In Praise of Marriage

Traditional wedding-topper marriage piece illustration

Image Credit: Cotswold Characters

A couple of months ago I was interested to read a Guardian Comment is Free piece by the marvellous Tauriq Moosa, which proposed that marriage no longer makes sense. Although I have a lot of time for his point of view on most things, I think he’s wrong in this case – and it’s fairly easy to explain why if we reframe the argument somewhat: myths aside, what IS good about marriage?

As a gut instinct, I have little time for tradition – at least as a justification for doing anything that you wouldn’t want to do without it. But for a lot of things in life, it is very useful; it can provide a generally recognisable framework or a default mode of behaviour, which can be helpful socially. Starting with something with which people are familiar and moulding it for your own purposes will usually give you a head start when you want to make some kind of statement. While I would never suggest getting married purely to appease some societal or family pressure, it is very useful to ride the wave of tradition if it suits you. For those of us who have found someone that we really love who we intend to spend the rest of our life with, a handy prefabricated arrangement into which that relationship can be categorised can be really rather nice; that warm and pleasant feeling of being a part of a tradition, practising a part of your culture and repeating something that has been done for so long before is a fulfilling thing. It’s not surprising that so many completely irreligious couples choose to marry in religious settings such as churches: the pleasant building alone is a part of it, but the feeling of being a part of something ancient brings a feeling of gravitas to the occasion. People have been gathering together their communities and celebrating their pairing off for a life together for millennia – it’s still a nice thing to do, so why stop now?

For those people who are religious, there are typically various god-related elements that make marriage special for them. If they choose to marry for these reasons and it makes them happy, where’s the problem? The various versions of marriage can coexist.

Of course, marriage changes very little in reality; unless you are a member of that tiny, possibly slightly crazy group of people who reserve certain intimacies for married life, you will typically return from your honeymoon somewhat (or quite considerably) poorer and with a lot of mismatched plates that you don’t need – but you will still be the same couple with the same family and friends. And yet… something does change. There is a difference. Perhaps it’s all motivated by tradition, prejudice one might even say, but having a wife/husband is different from having a girlfriend/boyfriend. Whether legitimately or otherwise, you feel in some small way more a part of society. Your partner’s family treat you a little differently. I suppose you feel a bit more grown up. Of course, this undoubtedly doesn’t apply to everyone, but it seems common. Is all of this a bit silly? Well, no; however little it may mean in the scheme of things, you have made a declaration to people around you, a statement of your intentions as a couple. That’s not something that tends to happen, otherwise.

And sometimes that display to those around you is important. If there are simmering misgivings about your partner from your family or friends, marriage can be a useful line in the sand. It can be a radical statement when you marry into a different religion or class, but it’s only because of that weight of history, tradition and the associated legal bindings that it means more than a couple of signatures on a piece of paper.

And on top of all of this, it’s an excellent excuse to buy all of your friends and family a pint!

What should change are the bad things about marriage; obviously the really nasty things like child marriages and forced marriages should be cracked down upon hard. Those are very serious human rights problems, but we don’t need to blame marriage itself for them. Any kind of coercion in relationships is clearly horrible and I can only feel for people who live in any situation where such a thing is considered normal and acceptable. Society should not force people to marry or assume that they will. Those who choose to marry should not have to get themselves into colossal amounts of debt, buy overpriced blood diamonds or misrepresent their beliefs or intentions to satisfy anyone else. Undeserved legal rights should be repealed. And the so-called “traditional” marriage, alluded to above, should be expanded to include as many different variations of the wholesome, Disney fairytale version as can be reasonably included in the definition; it should go beyond gay marriage into truly genderless marriage where two – or, why not, more than two – people can marry without their biological history being a factor. And we should be able to do it where we like and with whatever religious or pseudo-religious elements we want included within it. Other elements such as sexual fidelity should be a matter for those in the relationship. And perhaps a better system of alternatives to marriage needs to made more readily available to cover people with entirely different arrangements, too.

