I've been wanting to write about marriage for a while now, mainly
because The Spouse and I will mark fifteen years together, eleven of
them legally married, on July 14 (that's right, we got married on Bastille Day --
live with it), and I'm finding things out about the nuptial
relationship that really surprise me. Naturally, this makes me an
expert, so I consider it my ethical duty to straighten out all you poor
bastards who are DOING IT WRONG.
Take this article over at Salon. It's nothing new; the whole 'monogamy is unnatural' thing has been bobbing around in our contemporary consciousness for a while now, but the article touches on how ideas about monogamy and marriage interact in our culture to produce a pretty hellish vision of the matrimonial state. I mean, bound by law forever to somebody you lose sexual interest in almost immediately? What fun is that?
The fundamental problem with this perspective isn't monogamy or the lack thereof, it's people going into marriage thinking it's about sex and romance, when, really, sex and romance are just the tricks your hormones play to get you in the door. Getting married is a process, not an event. You can get a license to drive, but if you don't know how to operate a car, you're not going anywhere.
Wikipedia, that hallowed repository of all that is meaningful, defines marriage as "a social union or legal contract between individuals that creates kinship." The word 'kinship' is meaningful here; we're all born into blood ties -- relationship is literally the first thing we do. However, as we get older and the drive to procreate sets in, it becomes clear that we're not supposed to do it with people we're too closely related to. They smell wrong for that, a clue that mixing our genes with theirs won't produce hardy offspring. So off we go, hormones raging, to find someone who smells right. When we find them, the culture deems that we must legally declare our intention to hang around and raise the kids before it will confer any kind of status upon the relationship. So, we get married.
Because this happens at the beginning, when we're stoned on pheremones and mad to copulate, marriage has become inextricably related to sex and romance. So much so that we've decided that sex and romance must be the REASON for marriage. Thus, when the carnal madness begins to wane, we think, "OMG, I've made a huge mistake!" Sadly, this is where many marriages end. You've 'lost interest' in your spouse, so, obviously, you must part ways. I say "sadly" because, in my experience, this is really where the marriage starts.
What comes after your head clears long enough to get out of bed is another type of kinship. If you've married the right person, you find yourself in a relationship bizarrely similar to the ones you enjoy (or don't, depending) with your birth family, only now you get to do it with somebody that you've specifically selected for the purpose. And, unless you've run off to Vegas with some hottie you picked up at your sister's wedding, the person is presumably someone you like well enough, and trust far enough, to let them find out all those things you hate about yourself, and vice-versa.
If you're doing it right, this is where the real rewards of marriage start. All those things you hate about yourself, the spouse thinks they're funny, or cute, or fascinating, or -- OK, they think they're weird and disgusting, but they find a way to live with them -- because that's what family does. And those little primate social receptors that were activated when a pair of human hands caught you coming out of your mother go, "Ahhhh... acceptance!"
That's what marriage is about, I'm discovering -- something that goes deeper than sexual satisfaction or romantic fantasy fulfillment or even 'soulmate' companionship. It's about coming full circle from those first relationships to an intentionally created family that teaches you to accept everything about yourself, bad, good or indifferent.
Take this article over at Salon. It's nothing new; the whole 'monogamy is unnatural' thing has been bobbing around in our contemporary consciousness for a while now, but the article touches on how ideas about monogamy and marriage interact in our culture to produce a pretty hellish vision of the matrimonial state. I mean, bound by law forever to somebody you lose sexual interest in almost immediately? What fun is that?
The fundamental problem with this perspective isn't monogamy or the lack thereof, it's people going into marriage thinking it's about sex and romance, when, really, sex and romance are just the tricks your hormones play to get you in the door. Getting married is a process, not an event. You can get a license to drive, but if you don't know how to operate a car, you're not going anywhere.
Wikipedia, that hallowed repository of all that is meaningful, defines marriage as "a social union or legal contract between individuals that creates kinship." The word 'kinship' is meaningful here; we're all born into blood ties -- relationship is literally the first thing we do. However, as we get older and the drive to procreate sets in, it becomes clear that we're not supposed to do it with people we're too closely related to. They smell wrong for that, a clue that mixing our genes with theirs won't produce hardy offspring. So off we go, hormones raging, to find someone who smells right. When we find them, the culture deems that we must legally declare our intention to hang around and raise the kids before it will confer any kind of status upon the relationship. So, we get married.
Because this happens at the beginning, when we're stoned on pheremones and mad to copulate, marriage has become inextricably related to sex and romance. So much so that we've decided that sex and romance must be the REASON for marriage. Thus, when the carnal madness begins to wane, we think, "OMG, I've made a huge mistake!" Sadly, this is where many marriages end. You've 'lost interest' in your spouse, so, obviously, you must part ways. I say "sadly" because, in my experience, this is really where the marriage starts.
What comes after your head clears long enough to get out of bed is another type of kinship. If you've married the right person, you find yourself in a relationship bizarrely similar to the ones you enjoy (or don't, depending) with your birth family, only now you get to do it with somebody that you've specifically selected for the purpose. And, unless you've run off to Vegas with some hottie you picked up at your sister's wedding, the person is presumably someone you like well enough, and trust far enough, to let them find out all those things you hate about yourself, and vice-versa.
If you're doing it right, this is where the real rewards of marriage start. All those things you hate about yourself, the spouse thinks they're funny, or cute, or fascinating, or -- OK, they think they're weird and disgusting, but they find a way to live with them -- because that's what family does. And those little primate social receptors that were activated when a pair of human hands caught you coming out of your mother go, "Ahhhh... acceptance!"
That's what marriage is about, I'm discovering -- something that goes deeper than sexual satisfaction or romantic fantasy fulfillment or even 'soulmate' companionship. It's about coming full circle from those first relationships to an intentionally created family that teaches you to accept everything about yourself, bad, good or indifferent.
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