What is the purpose of marriage?
 

I know marriage is important to me and is a commitment I hope to have with someone in the future. However, I struggle with articulating its true purpose. I realize its purpose varies by individual, but I was looking for your collective feedback on the subject.

When I Googled it, I found the purpose defined as:

A lifetime commitment to constantly provide emotional intimacy to your spouse, thereby uncovering your true self and, ultimately, your unique purpose for being created.

What are your thoughts on the purpose of marriage in general? Try to be more specific than just saying "because I'm in love".

Love and marriage, love and marriage
Go together like a horse and carriage
This I tell you brother
You cant have one without the other

Love and marriage, love and marriage
Its an institute you cant disparage
Ask the local gentry
And they will say its elementary

Try, try, try to separate them
Its an illusion
Try, try, try, and you will only come
To this conclusion

Love and marriage, love and marriage
Go together like a horse and carriage
Dad was told by mother
You cant have one without the other

tax write off?
get your spouses insurance plan at work?
your kids won't be bastards :D

Consider that it might not have purpose.

I'm still not really sure why I got married to my wife. Ask us and the best we'll say is: "we heard that if one of us was in a vegetative state, the other has the legal right to pull the plug." That's a situation we trust each other with more than we trust our respective families.

My wife and I were together 10 years before we got married and weren't compelled to make it official until earlier this year. We also thought it might be nice for our families to get together and it was, but we didn't feel an overwhelming need to do it, at the end of the day.

I think the definition you cite is a pretty darn good one. I would add "emotional support" to "emotional intimacy." I know ratbastid is the person I feel most comfortable with, and I am most able to be myself around him. And with him, and with D (although we're not married) I have certainly uncovered (and "uncovered!" ;) ) a lot of my true self. Mostly they push and challenge me to be my best self, and support me in finding my happiness.

There are all those other, less philosophically noble reasons, too - social acceptance, legal privileges, sex, financial support. etc. The best reason I've seen for actually making it legal/public and not just an agreement between you and your SO is the declaration of your relationship to society - somehow it defines your relationship as something permanent and declares your intention to stay with each other to people who support you in that.

Dave and I wanted to be married...we wanted to be husband and wife...we wanted to make that commitment to god...and each other and our families. We didnt want to just be "live in" partners.

Even if the car insurance wasnt cheaper, even if there were no hospital treatment issues, even if I could still have him on my medical insurance, I would still want to be "married"

I actually dont see a purpose to marriage. Yes, I am a female, but no, I dont believe in it. To me all marriage is, is signing yourself into a financial contract that may or may not screw you. Yes, I realise there are pre-nups, but then really whats the point?

I dont feel that I need another legal paper to prove my devotion to another. I dont know if I can call on seperation of church and state here, but why cant one be joined in the eyes of GOD, without man made judicial law?

Same here. Though it'll be another year until my honey and I are married, I can't wait.

For Martel and I, it was the only way that anyone else we knew would understand what was going on between us. Our famlies are both very religous, and marriage being a religous thing (sometimes) the only way they'd "get" us living together was if we were legally married.

Why get legally married? Why does it exist? Well, there can be plenty of reasons for that... I don't think any one of them is right. Marriage, the committment part at least, is something private- very private. Having a ceremony is a way to celebrate that with your friends and family (although it's easy to get out of hand). It's like a birthday party but it only happens once (or twice or three times) in your life, so it's a bigger deal. The ceremony is just a celebration, and all the minister and vows and "you may now kiss the bride" I guess is just a way to prolong the celebration and try to come up with something that you can do in front of other people that will show your committment (something that can only really be understood by the bride and groom) to everyone else.

Or, that's one way it can be. Martel and I eloped- got married at the courthouse with two people we didn't know as witnessess, in the law library on the top floor. I think we were next to a copier. It was still a special day, because for us it was the day we could say that no one could deny our love or our committment to each other because we had it on paper. To us it was real, making it official was a way to make it real to everyone else :)

I think I'll be getting married only because of the social ramifications of the marriage. I have no personal desire to get married. If me and a guy are going to be 'forever' then we'll be forever whether or not we are married but after having dating for 2 or 3 or 8 years and ppl constitatly asking what is going on with us (esp since I am in a LD relationship) and asking why and such would get annoying. Therefore, I'll eventually marry him.
It's a lame reason. I understand this but that is my reason.

Hub and I lived together for five years, and had a commitment ceremony among our close friends in the fourth year. We had both gone through a previous marriage "until death do you part" that didn't meet that pledge. We were both relunctant to make that promise again.

It wasn't until our sixth year together that we both felt certain of our relationship and chose to make it legally recognized. At the time, there was no imperative for spousal recognition; and after marriage we continued to keep separate finances, debts and checking accounts. The income tax "marriage penalty" was certainly not an incentive. We also had no interest in making babies that would need "legal" parental status.

In answer to you question LL, there was no "reason" to our marriage other than we were no longer fearful of making a legal recognition of what we shared together. Very 70's :)

I'm inclined to file this one under "If you have to ask, you'll never know."