Let’s open it up to everyone, but demand it of no one. Then it can be the happy thing, for anyone who wants it, that it is for me and (she assures me), my lovely wife.

  • thejinx6

    I love and loath many aspects of marriage and you describe many of those aspects very well. Ultimately I find myself wondering why I need someone else’s [semi]predefined framework for others to be able to categorise me by, how it may be possible to declare your feelings publicly to get the same benefits (family recognition, warm feeling of having declared publicly your feelings, buy everyone a pint, etc), and what can be done to evolve marriage get the good bits without the bad.

    I’ve no time for tradition and feel amazed that couples who are not otherwise religious feign belief for months before their wedding just to be able to have it in a church. However, that is a side issue as the point is that I don’t feel I would get much warmth from simply being part of tradition. I feel there is a real incompatibility between wanting marriage as to be part of a tradition and wanting the evolution of marriage that you describe at the end of your post – By letting all combinations of numbers and sexes to marry, that kind of thumbs the nose to some of the traditional aspects of marriage that gives many their reason for doing so. I am a big believer in allowing whoever to get married (obvs not under duress or under age etc etc) but can see why some people are opposed to it as it is incongruous with beliefs/religion/tradition (although obviously dont agree with them). How do we reconcile the many incompatibilities and conflicts that exist between traditional marriage and current society.

    If I publicly declare my feelings to all friends and family and have a huge celebratory party to mark the occasion, I may get some of the acceptance and recognition from family etc that a wedding would afford, but without those signatures on a piece of paper, my declaration is not legally recognised and thus to all those not at the party, I am like anyone else who isn’t married.

    I’m not sure what the answer is (for me at least!), but I know that many of the benefits you describe above are things I actually can have without needing a wedding. As for the ‘myths’ contained in the original article, some ring true to me, some points do not, and some are there to make the piece humorously downbeat.

    Slightly rambling but thought I’d say a few words!

    • You know, I went through many of the same thoughts for a long time before proposing. I have a similar gut feeling about tradition in many ways – that it’s no reason to do anything in particular. But traditions are part of the fabric of our culture. For me, it makes more sense to accept them are fun, important and inclusive.

      Take Christmas: I’m not a Christian, but, like most Brits, I’ve cherry-picked the parts of the tradition that I enjoy and don’t bother with all the Jesus stuff. I can’t really be bothered to bang on about Yuletide or whatever and I like presents and roast potato, so why not. The best traditions are the ones that have a good enough core theme that variations enhance rather than destroy them. The idea of an extended party in the middle of winter is an old one and it lives on because it works.

      Marriage for me is the same way. The tweaks that have happened over time have changed little more than details and in spite of its very considerable baggage, I think the core idea still has value – for some people. Because like all good traditions it is optional and if it’s not for you, so be it. But I would recommend it – and if a Significant Other favours it I would encourage you to consider it: you can, after all, make it whatever you want.

      • thejinx6

        I agree… but its still a subject I sometimes wrestle with. I think the trick is to not overthink it: make your particular variant of marriage full of the good bits and ignore the bad bits. Ultimately maybe its already evolved into the very thing I want it to be if I choose it to. My stubbornness sometimes gets the better of me and I am consumed with thoughts of ‘screw you tradition/religion/social pressure’ especially when friends of mine that I haven’t seen in a while immediately look at my ring finger and ask when I’m getting married with a smugness about them, like they know something I don’t – as if its the only possible option available when in a situation like mine!

        I am concerned that I’ve been to the same number of divorce parties this year than weddings tho.

        Bloody love roast potato and legitimately drinking sherry in the early afternoon…

        • And that might be the single biggest gripe I have with traditions in general: an obligation to be involved. And marriage has *serious* baggage here. But I think it is slowly changing; plenty of people don’t choose to marry and a vanishingly small number have any issue with “living in sin” – at least in Britain, so hopefully people will one day stop making assumptions about other people or forcing the idea onto them. It is hard to escape a firmly-rooted tradition, though, I’ll grant you -especially when there’s money to be made.