If you ask a modern person why they should ever get married, the answer is likely to be that they want to tie their lives to a significant other with whom they share interests, romantic feelings, sexual attraction, and a mutually supportive relationship.
However, this notion of marriage did not emerge long ago. Since antiquity, marriage has been perceived as a political or socially useful event rather than a personal one. In particular, this is why Romeo and Juliet became so famous, and why Shakespeare’s tragedy is based on Lope de Vega’s drama Castlevines et Montes. Instead of cherishing family interests, the couple chose to twist love – scandal and drama!
Only when the bourgeoisie class spread and took the lead in the Western world did people discoverDiana Ackerman, “A Universal History of Love,” that marriage could be based primarily on the couple’s tender feelings for each other.
Over time, as more and more women began to gain material and social independence, marriage in first-world countries became a matter of personality. Simply put, it was no longer a matter of dynastic necessity, children, or survival, but simply because one wanted to. At the same time, a stamp in the passport is not necessary to be together with the person you love and to support each other financially and emotionally.
However, the social pressure expressed in the question “When to get married?” has not yet disappeared. It is primarily directed at women. After all, historically, when they had few opportunities to get an education and build a career, a successful marriage was considered the highest point of success. Now, however, things are changing, and if for some reason you don’t want to get married (now or at all), you can resist the provocation.
Why marriage is not necessary today?
Marriage doesn’t guarantee happiness.
Often behind the desperate desire to get married is the desire to achieve personal happiness. Not for nothing that many fairy tales end with the words “And they lived happily ever after. But harmony of soul is in no way connected with marital status.
You can be happy even when you are not married and not in a relationship at all – or you can be unhappy in your marriage.
Studies of subjective well-being often find that marriage is positively correlated with life at home? New Evidence on Marriage and the Set Point for Happiness with levels of happiness. However, other scientists point out that people who are already married testify to their satisfaction with their marriage – their level of mental harmony compares with the level of single people. Whereas for full statistics it would be necessary to ask the same question to people after divorce.
Anyway, marriage itself does not save from psychological problems. On the contrary, already existing dissatisfaction with oneself, anxiety and neurotic states can migrate into the relationship with the other person and undermine them from within. Other people don’t give away happiness like Wi-Fi. We are responsible for our own experiences. Even Immanuel Kant taught us to treat people as ends in themselves, not means.
Marriage does not guarantee stability
There is a misconception that after marriage a woman’s life will be settled. Behind this word is a desire for stability, both material and personal (the search for “the one” is over, and that is forever).
The attitude of seeking material well-being at the expense of the other person is, in principle, rather dubious.
After all, it is the understanding of a relationship as a union of equal people that assumes that they stay together because they want to, not because it benefits someone. Of course, support, including material support, is part of the relationship. And sometimes there are cases when a stamp in the passport makes situations related to obtaining citizenship or property issues easier. But the main reason for this should still be mutual desire (of course, if you are not planning an arranged marriage with predetermined rules).
Even if it’s a matter of great love, you have to remember that nothing lasts forever. Usually grooms and brides do not believe that such a thing can affect them, but about halfIn 2016, the number of registered marriages decreased by 15%, divorces – 0.5% of marriages in Russia end in divorce. Does this mean you shouldn’t get married because the relationship might end? Not at all. But this is one possible outcome to consider. And finding something unchangeable should definitely not be the motivation for getting married.
Marriage is not a panacea for loneliness.
Loneliness is one of man’s main fears. They even link the development of illnesses to it. According to some data, loneliness is a unique predictor of age-related differences in systolic blood pressure, among single people are higher rates of morbidity and mortality from cardiovascular problems. At the same time, the study refers to older people in general social isolation.
In general, a person has many opportunities to find company even outside of marriage – among relatives, colleagues, comrades in interest. And certainly the body does not care whether you and your partner have stamps in their passports.
That said, it is possible to be single in marriage as well. Complaints of misunderstanding and lack of emotional intimacy with your spouse are something that psychologists often have to deal with. According to the studyHow’s Life at Home? New Evidence on Marriage and the Set Point for Happiness, which examined the relationship between marriage and life satisfaction, the well-being of those whose husbands or wives also managed to become their best friends was highest.
The question is not whether people are legitimate spouses, but how their relationship is structured.
Weddings are expensive.
And it’s not just a matter of how much we can afford, but why we need it in the first place. For many, it is important not just to get married in a registry office, but to have a big celebration with a cake, a big dress, and mountains of flowers. In the English-speaking world, brides who obsessively desire a “perfect wedding” and drive people around them crazy with it are jokingly referred to as “bridezilla,” from the words bride and Godzilla.
No matter how fancy the wedding ceremony is, it has no bearing on the success of the relationship. In fact, it’s just a vanity fair.
For the sake of the wedding, people take out loans and go into debt. This money goes mostly to organize the event, food, and costumes for the bride and groom. According to economics wedding: how much is the holiday and where to find the money for it, representatives of wedding agencies in Moscow, the average cost of the event was 2-3 million rubles in 2017. And this is despite the fact that the amount of the state dutyThe Moscow Civil Registry Office: the amount of the state duty for a marriage certificate – is only 350 rubles.
Meanwhile, today more and more people are thinking about conscious consumption and whether it is worth spending money on things that we will use only once and that has no value other than status. It would be more rational to invest the wedding money in a house or buy a car.
External pressure isn’t an excuse either.
Even if phrases like “What do you mean you don’t want to, everyone does” only make you laugh, pressure from significant others is hard to ignore. This can be one of the main irritating factors associated with the proposed marriage.
Remember: no matter what your relatives or friends say, you are the one who makes the fateful decisions.
You don’t have to get involved in arguments, it’s enough to figure out what you want. Following the parental scriptures Berne. Group psychotherapy and transactional analysis are as dubious a path as preferring the anti-scenario, in which the subject seeks to do everything contrary (for example, to spite society and parents). The consciousness of actions, on the other hand, helps to achieve inner freedom.