Irony of Marriage
I came across this reading on Awaken.org and found it to be a fascinating perspective on contemporary marriage:
“Largely, marriage has been used by those societies, religions, and families as a mini-prison, as kind of a contractual arrangement that says:
‘Everything will be, now and forevermore, the way it is in just this moment. You will love no one else, and you certainly won't demonstrate that love for anyone else in the way you demonstrate your love for me. You won't go anywhere else except where I go. You'll do very little that I do not do with you, and in most ways from this day forward, your life is going to be, at least to some degree, limited.’ And so the very thing which should unlimit people and release the spirit within them, works against that and limits people and closes that spirit down.
That's the irony of marriage as we've created it. We say, ‘I do,’ and from the moment we say, ‘I do,’ we can't do the things that we would really love to do in life, in largest measure. Now, very few people would admit this in the first throes of romance and in the first moments after their wedding. They would only come to these conclusions three, or five, or--what's the famous phrase, the seven-year itch--seven years later, when they suddenly realize that, in fact, their experience of themselves in the world at large has been reduced, and not enlarged, by the institution of marriage.
That's not true, of course, in all marriages, naturally. But it's true in enough of them--I'm going to say, in the majority of them. And that is why we have such a high divorce rate, because it isn't so much that people have gotten tired of each other, not nearly so often as they've gotten tired of the restrictions and the limitations that marriage seems to have imposed upon them. The human heart knows when it's being asked to be less.
Now love, on the other hand, is all about freedom. The very definition of love is freedom itself. Love is that which is free and knows no limitation, restriction, or condition of any kind. And so I would think that what we have done here is that we have created an artificial construction around that which is least artificial. Love is the most authentic experience within the framework of the human adventure. And yet in the midst of this grand authenticity, we have created these artificial constrictions. And that makes it very difficult for people to stay in love.
And so what we have to do is reconstruct marriage, if we're going to have marriage at all, in a way that says: ‘I do not limit you. There is no condition that makes it okay for us to remain together. I do not have any desire to cause you to be less in your expression of yourself, in any way. Indeed, what this marriage is intended to do, this new form of marriage, is to fuel the engine of your experience--the experience of who you really are and who you choose to be.’
And one last thing that the New Marriage does: it says, ‘I recognize that even you, yourself, will change. Your ideas will change, your tastes will change, your desires will change. Your whole understanding of Who You Are had better change, because if it doesn't change, you've become a very static personality over a great many years, and nothing would displease me more. And I recognize that the process of evolution will produce changes in you.’
This new form of marriage not only allows for such changes, but it encourages them.”
Of course as a relationship counselor, I found this perspective intriguing. Here are some ways that these thoughts come up in the therapy room:
Are two people enough for a relationship to succeed? Would polyamory, open relationship or other forms of consensual non-monogamy be more fulfilling for us?
What parts of my culture inform my views on individuation within a romantic relationship? What examples have I had throughout my life?
How can our love change over time as we necessarily change? Change is inevitable. In a long term relationship, we are guaranteed to change. How can I honor my partner(s) as they evolve? What does my commitment to them look like after significant changes?
What kinds of thoughts did this essay bring up for you? Any areas where you’d like to push back?