The M Word

MARRIAGE

All this divorce and all this love in my life has put me on an emotional roll coaster lately. All the chaos in my family gets me so upset and then my boyfriend walks through the door and my emotions fly to the opposite side of the spectrum. I know first hand that love and hatred are complete opposites. Is it possible to hate someone after loving them and vice versa?

 Needless to say, I've had a lot of thoughts about the whole marriage thing. Having divorce so close to me has not made me second guess my personal relationship but it has made me think about marriage in general. You fall in love, wait until he asks you to marry him, and then you apparently live happily ever after. As if, marriage is the all mighty. It seems like so many people, especially girls, are waiting their whole lives to get married. Searching for their "prince charming" and then when they finally find him, they wait a certain amount of time and then expect a proposal, for marriage. There's also a time limit, in some cases, for how long one will wait for their significant other to pop "the question". If their boyfriend asks sooner than a year, is it too soon? Do you look at a couple sideways if they have been together for years and still haven't gotten married? Is it an ultimatum if your lover doesn't want to get married?

An activity in school many years ago comes to mind. Throughout grade school I was in an Extended Learning Program. A classroom where all the "smart" kids would go once a week. (My older brother always told me I only got into the program because the teacher loved our family however, that's beside the point).The agenda one day was to build a society. Imagine a group of third or fourth graders playing God or acting as "The Government". I was given the task to decide the underwater society's rites of passages. I think I finally decided on boys having to hunt some sort of fish or something along the lines. However, the relevance of the story is that I remember my teacher trying to provoke my thinking by asking me what the boys would wear and who would be involved. I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that I was deciding this. I just wanted to say, they'll do whatever they want to do, who am I to decide how they will act. I remember looking over at the table next to me and was extremely envious of the girl who had the wedding ceremonies. Again, I couldn't comprehend why they would do anything different than what we did for our weddings. No white dresses or flowers. No wedding parties and cakes. This is when I realized that we didn't do these things because that's the way of life, we did them because someone decided it for us. 

I currently work at a very high end hotel. The people I interact with on a daily basis are the elite and among the highest class in the world. I have seen the biggest and fanciest wedding rings. One certain occasion made me do a bit of self reflection. Two ladies came in. Beautiful in every way. They had model legs. They had long, perfectly curled hair, plump lips, gorgeous bathing suits and were ordering bottles of Rosé. All I could think about was how jealous of their wedding rings I was. I was jealous of how big they were. How great it must feel to place those "rocks" on their fingers every day. It must make them feel more confident, more beautiful. They probably flash it to everyone, every chance they get. Then I met their husbands. I'm not saying that they don't have great marriages or great husbands. However, after meeting these men and seeing the bigger picture, I realized I have everything they have, in regards to their wedding rings. Maybe I don't have a ring on my finger but isn't the ring meant to symbolize love? And love I have. The size of your diamond doesn't matter. I have an amazing man and amazing love in my life. Having a bigger ring doesn't make your love bigger or your man better. It doesn't make your life more fulfilling. We live in a society where a man is told to find the hottest wife possible and get her the biggest diamond possible. One of the first questions people ask a newly engaged woman is what size the ring is. 

Why are so many people just trying to do what society tells us to do? What the government tells us to do. What God tells us to do. Religion plays a huge part in the wedding ceremony. Many religions and cultures believe that you can't move in with your significant other until you are married. Why? Because that is what someone, the government, religion, culture, or belief system decided. Most people don't even question or begin to discover why. They just do and believe what they are told. Marriage has become a business. One again, the government and greed have taken over part of our lives. They control our perspectives of marriage. Marriage has lost it's beauty, it's love. 

I am not against marriage or anything associated with it. I am however against the reason why so many women are trying so desperately to find someone. I hope to, one day marry the man of my dreams, my best friend. (Yes, I have already found this amazing man). I love him so dearly and want to spend the rest of my life with him.  I want to marry him to celebrate our love and for our dear and true friends and family to celebrate it with us. I want to wear a ring on my finger just like I want to wear a smile on my face, so that everyone who sees me, knows how incredibly happy I am. 

The reasoning for me writing this is to hopefully make people think about why they want to get married. You are still the same person whether you are married or not. Your life may be different after getting married but the question is why it is different. 

From Wikipedia:

Marriage (also called matrimony or wedlock) is a social union or legal contract between people called spouses that establishes rights and obligations between the spouses, between the spouses and their children, and between the spouses and their in-laws. 

 It is often viewed as a contract.

Historically, in most cultures, married women had very few rights of their own, being considered, along with the family's children, the property of the husband; as such, they could not own or inherit property, or represent themselves legally (see for example coverture). In Europe, the United States, and a few other places, from the late 19th century throughout the 20th century, marriage has undergone gradual legal changes, aimed at improving the rights of women. These changes included giving wives a legal identity of their own, abolishing the right of husbands to physically discipline their wives, giving wives property rights, liberalizing divorce laws, and requiring a wife's consent when sexual relations occur. Many of these changes, however, remain restricted to Western countries.

In his book The History of Human Marriage (1921), Edvard Westermarck defined marriage as "a more or less durable connection between male and female lasting beyond the mere act of propagation till after the birth of the offspring."