Since Jason’s and my wedding is coming up in less than two weeks now, I thought it might be interesting to write something about why I think that marriage, in general, is something worthwhile. After all, it might seem that the most rational approach to romantic relationships would be to simply live with someone one loved for as long as living with that person brought joy to one’s life. Then, if the relationship became less valuable over time, one would be free to pursue a more valuable and meaningful one. Further, it seems that a person who is genuinely committed to self-actualization would benefit more from multiple partners over her lifetime because she would gain more opportunities to learn things about herself as the number of people with whom she had lived increased.
A common reason that people decide to get married in the face of these reasons not to do so is that they believe that they are somehow destined to be together; that each of them is “the one” for the other. However, since I don’t believe that there’s anyone out there coming up with little destinies for everyone, I also don’t think that it is impossible that there might be someone somewhere in the world who might make a better spouse for me than Jason, although certainly I think it’s extremely unlikely that I’ll ever meet anyone else who is as right for me as he is. So why am I willing to bind myself for life to just one person?
I think that part of the value of a lifelong commitment to someone one loves is that it transforms life from a solitary journey into a true partnership. Instead of being on her own in the world, a person who is married has someone who will always be there as a source of support, encouragement and challenge, someone with whom she will make the most important decisions of her life and someone with whom she will both celebrate her triumphs and find encouragement when she encounters adversity. As long as the two people in a marriage share the same overall goals in life, they can be each other’s greatest source of strength and achieve more together than they could have achieved alone.
Another part of the value of a lifelong commitment is that there are levels of intimacy that can only be experienced by people who have known each other for many years and who have promised to live out their lives together. Knowing that one’s spouse will be there for life allows one to bare one’s soul in a way that might otherwise be difficult, whether in sexual situations or simply in conversation about one’s greatest wishes and fears. Anyone who chose to have many short-term relationships instead of getting married (or anyone who didn’t have the opportunity to form a good marriage because she never met a suitable person) would never be able to achieve this level of intimacy.
A lifelong commitment is also valuable because it involves a clear decision of what kind of person one is going to be. It is all too easy to float through life, changing one’s mind with the current and never making any real commitments to any ideals. Getting married, however, means committing to the goals and ideals that one shares with one’s spouse, since one has promised to maintain the relationship for life and the relationship would fail without shared goals and ideals. Of course there are cases in which one might realize later that the relationship is based on evil ideals, in which case one would be obligated to do everything possible to convince the other partner in the marriage to change his mind, but it is best to consider the ideals in which one’s marriage is founded carefully before making the commitment in the first place. So, marriage has the additional benefit of involving a choice of a clear direction for one’s life, as well as someone to encourage one in working in that direction.
Of course, the most obvious value of getting married is that it allows me to spend the rest of my days with Jason, which is something that I badly want to do because I am much happier with him than I am without him. Being separated is terrible, and marriage is a way of promising not to ever let that happen. Without the experience of joy in the presence of the person one is marrying, the rest of the value of marriage would obviously be unattainable. In other words, marriage only works if you’re marrying someone you love.
But even if a lifelong commitment is valuable, why does that mean that this commitment has to occur in the form of a public ceremony followed by a big, expensive party? After all, couldn’t Jason and I achieve all of the above values by simply promising to stay together for life one afternoon in our backyard? I think that we probably could achieve most of the value of marriage through a private promise, but I also think that there is additional value in the very publicness of the commitment that we’ll make in front of our friends and family. Our wedding ceremony and the rings we will wear afterward will be our way of telling the world that we are together and we mean it, that the two of us are a family, and that our lives are centered around each other. The people who witness our commitment will hopefully become people who support it when we encounter challenges in our relationship, and anyone who sees us afterward will know by our rings that we are not available. Instead of being a private promise that will be known only to us and those whom we tell, our marriage will be a matter of public record, supported by our government. Rather than being two people who promised fidelity to each other, we will be a legal unit. Having our commitment recognized by our government, those who witness our marriage and everyone we meet afterward will help to strengthen it, thereby increasing the likelihood that we will achieve the values that a successful lifelong commitment can bring.
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