Why marry at all?

In response to my previous post on marriage, a friend rised the question "why marry at all?". It is very good question and I do not have any simple answer so I decided make a separate post about it.

First, we should separate practical reasons for marriage from others. It is confusing that marriage combines a slate of practical (including financial) reasons together with emotional and moral issues. In the case of Jinlin and myself, marriage will allow her to get permanent residence permit to Finland. In my previous marriage I had children with my wife and the status of marriage makes the bureaucracy related to children simpler. In many countries the state encourages long-term couples to marry through financial benefits.

I am not huge fan of such state-regulated rules based on marriage. In my ideal world states would not keep track of the status of marriage of its citizens. Marriage would not even be a legal entity in state jurisdiction at all. We would not need to debate whether gay couples, or triples of three persons should be allowed to get married because no-one would get married in the legal sense, legal marriage would not exist. No financial benefits would depend on the arbitrary switch between "married" and "non-married", status of children would depend only on who is their mother and father and Jinlin could move permanently to Finland based on similar letter of invitation that is now needed to get her a visiting Visa.

Even while marriage remains a legal institution I would change the law so that property of the couple would not be re-divided in divorce. This can be done with a prenuptial agreement already within the present law but I think it should be the default case since the present law is unequal and can lead to bitter divorce-battles in law. The possibility that a poor woman can marry a rich man and then walk away after short time with half of his possessions can actually hurt the level of commitment and love in a marriage.

Love and commitment without marriage?

For couples where practical (or religious) reasons for marriage are not an issue, I indeed think it is completely okay and equally good to remain unmarried indefinitely. I feel it is and should be completely okay to never get married. In this light my list of men that have not experienced divorce failed to include and important case. There are men, who have courage for love, relationship and commitment, experiencing long relationships with much good in addition to the trouble. But these long committed relationships do not simply involve marriage. Such men do not have divorces, they have simply endings of relationships.

I think I missed this case because it is rare: there are not many men who are born, live a long life with one or more long, full, committed relationships - with or without children - and die at old age. Indeed the friend who raised the question "why marry at all?" has been himself marrying and divorcing as well. This is because there are other non-practical reasons for marriage related to emotions, responsibility and public display of commitment. Regarding these "soft" emotional reasons for marriages, there seems to be a significant difference between the genders. Following reflection by a woman in an internet discussion quite well captures this irrational unexplainable desire for marriage:

I have no idea really why people marry. I really enjoyed my years as a single. I dated and I could do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. But I met someone and fell in love and we built a house and live together. We have everything we need, a nice home, love and commitment. Nothing will change when we marry, but I just have this huge, overwhelming desire to be married to this man. I know things will stay the same. I know we have no real need to get married. People living together is quite acceptable these days, and we are not planning on children or anything......but I cant deny my feelings. I want to be married to this man. It is like a mark of his respect to me. He adores me and respects me and will prove it to me and both of our families, by officially making his vows to me, and me to him.

Such desire most likely has large cultural aspect, but there might be some hard-wiring in the brain for that as well. It just reminds me of the stories of many parents about their girls start very naturally and at very young age play princess role-play. The fact that women are probably more deeply interested in getting married is contrasted by the cultural expectation that men are expected to ask their ladies to marry them. This reminds me of old quote: "Men choose the women that choose the men."

So is there more commitment in a long deep relationship with marriage than without? If other partner wants marriage - implicitly or explicitly, rationally or irrationally - but there is no marriage because the other one does not want (again, for any reason), then I would say that the level of commitment is not maximal. The additional trouble and bureaucracy of divorcing marriage and the slight residual shame associated with divorce can be reasonable reasons to not get married but I think that fully committed person does not use them as reasons but proceeds with requested marriage despite of these and other reasons.

But if both partners have absolutely no desire for marriage and are unconditionally happy about long and deep relationship with or without children but without marriage, then I see no reason for the commitment being as high as possible. In some ways, perhaps, such couples can have even stronger determination about their relationship by choosing to be explicitly independent from the pressures of society and traditional roles? I don't know, but I extend my sincere congratulations to such lovers.