper from the government solves apart from traditional and societal expectations. That paper does not make you love someone more, it does not make you feel more protected, and it certainly does not make your ovaries or semen more fertile. Some people may make the argument that the paper gives you an air of certainty that this person has made a commitment to you for life, but guess what? That is a lie, ALL marriages end. No marriage lasts a lifetime. ALL marriages always end in “D”. Marriages end either in death or divorce. All, no exceptions. So the idea that marriage is this lifetime vehicle is a fallacy.
I like the idea of marriage, but that is also because I stupidly believe marriage to be do-or-die. Even if it does not work out, we die in it with our unhappy beings. This might be a phantasm, but that is what I believe in. I like the idea of being tied to something and not having a way out, so your only real option is to find a way to make it work. I feel it forces people to think solutions instead of exits, but most people do not think like me and think that if the marriage does not work out, both parties should go their separate ways. Now, if you think this way, why get married at all? Marriage is such an expensive venture all through; you spend money on counselling, the wedding ceremony, and then huge lawyer fees during the divorce too. Why go through such an expensive journey for something that offers you absolutely nothing that you can’t get outside it.
I don’t have the answers, but it might be time to start looking at marriage differently.
Miracle.