A Wedding For What?
Copyright 2005 Richard Keir
Once the actual purpose of a wedding had much more to do with
property, parenthood and moral propriety in the eyes of the
community. And those 3 elements were strongly interlinked,
particularly among those members of society who made the rules.
In most western cultures, inheritance passed from father to son.
So who was the father of the child was an important question,
generally answered by identifying the father as the mother's
wedded husband. And the issue of moral propriety tended to have
to do with the fidelity of the wife rather than the activities
of the husband.
Those days are largely passed despite lingering remnants of a
double standard and the more modern belief in marrying for love
rather than to ensure paternity and the orderly handing down of
property. While alliances between powerful families may still be
built based on bonding through marriage, generally the
participants have a little more to say about the process these
days.
Statistics today suggest that not too many marriages are until
death do us part. Many hardly last long enough to have a child,
much less raise one securely to adulthood. And the belief in the
sanctity of marriage? Well, the statistics do also indicate that
most divorced people remarry. That may not say much about
sanctity but clearly marriage is seen as desirable even by the
divorced.
In industrialized countries the increasing numbers of single
parent families, also indicate that marriage is not serving all
that well to protect and nurture children.
Many trends in modern society can be pointed to that contribute
to these challenges to a successful marriage. To be raised in a
consumer oriented society can be a curse. Things, ideas and
people all tend to be turned into consumable items. The
incessant hammering of advertising insists on new, different,
better. Television and movies portray a parody of life. It's a
rare individual who experiences one hundredth of the excitement
and glamour (or fear and terror) of a 2 hour movie in their
entire life. Our lives, our selves, appear drab and
uninteresting. And our loved ones become boring, tedious,
unexciting and uninteresting. Glued to the TV, passively sucking
up pseudo-existence, we are divorced from the possibilities of
real life.
Sensation addicts (which every advertiser deeply desires to
makes us) just don't do well with commitment. The fizzy magic of
falling in love is delirious and mysterious. If that's what you
want, don't do the wedding thing. You'll be disabused,
discovering that the magic mysterious person you fell in love
with has a lot of really annoying habits, is kind of boring
(maybe really boring), actually doesn't like your kind of fun
much and wants to watch different TV shows too.
We all want to believe that we want a permanent long-term
relationship - or at least we all pretty much have convinced
ourselves of that before deciding to get married. However, it is
a lot harder to actually do it than to delude yourself into
thinking that's what you want.
And you also have to consider that your partner may change his
or her mind while you still want one of those permanent
long-term relationships. Is there some way to be sure? No.
I'd love to say yes, there is a way and here it is, the perfect
and infallible method of knowing, in advance, if you will have a
wonderful lifelong marriage. Regret it as I might, no one can
guarantee it.
What is clear is that there is only one way to find out. Get
married. Know the pitfalls. Work on your relationship. Share.
Communicate. Build your dreams for the future together. Take
care of each other and never fail to appreciate each other and
treat each other better than you would some stranger. Absurd as
it may sound, be polite, say thank you, be grateful for every
good thing and equally grateful that you survived any bad thing.
Take each other seriously and never take each other for granted.
If you can do even half of that, you'll be ahead of 87.3% of all
married couples.
And here's the nearly impossible thing - learn to see your
partner anew. We never really know another person fully. We come
to believe that we do, but this is an illusion. Every person is
a bottomless mystery. Our vision becomes clouded day by day as
we go through the routines of life. Eventually we think we know
it all because we have blinded ourselves to reality. Sometimes
we even become our own petrified visions of our selves. At that
point we are convinced that somehow we are done, completed,
beyond the need or even the possibility of internal change. If
that were true, then only an outer change - modifying something
external to ourselves could change our lives. And that, rarely
works for long. No matter where you go, there you are. If you
can not change yourself, it's futile to change your
circumstances. You'll simply recreate the same old problems.
Check the statistics on how many divorced people who marry
again, end up getting divorced again.
Sounds bloody awful, doesn't it? But think of this, the
incredible joy of parenthood lies in seeing a child grow and
change and become something new. Our nature as humans is to be
not only capable of learning and expanding ourselves, but to
find our meaning in learning and changing. Marriage is serious
business, not to be entered lightly. It is the beginning of what
can become an awesome journey of discovery, rich with rewards
and, certainly, full of challenges, uncertainty and trouble.
Growing within a commitment shared with an equal partner can be
the most rewarding thing you can do. But never think it will be
easy or without pain, doubt and suffering. Any road you take
through life will present challenges. Walking that road,
successfully, with your partner, may not be an easy thing, but
ultimately it is most definitely what a wedding is for.