Is Marriage Obsolete?
By: Joe Duncan
Tags: Marriage, Relationships, Life, Self, Love

Most People Aren’t Ready

In a very real way, love is what we make it; it’s what we make it because it’s conceptual, we get what we put in, much like any other activity, but it’s also not what we make it at the same time— it’s what our partner makes it as well.

One of the most valuable lessons of my life was when I learned that you can’t control other people. I know it sounds basic, but I don’t think it’s natural for us to believe that we can’t facilitate the change we want that depends on others doing their part and upholding their commitments.

Similarly, where most of my relationships have failed have been my ability to be happy with my life in general, single or in a relationship, and others often expecting a relationship to bring them a happiness that they didn’t previously yet have.

I really don’t mean to talk bad about people on a whole, based upon what I see in the world and how others create and maintain their relationships, many people (if not most) are not at all prepared to handle something like a lifelong commitment. A commitment to anything takes work, especially other people, but even commitment to maintaining my garden takes work and self-sacrifice every day.

So an important question we should ask ourselves if we’re considering marriage at any point in life is, “Am I prepared for neverending self-sacrifice? Am I prepared to give every single day a large part of myself and expect nothing in return?”

While I know there are some out there thinking, “Expect nothing in return? Are you nuts!? That’s just a recipe for disaster!” my personal take is that while there are cases of abuse and neglect and other reasons for us to set healthy boundaries of what’s acceptable in return, I’ll also say that the most healthy relationships I’ve ever been in or witnessed were between two people capable of total self-sacrifice.

And I say, “nothing in return,” because their chances are pretty good that we may invest every part of ourselves into a relationship that fails because the other person simply wasn’t willing to do the same. This is why we should be extremely selective with our partners.

Most successful marriages I’ve ever seen were successful because both of the two people were constitutionally inclined towards self-sacrifice and selflessness, they didn’t have to tolerate abuse, neglect, drama, or other problems that ordinary people often do.

“Am I really ready for that kind of commitment in the face of such an incredible risk?”

We shouldn’t ask ourselves these questions in the months leading up to marriage but rather during the course of our lives as our opinions and feelings change. A lifelong commitment isn’t anything to take lightly, especially when it’s a commitment in which other people will depend on us.

The Single Biggest Factor in a Successful Marriage

Marriage isn’t just an endeavor that brings us things, it’s a responsibility and opportunity for us to contribute something. Beyond this, marriage also isn’t just an exchange, one person’s comfort and sacrifice for another, no, marriage is when we sacrifice ourselves entirely as independent entities for the good of the union. We can’t casually marry and expect great results no more than we can casually expect to go to war and pledge a half-hearted and conditional commitment to die for our country — once on the battlefield you can’t quit.

Simply put, couples fail to solidify their bond. It isn’t infidelity, finances, nor any of the other common things we hear about that destroys marriages, says Marriage Counselor of 40-years Neil Lavender, but a lack of solidification.

People refuse to give up their sense of self and commit to the “we” entity more than themselves, and this is the number one cause of failure in marriage, which permeates all the others. Infidelity is a case of someone placing their own individual needs above the “we,” just as financial problems is a person feeling that money is more important than the “we.”

Many instances of financial troubles or infidelity stem from one party completely giving up on contributing anything to the relationship until the other party eventually takes matters into their own hands — in this case, one person lost hope and it reflected in them not living up to their commitments, and the other held out as long as they could until they couldn’t any longer.

If you disagree with these premises and think this is giving too much of yourself, I ask that you sit back and consider what marriage should be. How much of our independence to we expect to retain? People who are big on independence might want to think deeply before they get involved in such a relationship dynamic.

Neil Lavender doesn’t actually even really believe in half-hearted compromise, for instance, when one party is a total introvert and spends their time reading and the other is an outdoors-person, these challenges are often counterintuitively solved by coming up with a true middle-ground, rather than just doing what the other person prefers some of the time.

He shouldn’t go out and be miserable on a hike just like she shouldn’t feel couped up half of her time indoors. Making the other person unhappy some of the time isn’t a way to solve this problem, it’s better to find an activity that works for both people by thinking outside the box. Fortunately, in the era of the internet, this is very easy to do.

If a man likes reading at home most of the time and the woman likes hiking and going outdoors to the park, they can strike a compromise with a unique and fun outdoors activity that can be done at home, such as gardening or even something totally new and different like beekeeping, an activity which helped save the marriage of a couple Neil was a counselor for.

Personal Expression

Like one’s chosen work field or various hobbies, marriage, too, is a form of expression, so when asking ourselves if its right for us, another important question to ask might be, “What do I want to communicate with my marriage?”

Which part of ourselves do we want to amplify indefinitely and bring into the forefront of our lives? Marriage is a medium for personal expression, and expressive relationships are the best relationships, I think everyone can agree.

Passion should not be underestimated, nor should passion be something that we just assume comes to us naturally because we got married — a marriage is a way for us to cultivate and utilize our passion in order that we may express and reinforce it more often, becoming more intimate with it.

We need to pick a partner that we value and a partner that values what we value, and because our passions and desires are subject to change over time, one of the most paramount traits to look for in a partner is adaptability.

Can your partner adapt to changing circumstances and situations? It shouldn’t come as a surprise that people who can’t adapt as well might not do as well with something like, uhh, I don’t know, a life-long commitment.

Marriage is Hard, But Worth It

A friend of mine in Los Angeles was 93-years-old when he told me the following sentence, “I grew up in The Great Depression, was alive for and went to fight in the second world war. I lived through Vietnam and the chaotic 1960s and became addicted to heroin in the 1970s. Heroin brought me to my knees and I quit — and then I got married. I’ve been married since 1979, it’s 2014 now, and I’m here to tell you, marriage is the hardest thing I’ve ever done…but I love my wife more than anything in this world and I wouldn’t trade her for anything.”

Hard though it may be, is it possible that some of the beauty, some of the real sanctity beyond religious beliefs and cultural tradition comes from the fact that marriage itself is hard? I think so. And this ties together everything said in this story, marriage is something that we must be prepared for at the outset, we must the continually be willing to sacrifice ourselves entirely (what wedding, to profess to do), and then actually live our collective passions as an entity rather than independent individuals. I believe that we as individuals have a deep and undying need to contribute to something larger than ourselves on a daily basis, something that can be bigger than our own egos complete with our selfish desires, and whether that thing is our calling in a body of work or marriage depends on the individual in question.

Marriage isn’t a given, it’s a lifestyle, one that many don’t want to take up, understandably — but for those that do, and do it well, the tradeoff seems to be almost always worth it.

For more on this, see My Girlfriend and Her Husband: Polyamory and What I’ve Learned From Their Happy Marriage

© 2019; Joe Duncan. All Rights Reserved