Daily Lobo Columnist
Emma Goldman once said, “There are today large numbers of men and women to whom marriage is naught but a farce, but who submit to it for the sake of public opinion.”
That quote is from an essay printed in 1911, but the picture isn’t any prettier today. The ideal of two people falling in love and deciding to spend the rest of their lives together has little if anything to do with what marriage really is. I have no doubt that love can exist in marriage — my parents and my brother and sister-in-law provide great examples of that in my own life. But the institution of marriage as it now stands does more to hinder than to help the cause of love.
Given the history of marriage, it’s surprising that love is a factor at all. The invention of surplus wealth brought about marriage as property exchange. Since men now had possessions to pass on to their children, they needed to be sure that their children were in fact their own. So, they gave property or labor in exchange for a woman (or women) to exclusively bear their progeny.
Although marriage is no longer literally an exchange of property, marriage as a legal institution still has property at its core. Tax benefits, inheritance rights, shared property these are the true foundations of marriage today. Love could never require or be bound by a legal contract; private property demands it.
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And if the pressures of property and law aren’t enough, there is always good ol’ “public opinion.” From fairytales to Hollywood, the message is the same: You know you really want to get married, so you’d better snatch up the first person who saves you from evil enchantment — or at least kind of turns you on — as quick as you can. The standard assumption of the mass media is that marriage is necessarily a happy ending, whether or not any real basis for love exists.
More powerful still is that other mechanism of social pressure: the family. You know what I’m talking about. Every family gathering comes equipped with that requisite question, “So are you seeing anyone?” If you’re really lucky, your family might even try to set you up. Again, the message is clear: Get hitched, make babies, and carry on the family name.
All these factors conspire to make marriage more an obligation than a source of love and self-fulfillment.
And yet, in spite of all that, I, for one, still want to get married. But what does that really mean? Does it mean I want to have someone legally bound to me forever or at least until one of us dies or gets a second legal document to invalidate the first one? Does it mean I want to forfeit my ideals to the economic necessity of the two-income household, and get some tax benefits to boot? Does it mean the latest chick flick has convinced me to give up my promiscuous ways and settle into a white picket cage?
Of course not. It means I want to fall in love and spend the rest of my life with this person I’m in love with. It means I want to share the happiness of that love with my family, friends and community. It means I want my relationships to be bigger than anything that law can bind.
Marriage can be a farce, but it doesn’t have to be. You don’t have to give in to the pressures of law, property, or public opinion. Just keep your eyes and your heart on love, and let the rest go to hell.
