Thoughts on (my) Marriage

So this is around the time of year when everyone starts getting married. My cousin (who is a month younger than me) just got engaged. One the best friends of Asterisk and me, Ralph, just got married and is in Hawaii now. Two more of my high school friends have gotten engaged. Which has led me to begrudgingly start thinking about the subject.

The fact is, marriage seems kind of...icky...to me.

Which, of course, is a highly qualified, extremely scientific qualification on my part. But it's true. And I've actually spent a decent amount of time (I even read a book about marriage) this summer thinking about it, and why I'm so averse to the idea.

Let me state clearly, here, that I absolutely love weddings. I get all excited and choked up. And for my friends that are getting married, I could not be happier. I think it's beautiful, and wonderful, and a great way of showing your love and devotion to another person.

It's just that when it comes to me, I get a little antsy.

Now, I hate to bring this up, but it is valid in my case. My parents are divorced. My mother is divorced twice. Of all my family (and there's a lot of us), I would say that the only truly happy marriage I have ever seen was between my Mammie and Georgie (my grandma and grandpa on my mom's side). I did not grow up thinking that marriage was supposed to last, nor that it would work, nor that it guaranteed happiness. In fact, the divorces I saw, and lived in, gave me the impression that marriage was really just a stepping stone to divorce, and divorce sucks. For everyone.

So why do it in the first place? There's a 50% chance it won't work out, and then you're dealing with the most stressful personal situation behind the death of a partner. Plus, the stats are not in my favor. I would more than likely get married young-ish (27, 28), because if I have kids (and I want a child, just one, mind you), I'd want to be married before I was pregnant, and I want to have my child around 29 or 30, because my family has a terrible track record with keeping out lady parts working well into older age. The younger you marry, the less likely you are to stay together. I also come from divorced parents. Another mark against me. I also tend to live with my partners, and if you live together beforehand, it also tends to mark your marriage as less likely to succeed.

And, well, probably most damning, there's that little part where I don't really believe in the institution I would be entering.

The thing is, I came to terms with the fact that I, more than likely, would never be legally able to get married when I was sixteen, and figured out how damn gay I am. And after that, marriage sort of stopped mattering to me in terms of commitment, love, and lifelong devotion. I in no way believe that marriage is needed in order to form a loving partnership nor a loving family. In fact, it seems a bit antiquated.

Marriage (traditional heterosexual marriage) entails a lot of loss on the woman's part, and no loss on the man's part. Married men earn more, live longer, and are happier than unmarried men. On the other hand, married women live shorter lives, take a 7% pay decrease on average, and are generally unhappier than unmarried women. (I'm getting all of the stats in this blog from Committed, by Elizabeth Gilbert, the same woman who wrote Eat, Pray, Love. If you care enough to fact check me, there you go.) Not only that, but marriage also tends to restrict a woman's autonomy, since there's this little thing called coverture, which means that the woman, and all her assets, are subsumed by those of her husband. In legal terms, she is now an extension of him. (By the way, this is part of the reason why marital rape was legal until the 1970's -- it's not considered rape if the woman is part and parcel of the man). Taking of the man's last name by the woman is a symbolic representation of this. Now, this can be avoided in modern marriages, but oftentimes it's true that the woman becomes a disadvantaged partner in the relationship. My mother had an allowance, for goodness' sake, from her husband.

As a pretty damn modern queer feminist woman, all of this makes it kind of hard for me to get behind the idea of marriage. Even though I am dating a man now, it still seems a bit, I don't know, traitor-ish to the gay community to get hetero-married. I'm also not religious by any means, so there's none of that pushing me forward. In fact, the religious overtones of marriage (now, anyways; Christianity was actually extremely opposed to the idea of marriage for the first 1,000 or so years, because marriage leads to sex, and sex is impure. Judaism was way more cool with it) kind of scare me away from it. It would seem like the ultimate form of passing -- getting married in a church to a man, when I'm a mostly lesbian heathen.

So perhaps that's why I'm so against it for myself. It negates, from the outside view, most of my identity. It would just be so normal.

But then again, part of me really, really wants to do it sometime. To make a public commitment to someone, to exchange rings and vows, to promise to only be with that person. I want it. I do. It's just that I have to overcome the vast paragraphs I just expounded. And I think, with the right person, I could have an exceedingly egalitarian marriage in which we both agree that we will keep open communication and try our damnedest not to get divorced, and in which I lose none of my financial or legal rights, and have an equal say. I think, with a person who really respects who I am, and who I respect in turn, it could be quite beautiful. Especially, say, if we got married outside, and had blues and swing dancing. That would be nice.

I think the thing is, everyone just has to chisel out their own spot in the idea of marriage. And I do really like the idea of co-opting such a stodgy old idea and making it uniquely mine, and my partner's. Seems kind of subversive. Which is neat.

At any rate, take what you like from this. Just know, that when I get married, it'll have very little to do with tradition, and a lot to do with an expression of love. And probably very cheap, since I can't see me being much richer any time soon.

-- Jazz