Till (Blank) Do Us Part

Jesse | Mar 4, 2009

“Mawigge, Mawigge is what bwings us togedah today”.

You know it’s gonna be a good column when you start off with a quote from The Princess Bride.  And just wait, it gets better, if you stick with it till the end I’ll finish with an analogy to Rodents Of Unusual Size (ROUS).

A friend once told me that he believes marriage should never be assumed to be permanent.   He believes it should be a state of constant negotiation.  As long as both people feel happy and supported and find challenge and growth in the relationship, the marriage should continue.  But if at any point they decide that they have grown apart and that their interests now lie in different directions, they should be free to go their own way without feeling that they have broken a promise or done something hurtful towards another person who didn’t deserve it.

Another friend asked me recently why I thought so many marriages end when they face the empty nest syndrome (when the final kid leaves the house and the couple is left alone together).  He asked if I thought it made sense, now that women and men are able to support themselves equally and people are living so much longer, to have a traditional concept of marriage.  Wouldn’t it make more sense, he asked, to have the potential for a new partner for each new stage of your life?

On the other hand, Soren Kierkegaard believes that true love can only exist as an unbreakable promise between two people, a promise binding them together for life.  Let’s be honest here, you have to think twice before messing with anyone whose first name is Soren (with two dots over the ‘o’ no less) and whose last name has two a’s in a row.

So this whole my two friends versus Soren with two dots thing got me thinking.  And who better to think about marriage than someone with such a healthy distance between he and it?  A distance from which to be able to objectively evaluate the pros (few though they may be) and the cons (though they be too numerous to enumerate)?

The old arguments for marriage really hold very little water these days.  Women don’t need a man to bring home the bacon (to those vegetarians, vegans, and fruitarians in the audience think “bring home the soyrizo”) anymore.  A “traditional family unit” is no more a guarantee of a healthy environment than a non-traditional family unit (or even a non-existent unit for that matter).

Some people say they want someone to grow old with, someone to take care of them and who they can take care of, someone to watch Days Of Our Lives reruns with.  But lately stories are making it into the news of elderly women and men with no romantic connection living together and supporting each other in self-created communities that can be at least as sustaining and fulfilling as a marriage.

Does this mean marriage is always a mistake?  By no means.  But it does mean that marriage doesn’t have to be the default option, the automatic “right choice”.  Not getting married is a choice, not a failure.  And if you do decide to get married, it should be a conscious decision, not a destination arrived at by autopilot.

My friend who asks about different partners for different stages is right, some people would be better off this way.  In fact, we do it all the time.  We make different friends during different stages of our lives.  If you want it that way romantically, you can have it, as long as you don’t get married.  Getting married says you are giving up your chance for new partners in the future.  If you don’t want to give that up, don’t walk down the aisle.

I won’t go quite as far as Soren.  There are times when even the promise of marriage has to be broken, as in instances of abuse.  And one could argue about his equating the promise with love.  But basically, and barring extreme circumstances, Kierkegaard was right.  There’s no point in marriage if the promise isn’t (almost) iron clad.

As for my friend’s plan to have marriage be in constant flux, always open to minute by minute renegotiation, it can’t work that way.  Part of the reason we have a divorce rate of 50% in this country is that people use divorce as a go to option whenever things get rough.  There has to be more of a backbone to a marriage or it will never last.  And entering into a promise that can’t be kept is no less of a lie for being slow in coming.

So if you choose to get married, think it through and give the “anti-nuptial” option its fair consideration.  And if you decide to go forward, know that you will stick it out through thick and thin.

Or, to put it another way, in the great fire swamp of marriage there are ROUSs lurking around every corner and unexpected jets of flame popping up from previously safe-looking ground.  If you want to make it through in one piece you’d better hold on tight to your Dread Pirate Roberts and not let go at the first sign of trouble.  And whatever you do, don’t forget your iocane powder.