Marriage, the Mature Understanding and why there are better alternatives

Why get married?

By loving another being or myself alone, am I reserving love? Is real love free so that I am not free unless I have an open marriage? The best marriage is where the man and woman are together in freedom and nothing stops them from walking away. The wife and husband give each other the opportunity to love and sleep with someone new. But they don't take it.

Why is marriage made important? It is not because it is making a commitment. The married couple will have already made a commitment. A couple can be committed without marriage. Marriage must be important because it is two people making their commitment legally binding. It is about the binding not the commitment. It’s the conferring of legal rights and privileges that matters. In other words, property rights. Also the husband gets a legal right to his wife's body for sex as she does to his - but they are only required to have sex the once to make the marriage real!

People like to say that marriage is about protecting love. But love cannot be protected! No matter what a couple does, it can fade away. Marriage, despite the deceitfully romantic trappings, is in fact about the man hoping to control the woman and vice versa.

There are three essential points to be made about marriage.

One, marriage is making the husband and wife the joint owners of the property each has.

The problem is that these legal rights could be conferred without marriage and a wedding ceremony. This point declares that any marriages which are not recognised by law are not marriages at all. An example, is the marriages of Catholics whose previous marriages were annulled by Church law. State law and Church law do not agree on nullity.

If marriage is merely about property, then it is not about love but about the man and woman giving each other the gift of all that they have. Giving something to a person does not mean you love them.

Two, marriage is authorising a husband and wife to have sexual relations. 

This is thought by many to be the real reason for marriage. In so far as marriage is about sex, then it is not about love because sex and love don't necessarily go together.

If marriage is at least partly about sex, then marriage is a declaration, among other things, that people having harmless sex without being married are doing wrong. It also suggests that it is the business of society and the state and the church if you have sex outside of marriage and at least once inside of marriage. Marriage is purported to be the bedrock of society meaning it declares sex to be the business of other people and society.

If a man and woman love each other intensely and have sex and have children while remaining unwed that is nobody's business but theirs. The thought that they need permission or authorisation from Church and/or state is a violation of their rights and dignity not to mention commonsense.

Suppose love could bind a couple together better than marriage. Marriage would then be unnecessary. This would not bother the state. Why would it?

Three, a marriage is not a true marriage if the husband and wife do not have sex at least once after the ceremony. This consummates the marriage or activates the marriage.

It is strange that you need witnesses for the marriage vows and don't need them for the consummation!

If a man and woman had sex before getting married and none after, their marriage will be considered invalid. They will be permitted to remarry for the marriage isn’t real until they have had sex at least once. This is a degrading doctrine. It doesn't care about the love but about physical union. No matter how much the man and woman love each other, their union is not a marriage until they have sex.

It would seem that people are not married by vows and churches and registrars but by having sex to express a commitment. A man and woman who decide to use sex to declare that they will be with one another for life are far more married than those who take vows and keep the rules. Those who say marriage must be done by public vows and ceremonies and fulfilling legal requirements have to discriminate against such people. They can only justify it by saying the sex was not really love. They insult those who though legally unmarried, who have sex to express lifelong love though it may express more love and dedication than any ceremony. Those who go through the ceremony are more honoured just because they go through a ceremony. The love isn't considered.

Who says that when you wish to marry, you need to do it a certain way to be really married? Who says you need the priest, the legal papers and the sex after the ceremony to be married? Why can't loving sex without all this bind the man and woman together for life as in marriage? It is love that must bind not rites and laws! Otherwise there is only an artificial bond. Marriage is about law not love for rules are put before people. This is proven by the fact that people don't believe that if an unmarried couple have sex to express their lifelong commitment and devotion to each other that sex binds them together just as a marriage ceremony would. The only way religious people can condemn such sex is by denying that the love expressed by the sex was real. They dismiss the loving sex a couple had before legal or religious marriage although it expressed deep everlasting commitment as irrelevant. They impugn it.

Commitment can be stronger where there is no sex. Sex is not necessary to express or ratify commitment.

A couple who never have sex but who love each other can have a stronger and more committed relationship than those couples who do have sex but who don’t have much love for each other. It is hearts that truly bind not bodies. A couple who love each other through sickness and misery and poverty express their love in a way that sex could never manage. To forbid a person who cannot have sex to marry is discrimination.

The marriage where the man and woman soon split up is recognised as still existing. The childless marriage is recognised as real. Love and living together and having children don’t seem to be essentials for a real marriage. A ceremony that is legally recognised and one act of sex is essential. Is this not an unloving idea?

The rule that sex should be necessary for marriage to be valid has to be discarded. When love and living together are not necessary even in marriage it is silly to say that sex is necessary. If marriage is incomplete or unreal without sex then what if the couple have sex once and never again? Is it not incorrect to say their marriage is complete if sex is necessary for that when they can only endure doing it the once? Surely if sex validates and establishes marriage then the more sex the better!

The sharing of property and mutual giving of the body seems essential so marriage need not be between a man and woman. A man can marry a man and a woman can marry a woman. 

Also, the man and woman or man and man or woman and woman need to "live in sin" beforehand. That way they prepare for the sharing that marriage involves in terms of property etc. It is said that couples who cohabit break up more if they wed. Christians make this claim and argue that cohabitation is a bad idea. But if marriage is about sharing property most of all then is that a reason to disparage cohabitation? No! In fact, living together before marriage for a time should be a legal prerequisite for marriage.

Marriage is only compatible with self-esteem and human dignity if it is just the legal declaration that two people love each other and want to share their lives and property for they are in a committed relationship. The focus needs to be taken away from making children, taken away from God and the notion of marriage being a sacrament, and away from the notion that the marriage is only binding with the accomplishment of the sexual act.

Refrain from any form of marriage that fails to honour you and assert your rights and dignity. Such marriage is a bad affirmation and disrespectful to the husband and wife.

Some New Age people think that is possible to marry for all eternity. This ceremony programs the universe to bring you together again in a future life and possibly for an eternity of future incarnations. They embrace in principle the Mormon doctrine of eternal marriage.

Marriage should be replaced with a civil agreement for tax and legal purposes aimed to support a pair in raising a family. There is no need for any ceremony. Just sign the register and get it witnessed.