No Guarantees

This week I have had a couple of conversations about how getting married does not offer you any assurance to life long happiness and that it does not guarantee fidelity, safety, security, trust, connection or love. Sure, there can be legal and financial benefits to being married, but that can be said of most business contracts. Marriage though has other expectations imposed onto it. To be honest, I bought into this fairytale. Getting married, at first, gave me a sense of social standing that I wanted to experience. My psyche was filled with romantic notions and I am sure that gave me a sense of hope that a marriage would be a happily ever after for me. If I am happy it is not due to a ceremony, a document or a promise. I have been married 8 years and if I had to do it again I likely would not. I did not have an expensive or extravagant wedding, but I think I would have rather invested the cost of the wedding into my retirement fund or into a down payment for a home. Yes, the day was lovely and both James and I appreciated the sense of specialness we felt by having our friends and family honour us, but we do not think it made our relationship any more satisfactory, our life views and goals any more compatible, or our appreciation for each other as individuals any stronger. It seems I am not the only one who this week has thought about the institution of marriage and the myth that it offers us protection from a host of negatives or guarantees us with a better life. Heather Corinna wrote an excellent journal entry about how, for women especially, it is not the fix all, save all that so many folks think or want it to be. A must read. A snippet...

Historically and currently, marriage, in and of itself, does not and never has offered protection from sexually transmitted infections, especially when you consider not only what the rates of infidelity are — particularly among men, who more often transmit disease to their spouses, simply when we’re talking about the physiology of sexually transmitted infections — and as well, when you consider that most people will have had other sexual partners before marriage, and how many people (again, especially men) never get STI screenings, and also don’t use latex barriers consistently, or at all. I’ve talked before — and you hardly need me to deliver this news flash — about how anyone with ears and eyes knows that marriage does not guarantee a safe or satisfying sex life. I’ve talked before about how given domestic violence rates, the notion that women are guaranteed lifelong safety, on every level, simply by getting married is an incredibly cruel piece of propaganda. Heather Corinna - Choose Wife