Here Be Marriage

On September 25, 2010, barring force majeure, spatial anomaly, or Glenn Beck invasion, I will be getting married to a fine-figure of a woman named Sharon Mah (she’s keeping her name).  We will be getting married in a church by a priest, though neither of us is much in the way of religious. There will be a ceremony that is legally binding, and papers will be signed to this effect, and then we’ll all go and have a lawn party and drink to excess and dance to old-timey music. It will be, dare I say, a roaring good time. And it will cost a small fortune.

While the event itself will be lovely, and the feelings behind it true, the planning process will be stressful, tense, full of competing demands, and have the general tenor and atmosphere of people planning a war. In Asia. By the time the wedding actually rolls around we’ll have had enough discussions to plan multiple weddings, accommodating an entire gamut of faiths, backgrounds, and family traditions. We will not be alone in this - all around this city and country and continent are thousands of other couples doing the exact same things, experiencing the exact same problems, and aiming for, differences notwithstanding, relatively the same experience. 

Given all this is true (and it is, to the point of excessive cliché), why do so many people get married?

It’s important to note that in asking the question I am speaking specifically of the way I’m getting married, which is the majority but by no means only way people get married in North America and Western Europe.  I am speaking both of the ceremony of marriage and the legal nature of marriage itself, as recognized by the state and, in still I believe the majority of cases, a church. I am limiting the discussion not to invalidate any other form of marriage, or partnership, or coupling, or lifelong relationship, or indeed any form of partnering in which two or more people may find themselves relating. I limit the discussion simply because a) this is the format that I know and am choosing, and b) I think not nearly enough is said, especially by men, about why one might want to choose this form.

That said, this is neither a justification of this form of marriage nor a defence of it. Marriage of this kind doesn’t need to be defended anymore than washing dishes by filling the sink, or taking off your shoes before entering someone’s house. It is something people do, for the reasons that they do it. Should people decide to do so less and less does not, as it does with some people, fill me with fear, nor does it make me question my own choice.

So, in summary, what you will not find here:

• Advice on how to find someone to marry. There are many, many sites, books, talk shows, healing circles, singles clubs, and gurus, all of which will purport to tell you how to locate your soul mate. Maybe they can and maybe they can’t, but basic math tells me that if all of them worked there’d be a lot less unhappy people of the married or unmarried variety. 
• A defence of marriage, “traditional” or otherwise. I would never tell anyone that I thought they should get married. In fact, I’m more likely to tell people that they shouldn’t. 
• A definition of marriage that privileges one version of it over the other (if you think there’s only one way to get married you’ll probably not like this at all.)  

Instead I’ll be writing about the reasons why someone might want to pursue this form of marriage, and yes, I do believe there are good reasons to do so, just as I believe there are many more piss poor reasons. Considering the emotional, financial, and sometimes even physical pain of divorce, it seems, instead of working out all the reasons why marriages “fail,” maybe we should consider whether we should be getting married at all.

So, you know, easy questions.