Marriage: An outdated institution?

Meh.

[ Removed by myself ]

Tax breaks. Sign of commitment between two people. Shits and giggles.

“Marriage: An outdated institution?”

In this economy? Are you kidding me?

No.

If marriage is an outdated institution, then why are people still fighting for the right to participate in it?

In my opinion, marriage is a very important bond. I don’t think it will ever be “outdated.”

I think the entire gay marriage controversy is good for marriage. Suddenly you have thousands of people who want to display their lifelong commitment to someone else. How is that bad for marriage?

Commitment between a pair, mainly. In a way I look at it like this, I feel so committed to you that I will even go through ancient rituals as a show of my enthusiasm and love, I’ll give you the whole nine yards of past present and future.

The glass is half full, avalmez. Half of marriages manage to stay together. Not sure how happily, but they do it.

Marriage was never important as a religious, moral, or economic thing. Not really. Sure, that comes along with it, but it’s so much deeper. It used to be about alliances between families, and it was economic, too, but there was always, I imagine, this idea of romantic love, too.

Romantic love may not always have been a part of marriage, but for folks in the Western world, it is a very important element in many marriages.

Marriage is a celebration and an announcement of an intention, not necessarily in that order. Marriage is where you go public with your relationship. In front of friends and families, you announce to all that you want to be together for a long time. You ask your friends and family for both help and blessing for your relationship. Marriages can’t survive with no help, I believe.

Of course, if you’re going to announce an intention like that, then you want to celebrate it. And we should. For half of us, we only get to do this one time! It is special, and should be treated that way.

Some people do marry for money—the economics of it; the parental rights, the inheritance rights, the instant simplification of so many legal things. I’ll bet for some people this is what it’s about. Maybe it’s about getting a visa or citizenship. Maybe it’s about economic opportunity. Maybe it’s just about getting a lot of money and trading a bit of sex and possibly a little companionship for that.

For those people, we might as well have a different document. “I hereby enter into this economic arrangement…” sort of a civil/legal thingy. It’s not marriage. At least, not for me.

For me, marriage is about a relationship, an intention, and a ceremony. Go forth and multiply!

Man a lot of members of this site are a real drag.

@ShauneP82 : Flutherer, heal thyself.

No, and I agree with @tinyfaery and @filmfann.

Your question details remind me of the local evening news – nothing but negativity.
What about the 50% of marriages that survive. Some even thrive?
What of the folks that don’t cheat (in spite of temptation)?

ok it’s cool that many of you see marriage as a sign or act of love and committment. no problem with that whatsoever. i guess it’s the legal aspects to marriage that led me to ask the question in the first place.

suppose marriage did not come with the legal aspects tied to it, but lived on as a ritual representing a public declaration, a sign, or act of love and committment.

increases or diminishes the sign or act marriage represents to most of you?

and a major reason the gay community is fighting for the right to marry is because it’s a legal status required for certain benefits

@avalmez your question on if the legal aspects weren’t tied to marriage, is a much better question.
marriage will always be more important to some, it seems the more religious hold it up on a pedestal, something only a man and a woman can have together. that part really bothers me. the legal aspects should be given to any life partners, no matter what.
i personally got married because i love my husband, we’re a family and it made it legally binding. it also helps greatly when it comes to taxes. it actually hurt me to get married, because i lost my health insurance. it sucked, but we had already put off getting married for two years, for health insurance reasons. it’s a shame when legalities rule your personal life.

I do not believe marriage is outdated. I think something important happens when two people publically pledge themselves to one another.

I believe marriage can be for love.
It can be for medial benefits.
It can be for a union of a family.
It can be a sacrament.

It CAN BE sooooo many things to many different people.

Saying it’s outdated or archaic is just one person’s opinion.

@daloon Marriage was originally a financial arrangement. In many ways it still is.

The value of marriage has not depreciated. The sincerity of the vows has.

@SpatzielLover actually i stated a question, not an opinion. i happen to believe that when two people are committed to each other as life partners, marriage as a declaration of that fact is a great thing. but when it turns out that fovever lasts less than a lifetiime, marriage becomes a legal status that must be undone legally and has it’s consequences in that case.

and, believe my sincerity or not, maybe that’s as it should be – companies that enter into legal agreements often have to deal with the consequences of unwinding them in order to ensure fairness prevails.

I think this is a good question. It is quite relevant in my own life. I have been with my “hubby” for 8 years now. We have lived together for 7 of those years. We share a bank account. And we have been through crap together. Everyone around us considers us married. But we aren’t technically married.