Have you been in an Applebee's, or a Red Robin, Lately. Don't even get me started on IHOP. :mad:

Oh...you meant the literal usage. :o


Never mind. :D

overall, it's like saying: i will never love anyone else than you.

but i feel that weddings are just for women. could they really get the marriage part without the wedding?

but if it wasnt for some of the legal things, I would never get married. don't believe in god or religions so it would probably have to be some sort of legal wedding or my someone that isnt religious.

Dave would VEHEMENTLY disagree with you that the wedding was for me....he wanted (and planned) it just as much as I did

How DARE you!!! You paranoid-psycho-wacko, stir-things-up, obviously-have-a-problem, irrational child-hater person you.

Why I NEVER.....

Not to single out dear mexicanonabike, but this seems a reasonable justification, or at least the start of one.

It's a public and legal life-long (in theory, anyways) committment to "stay with" a person. Key word: Committment. "I will stay with you, even if I don't want to anymore."

Because that's what committments/contracts generally guard against--Continuing to Do Something Even If You're Not Wanting To Anymore. For whatever reason, some good and some bad (good or bad to whom? Who gets to decide that? Ultimately it's strictly an individual's decision).

And is that really such a good idea? People change. Things change. No one (hopefully) is the same person at 40 that they were at 19, 19 and legally capable of making life-long decisions. However, marriage is really not at all a life-long binding contract anymore, it just seems that folks still get all caught up in the romantisicm of "Until death do we part". No, it's not romantic to vow:
"Until I just can't stand you any more", or
"Until my personal unhappiness is consistently 50% greater than my guilt for the period of one calendar year", or
"Until my marginal communication skills outpace my better-than-average sexual prowress", or
"Until we realize we have grown in very different directions and one of us has no more tolerance for the other, which we rather hope doesn't happen but still one must be realistic about these things".

haha! i didnt mean to say ALL guys don't care but just from watching the girls i know, when they hear or talk about wedding, they act like it's clear that the wedding has to cost 50,000$ and have 400ppl (even some they never met) and have a diamond ring the size of golfball.

if it was simply what it represents and not about the party or the money involved, i'm sure a lot more ppl would reconsider weddings.

heh. I just got married.. and I have no clue as to what the point was. I guess it was just to say.. I'm with you and only you from now on. I've always said I didn't need to get married because I didn't need a piece of paper to tell me who I was going to be with. The actual ceremony was kind of fun though. I got to try and make her laugh during the ceremony and of course we got money and insurance benefits and yada yada, but I feel that since we've taken that step we've already grown more together. Of course we're still in that "honeymoon" stage .......... ;)
<i>mexicanonabike</i>, I got lucky. My girl didn't want a big fancy ring or a fancy wedding. Just simply elegant ;)

Well, in my 11 years of marriage... I think the reasons you start with change over time. I got married because of love, and a child. I don't think the way I felt then, still holds true today. My passion and love for my wife have evovled through the years. We had a few years where we barely had sex, but were very close, and other years where we had lots of sex but the bond didn't seem there either. I know my feelings have changed, and I have a deeper love now than ever.

At first, marriage is to show everyone that you do "love" each other, and are willing to take a drastic step in order to prove it. But as for later, the bond is more emotionally tied to one another.

Does that make any sense?

My wife swears if a guy doesn't get married he isn't totally committed to that person. We argued that one for days. As you can imagine, I didn't fare well in that debate. I'm not sure if I gave up or just lost.

But seriously, I have no idea if it would have made a difference when we've gone through our tough times. I tell myself it is because of the person, not the paper, so who knows.

Oh man... I can totally disprove your theory there about women! I am a woman and while I have my preferences for a wedding (to have a decent dress, e.g. around $500, and to have loved ones with us and a little casual celebration, e.g. $5000 MAX)... there is no way in hell that I or any of my more sensible female friends would stand for anything as outrageous as what you quote. Yep, I know it happens... but sometimes I think those people getting married at that price have some kind of insecurity complex. Or, they're filthy rich and have no problem advertising it, lol.

I have also seen plenty of guys get excited about a wedding, so yeah, it's not a clear gender issue. :D But, I think you're right, women are more into weddings in general... but not all women have the same expectations. :)

You'll have to ask DEI37 if what I say is true for him. For me, the wedding itself was more for our parents than for us. We let our parents (and even my grandpa) do a lot of the more minor decisions. We picked stuff out for the basic stuff but they did the rest of the planning. His Mom was so pleased when I let her decide how to arrange the place for the reception. I must say I loved it. I was just glad it was done and looked good and was functional.

As for marriage - shoot! the reasons we GOT married were not for love. He got married for the sex, I got married to escape my parents house and it was the easiest route and for the sex. The reason we stay married IS love and trust. There are plenty of other minor reasons to get married and stay married but I'd have to boil it down to, I love being around him, knowing him, sharing his life, and I'd trust him with my life, trust him with our daughter, and trust him with my heart.