The Marriage Crisis: Is the Sacred Union in Danger?

With all the pissing and moaning that's been going on about the state of marriage in today's society, you have to ask yourself what's really going on. Is marriage really in crisis? Is it a sacred institution that badly needs defending? Is gay marriage really a threat? And finally, should you be concerned about the high divorce rates?

If you ask me, the answer to all these questions is a resounding 'No!'

Defending the Traditional Marriage

Before we start defending, let's start defining. What's a traditional marriage? The words often call up an image of blissful domesticity: "Honey, I'm home!" and a pot roast in the oven. In this model, the man is the breadwinner, and the woman is the happy homemaker. Nothing wrong with that, of course -especially in today's society where the work women do at home commands nearly equal respect. However, traditionally, this type of marriage gave all the economic power to the man and promoted the subservience of women. That kind of institution isn't going to be solving any of the marriage problems today. So let's reject it and move on.

The next definition is religious (mostly Christian) and particularly vocal. This group describes marriage as "a sacred union between a man and a woman." Sounds beautiful. However, there are a few problems with this statement. First of all, the Church was deeply opposed to marriage during the early years of Christianity. Love relationships were openly disapproved of and discouraged because love was thought to be an emotion that a person should only devote to god. Over the years, the Church relented grudgingly but placed more and more limitations upon the state of marriage. Even today, there's this dichotomy between the reverence paid to the ceremony and state of marriage, and the underlying disapproval of the Church. By this I mean that it's telling that priests and nuns are not allowed to marry - marriage is a sacred institution, but apparently, not sacred enough for the Church itself. Which kind of makes you think that the real reason for marriage in the eyes of religion is to control another activity it doesn't much approve of. As in, "Heck, we can't get these crazy kids to keep it in their pants. Might as well pair them off and make it look legitimate." The Church's marriage model keeps everything nice, neat, and palatable: it is the only acceptable way a man and a woman can have a sexual relationship. They don't want anybody to mess with it. Gosh, think of the consequences! Chaos and promiscuity! Collapse of family life!

All that aside, my point is that the defense of a traditional marriage from the religious perspective does no good at all in the national sense. It's a lofty ideal with a suspicious backdrop. Go ahead and preserve marriage within your own flock. But when it comes to politics, preserve the division of Church and state.

Marriage belongs to the legal sphere as much as it does to the social one. Thus, marriage laws should be crafted to be fair to all human beings, not just the heterosexual ones. We can't deny a whole class of people civil rights just because god says it's wrong to be homosexual. Well, we can, but we shouldn't, whether it's traditional or not.

Finally, the term 'traditional' itself makes me laugh. If we're seriously going to talk about tradition, take a look at the history of marriage. What we think is traditional is actually a very recent development in Western culture. For most of history, love was not necessary for marriage. In fact, at different points, it was discouraged, suspect, and wrong. It started to show up occasionally in the 18th and 19th centuries, but didn't really become a major motivation for marriage until the beginning of the 20th.Meanwhile, every possible structure of marriage has existed at some point in history, not just the one man/one woman model. Over and over, marriage has been 'in crisis,' yet the human race and its habit of getting hitched have both survived.

What can we conclude? I think it's pretty obvious that the social ideal of a traditional marriage is an unrealistic model. It creates expectations that can't be met which leads to tension and distress. From youth, we're exposed to images and ideas that lead us to believe marriage is split down the middle between two extremes. The first is traditional: white picket fence and all that jazz, perfect in every way from the one-month's-salary engagement ring to the family dinner every night at seven. The second is dysfunctional: nagging, fighting, cheating people who make each other miserable. Rare is the woman who doesn't sigh over a jewelry commercial, picturing her own perfectly romantic moment. Few are the men whose psyches have been untouched by sitcoms, who don't learn to fear commitment even as they're laughing at Al Bundy. We're being socialized by a culture that is completely schizophrenic in its treatment of marriage. We want it and we fear it, all at once.

Where's the happy medium? That's what we should be seeking, instead of clinging to old ideas just because it's been done in the past.

The Divorce Rate

Is the threat of divorce making you hesitant to get married? Are you worried about your chances?

Good.

I'm glad that we have a high divorce rate. I think it does a world of good. We're all aware of that one magical number, and I believe that it's forcing today's couples to really think about what they're doing and why.

There's nothing wrong with marriage that won't get resolved once we stop obsessing over tradition. The preoccupation with marriage is so pervasive that the divorce rate is not surprising at all. We're all conditioned to think marriage is necessary. You're expected to get married so everybody rushes around playing musical chairs, desperately trying to snag the best they can get or any at all. Is that really the way to approach what's supposed to be a lifetime commitment? As a goal to be accomplished rather than a celebration of two people in love?

I take the divorce rate as a good sign, a sign that our society is in a state of transition where old ideas are battling new. Today, more than ever before, we have all the tools necessary for choosing a love-based marriage. We are lucky enough to live in an advanced society where gender roles are more or less equalized, and economic independence is attainable. We are capable of choosing marriage for all the right reasons. We're learning not to let our wallets, our families, our sex drives, or our wombs make our decisions for us. And yet, we're still handicapped by a lifetime's worth of brainwashing and naturally, that leads to mistakes.

There is always going to be divorce because people can grow apart and change, but the divorce rate is high now because our expectations are higher. We want to be satisfied and happy. We're becoming more cautious, but we still tend to jump in because we're conditioned to take the plunge.

The divorce rate doesn't reflect a breakdown or a crisis. It reflects the process of change, it reflects our growing need for fulfilling relationships, and it will shrink once we learn to adapt marriage to our real needs and desires. It's shrinking even now...so very slowly, but still.

Everything's Fine

Sit back and relax, there's no need to panic.

Our problem with marriage is that we have unreal, romanticized expectations. We expect it to be perfect and then we realize, oh yeah, we're human. We expect this and we get that, and we can't deal so we split.

We need to stop trying to make marriages today fit a cookie-cutter ideal of the past. Or any ideal for that matter. Do what works for you, and if it's not traditional, so what? The point is to be happy, not to revert to the oppressed society of the 1950s.

Nobody's attacking traditional marriage. We're just acknowledging that it's not the only option. Which also means that we have to stop preventing gay marriage. They're human too. They deserve the same rights as everybody else. How is that at all threatening? I don't understand what a gay couple's marriage has to do with the state of marriage. If John and Joe next door get married, is my decidedly heterosexual boyfriend going to run out and get married to a man too, just to get in on the trend? Oh, please. Not even if pigs flew. There is absolutely no connection.

It's time to reject your conditioning. Make the best decisions you can, and let others make their own.