Maybe it's just me, but I think that people take marriage for granted, which often becomes their biggest mistake in life. Getting married is the default choice that most people make, because that's what everyone does and expects us to do. Yet if we don't consider the dead-serious consequences of signing matrimonial papers, we'd be condemned to living a life we didn't sign up for.
For the lucky ones among us, we wouldn't feel the backlash, because, after clarifying our values and desires, we realised that being monogamous and starting a family was indeed what we wanted all along. That would be a rare coincidence hinged on luck and probability.
For the rest of us, we'd definitely turn bitter rather quickly once we realised how many things we'd be forced to do upon deciding to get married: caring about making money, finding a spouse, buying a house, buying a diamond ring, splurging on a wedding, having children, working extra hard to give the best to said children, pleasing parents-in-law, being sexually exclusive to one partner for life, keeping a safe yet dreadful job, having to forgo passions, hobbies, and dream careers, and basically signing our lives away to our spouse and family.
When we clarified our values and desires and realised that we didn't really like children or the woman we married, particularly for us men, there isn't even a pain-free exit strategy from marriage, given that matrimonial laws are so sexist anyway and in favour of the state's public policy need to protect women and children.
In fact, it's deeply ironic that our culture dictates that men should go on their knees during a marriage proposal, as if signifying that he was begging for marriage. I find it insulting that the man should even be expected to ask for it, even though it's the woman who most probably wants it more. In reality, it's women who're far more likely to insist on marriage as a form of guarantee and protection that her husband would stay with her forever, because women are insecure, which brings me to another irony of marriage: the contractual nature of marriage.
Proponents of marriage like to claim that marriage is a formalisation and symbolic recognition of love, a willingness of both parties to surrender to binding commitment as a sign of love. Here's the problem: marriage is a legal contract, much like your S&P agreement in real estate transactions. If the love is true and strong, why do we need a contract that's enforceable in court to force the two people to stay together?
We shouldn't need the legal contract, because real romance should be based on trust and mutual liking, not threats of legal consequences. If the love isn't true or strong, or two people no longer love each other, isn't it meaningless and silly anyway to force them to stay together by threatening to make one of them share his assets and pay alimony?
I think insisting on a contract to formalise a loving relationship weakens the concept of love, because compulsion and legal enforcement have no place in love. I doubt that any legal remedy under matrimonial laws, like alimony, will help to improve the relationship.
I believe that, in the absence of the possibility of legal threats, two individuals are more likely to communicate calmly and sort things out maturely. If there are still irreconcilable differences, they can part amicably instead of undergoing a financially- and emotionally- harrowing and otherwise unnecessary divorce. Put in another way, the irony is that marriage tends to ruin love when it's supposed to strengthen it.
Besides, there are other ways to express love, like living together, being monogamous sexually, and hell, even tattooing your partner's name all over your chest. Contracts are reserved for things where we require some form of guarantee because we don't trust the other party enough, like commercial transactions. It's for this reason that it always seems a bit suspicious whenever women insist on marriage, even more so than a glitzy wedding.
Sure, women can call us out and claim that our unwillingness to sign matrimonial papers is indicative of an intention to violate the agreement of commitment and exclusivity, amounting to an anticipatory breach of trust. Yet any woman who indulges in such finger-pointing behaviour already knows that the relationship wasn't that strong to begin with, because questioning the other party's intention already shows a clear culture of distrust. The relationship is doomed anyway if both parties can't put faith in each other without verification or proof, marriage certificate or not.
For the reasons above, I've never considered marriage to be a meaningful institution. Apart from its self-contradictory nature, marriage is also the biggest commitment any man can ever make, such that deciding not get married actually solves a lot of his life problems.
Conversely, deciding to get married practically self-imposes lifelong slavery in servitude of the family. It's impossible to live life for yourself the moment you get hitched and have to raise children, because taking care of people is an extremely-taxing process.
Deciding to get married is like playing life on hard mode, yet the young man just accepts it as a phase of life that's inevitable and necessary. Worse, they try to make it work by hook or by crook for some inexplicable reason, by consoling themselves by saying that "it just takes effort" or "it works if you find the right partner".
I suspect their lives would improve remarkably if they asked "whether" and "why" way before they ponder the "what", "who", or "where" (this thought process, coincidentally, is a hallmark trait of listening to our hearts). Marriage may be the right choice, but at least we should at least know what we're signing up for and why we want to do it. The concept of caveat emptor has never been more relevant than when it concerns marriage.
The first time I seriously questioned the concept of marriage was actually as a primary school kid, when I always saw in movies that men with families were always weaker, in that the villains often blackmailed said men by taking their families hostage, completely grabbing them by the balls. When facing calamity, the married man was always slowed down by his dependants who often burderned instead of aided him. In contrast, the single protagonist only needed to care for himself, and he could take on so much more risk than his married counterpart. His chance of survival was also higher.
Then I further saw how hard people worked at jobs they hated, simply because they insisted that they had to earn a "certain level of income" by a certain age.
Excerpt from Sex, Pork, and Persecution: How One Young Man's Fight Against Conformity Led To Imprisonment And Vilification (Authored by Alvin Tan)
Book available here: https://sexporkandpersecution.com/
Typed this out from the book because I thought it's well-written and worthy of a share.
Hope you enjoyed it :)
Note: The author's opinions doesn't represent me.
That's an awesome title! Personally, I just don't get marriage. I understand the tradition, but makes no sense to me. The author is right, especially getting law involved in a personal relationship seems like a bad, bad idea.
Check out the book! The dude's pretty fluent. He got persecuted by the Malaysian government sometime ago and he escaped and made his way to the US as a refugee. Makes for an interesting story..
Yikes! That does sound intriguing. Will certainly check it out. Thanks for the recommendation.
Don't think to long or she will marry your brother from another mother :( dem girls be horny too.
What an interesting point of view. In my experience I've lived on the opposite side of the coin. I've been with my husband for 15 years before marriage. I was the one who stalled and postponed. I didn't want to lose my independence and for him not to lose his. I actually understand quite a lot of what the article said and wow is the best I can think of right now. Thank you for sharing this!