by Gaurav Ojha
After romantic dates, love affairs, and being in a loving relationship, a question starts to run over the mind of the unmarried ‘To marry or not to marry’, this indeed becomes a pertinent question. It is still a mystery how and why humans make marriage decisions. We can find thousands of contextual socio-cultural factors and personal reasons everywhere. Let’s take the example of the South Asian socio-cultural context, where marriage is considered a kind of coming-of-age experience or a rite of passage in which a ceremony of metamorphosis turns a boy and a girl into a man and woman. It is a social institution that recognizes the attainment of maturity and receives you into the responsibilities of adulthood. Therefore, even after expressing progressive ideas and liberal connotations about the relationship between men and women, people in our South Asian cultural context still find marriage rather unavoidable.
Moreover, so much of our cultural ethos and social values revolve around the institution of marriage, and for a social being, so much of adulthood without marriage would in a sense become culturally meaningless. We are different in this regard; marriage for us is a sensitive issue. As American comedian Groucho Marx lamented that marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution? I guess South Asians would say even if we dislike, distaste or regret marriage as a personal decision, we would still embrace it as a socio-cultural institution.
In our socio-cultural context, marriage decisions are taken by either individual themselves or by families for maintaining their family tradition, for the purpose of one generation to another. A Marxist critic would consider marriage as bondage for a woman, where she is considered a mere instrument of production. For a capitalist society, marriage decisions are necessary for producing consumers for the future. Moreover, playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw observed that marriage decisions for financial security and replication of social tradition as nothing more than legalized prostitution. On the contrary, philosopher Immanuel Kant stated that marriage is a relationship of reciprocity, where both humans express their sexual needs without becoming a mere thing of use and without breaking the law and degrading humanity. Indeed many people take marriage decisions because it provides them with a safe framework to fulfill their sexual needs. However, marriage can’t be reduced to only natural inclinations, even in these times of quick gratifications, monogamous marriage still finds great significance due to family love, togetherness, friendships, opportunities for support, sense of comfort and care it provides.
Marriage decision, just like any other important decision in life, depends on individual thinking, evaluation, and judgment. Marriage decisions can be a highly mechanistic and rational process when an individual goes on by establishing criteria, evaluating alternatives, and selecting the best possible option. Likewise, marriage decisions can also be bounded by particular situations, time, limited information about the other person, mood, inner excitements, and context. Similarly, marriage decisions can also be a matter of psychology and biology, subtle genetic signals your subconscious mind picks up from the other person for procreation and how much your choice resembles your father and mother. Moreover, based on whatever assumptions and reasons people make marriage decisions, for money, residence, great escape, economic advantage, Green card, dependent visa, or for that beautiful face, be satisfied if it works out well, but if marriage makes you feel disappointed and more importantly, if you can’t take your own decision when in marriage, then it’s time to be strong, challenge, make a move and leave.
Interestingly, George Bernard Shaw argued that it is most unwise for people in love to get married. And, the more we think about marriage, we realize that marriage is not about love, love has never been part of marriage, and marriage is an arrangement for fulfilling our social and family obligations. Hence, we find all sorts of depressions, disappointments, and regrets in marriage when we confuse it with love. Leave love behind for the lovers, more importantly, marriage makes you realize that you need other inspirations, motivations, and challenges than love. Love is not enough, love is just a feeling that fades, and what shall we do with expectations when people change? From a loving person to a monster and then back to normal again. Hence, marriage is about realizing the importance of togetherness, for all those things we struggle, overcome, and achieve. Marriage works if we can remain interested to each other even when we are not attracted anymore. When in marriage, talking and listening are the most important things and if you and your partner can chatter on topics for hours with excitement but without any purpose, then you can consider married life is a living that includes you and me, this is not how I see, but as we see it together.
Again as philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche stated both the individuals involved in marriage need to ask themselves: Are we prepared to imagine and accept the face of each other after twenty years in the mirror right now? Therefore, don’t get into marriage without a vision, strategy, and action plans. Be rather supportive and blunt, even if marriage appears like a business deal, and discuss and decide on roles, skills, expectations, and responsibilities in clear terms without being defensive and deceptive. Never promise a word that can’t be translated into action. And, my only suggestion would be to get into a marriage if both of you know how to make it work.
About the Author:
Gaurav Ojha is a writer from Kathmandu, Nepal. He works have appeared in Indian Periodical.