Marriage Free Fall

Next Saturday my niece Jessica and her fiance Joe are getting married.  I am not excited.  You see I'm not really sold on the marriage thing, at all, for anybody.  In reality it's nothing more then a business arrangement.  For most of its existence marriage was more about making a good match then anything else.  Love had nothing to do with it.  What mattered more then anything was the end deal.  How many goats and pigs could you get from the farmer for marrying his daughter.  She might have been hideous but face it, twelve goats is better then seven chickens.  This is why dowries were so important.  Getting married meant making sure you were getting your money's worth.  And it applied to men as well.  Being handsome might allow you to diddle your way through town, however it didn't mean you could marry above your station.  That cute little burgemeister's daughter?  She'd be married off to someone who could afford her.  The studly guy?  He'd be married to the girl who was missing her front teeth.   Falling in love and getting married was a fiction most usually presented on stage, where things could end happily ever after.

Most people really don't want to admit that marriage, as an institution, is pretty much a failure in its current state.  When I worked for Interstate Hotels there was a catering secretary who sat just around the corner from my office who'd been married and divorced 5 times.  You read that right.  Five times she said "I do," and then five times changed her mind and broke her vows.  There was a time when religion kept divorce in check.  You got married and you stayed married.  If you got a divorce you were excommunicated from the church, or you were snubbed by the community.  That did not make marriage a good institution, but it did help it to endure.  Today divorces are common place.  The only time they make news is when they're between same sex couples.  The Crazy Christians feel they need to throw as many stones as possible.

The Happy Couple

My Mom tells be her dress was expensive and the ceremony is going to be on the elaborate side.  What a waste of money.  The bride who buys a dress that costs as much or more then an inexpensive refrigerator is dumb as a brick.  Of course most brides have already convinced themselves this is going to be the most important day in their life - until they marry for the second time.  You see, that's another big problem with marriage which so many people choose to ignore.  Divorce rates are high.  Very high.  In some states 65% of all marriages end up in divorce, which means only 35% don't get divorced.  It doesn't mean they are happy marriages, just that both partners end up going their separate ways.  Think about that percentage.  What would you do if, after successfully completing all of the training, your instructor were tell you, just before you stepped out of the plane, "hey, you've got a 35% chance of surviving this jump?"  Of course in one or two states almost 45% of all marriages survive.  Would you want to bet on a horse with those odds? 

Traditonal Marriage - nothing more then Hallmark Hell

As I was walking the dog this morning I thought about marriage since there is a big 'to do' going on about it.  There's traditional marriage and now there's nontraditional marriage, both are supposed to be based upon the love of two people.  However, too many are oblivious to the fact that right from the beginning marriage was about ownership and that ownership needed to be legitimized by some deity, or religious philosophy.  I get a little fed up with this crap about the love between a man and a women because in all of the shrieks and rants no one mentions bankable.  Dowries were important.  A young woman who had a dowry worth 2 pigs, 4 goats, and 10 chickens was worth a hell of a lot more then a young woman who could only bring 3 goats and 6 chickens to a marriage.  Where's the love in that?  Some cultures relied heavily on matchmakers, people hired to broker marriages, and the first thing they looked was ownership.  What were the potential bride and groom going to be bringing to the table?

The age of the bride was important as well.  For centuries the younger she was the better, not because so many of the men were pedophiles, but because so many women died in childbirth.  The younger the bride, the more likely she would have several children who survived.  Babies were very important, after all, who was going to take care of you when you hit the ripe old age of 36.

We would like marriage to be this romantic, Hallmark moment that lasts forever.  It doesn't.  In some states the divorce rate is almost 60% and that's bad.  That's another problem with the traditionalists, they want to talk about the marriage aspect but not the divorce end, or infidelity (both men and women seem equally guilty in that arena), nor terrible custody battles. The terrible truth is that there are people who are locked in this Hallmark hell, their minds shut off to any reality other then the  blanket of disillusionment that makes them happy.