It seems so odd to me now to go get “married” when we’ve been living as if we are for so long now. It almost seems fake and pointless.

Also the marriage ceremony, to me, means little. I don’t identify with the ceremony itself and have yet to think of one that would be meaningful for me.

Beyond getting married for legal purposes I just don’t see the point (for us personally).

I’m not sure when or if we will get technically married. We’ve been talking about it recently because of the economy and just getting tired of telling others “my partner” or “my boyfriend/girlfriend”. Neither of those sums it up for us anymore. Our relationship is still growing but I don’t know how “marriage” fits in with that. It seems more like a legal necessity than anything else.

Well there is my personal two cents :)

Just for the tax breaks. ;)

@RedPowerLady: My wife and I designed our own ceremony and wrote our own vows. We had help from various sources in doing this. We included a dance in the marriage ceremony, because that’s how we met. We said only the words we wanted to say, and did not follow from any religious tradition. We had friends make the music. It was about us and our community.

I guess you don’t live in a common law state? If you lived in Pennsylvania, you would be married now, if you called yourselves married.

Rhode Island is also a common law state.

@daloon I think that is beautiful. If we ever do have a marriage ceremony I would want to do something like what you did.

You know people have told me that this state (Oregon) does have common law and that it doesn’t. I tried looking online once and believe I found out that it does not but then someone insisted that it does. So I’m not quite sure.

Of course I’m not sure how the determine it either. We’ve had the same bank account 7 years. But we’ve only “officially” lived together for about 5 years. By officially I mean both of us signing the lease, before that I would sign it myself although we would still live together.

A married couple in their early 60s
A married couple in their early 60s were out celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary in a quiet, romantic little restaurant. Suddenly, a tiny yet beautiful fairy appeared on their table and said, “For being such an exemplary married couple and for being faithful to each other for all this time, I will grant you each a wish.”

“Ooh, I want to travel around the world with my darling husband” said the wife. The fairy moved her
magic stick and – abracadabra! – two tickets for the new QM2 luxury liner appeared in her hands.

Now it was the husband’s turn. He thought for a moment and said: “Well this is all very romantic, but an opportunity like this only occurs once in a lifetime, so, I’m sorry my love, but my wish is to have a wife 30 years younger than me”.

The wife, and the fairy, were deeply disappointed; but a wish is a wish. So the fairy made a circle with her magic stick and -abracadabra! – the husband became 92 years old.

The moral of this story….. Men might be ungrateful idiots….But fairies are…...females.

@squirbel Thank you & lurve for that chuckle!

i value the love itself over legal documentation and a ceremony. also, i think that when 2 people who are actually in love can’t get married because they’re the same sex, but you can have a quickie wedding in vegas because you’re drunk and will get it annulled the next day, it kind of says something about the meaning of marriage…
that being said, i’m not against marriage, and i don’t think people should all just stop getting married. i think it’s a lovely gesture if it’s genuine. but i don’t think it’s the most important thing in a relationship.

@NaturalMineralWater I agree with you.
Marriage may be outdated because of the way many people now view it. They see it as a temporary thing. The moment things aren’t light and happy they run for the hills. Why work things out when you can throw out the marriage and start new again.
People all to often enter a marriage without thinking what it really means to pledge devotion to another person and that it may not be without its struggles.
Marriage is outdated in the sense that honor is also outdated. People rarely know what it means to be honor bound any more. That their words should be more than mere words but should always represent the truth.
There are those who know the real value of marriage. I’ve been happily married for 28 years now. Before I married my husband. I asked him not to marry me if he believed in divorce. (Yes, I do believe in divorce in extreme cases.) But under normal everyday trials one has to be able to forge ahead to get to the other side of what is menancing your marriage. I told him that once we are married, I believe us to be family and family works through good and bad times. We are in it together till the end.
If people really took the time to see all the good and all the bad in the other person, than they will know what they are getting into before saying I do.
As too why get married at all? Because when it is right, there is nothing better than having someone whom you can share all the good times and even the bad times with. Someone who will always be there to pick you up when you need them, someone who is always going to be there for you who knows you better than anyone else in the world. There is no better friend than a good spouse who unselfishly puts your needs first because they love you. And you return the affection and unselfishness. Everything that is good in you is mirrored in their eyes. And despite your wrongs they know you are capable of overcoming them and love you because they see the big picture. So they made vows and swore that they will be their for you till the end and that no one else or thing or bad event will ever come between you two.