Between the two of us, my friend and I had been married four times. Over lunch one day, he said simply, “Marriage is impossible!” I knew immediately what he meant.
To begin with, marriage is an impossible topic of conversation. Just try to put into words what makes a friend’s marriage work — never mind your own. It’s impossible to fully describe, much less arrive at a consensus about. Marriage is a subject sure to disrupt most dinner parties. Ultimately a product of the human imagination, it appears in countless forms and varieties. For reformers and many feminists, marriage is oppression and legalized rape, while right-wing fundamentalists (Christian, Muslim, and otherwise) see heterosexual marriage as an act of salvation for civilization.
Why get married, anyway? Societal norms no longer require it. You don’t need vows or a civil ceremony to set up housekeeping. Children can be raised by unmarried couples without fear of the taint of illegitimacy. And with present divorce rates, the argument that marriage stabilizes a relationship doesn’t hold up. Would the same people who say that marriage is a stabilizing force invest in a company that — like marriage today — has a fifty-fifty chance of going out of business? Yet we marry, over and over.
Getting married is like joining the Mafia. When you marry, you become a part of something bigger than yourself and your partner. You don’t get this if you merely live together. In cohabitation, one plus one equals two, but marriage is a threesome: you, me, and “the marriage.” Married people build a relationship not only with each other but with the idea of marriage. “How will this affect the marriage?” they ask themselves. When we “meet at the altar,” it is to pay tribute to the marriage gods, an act similar to pledging loyalty to the Godfather. We are seeking to ensure that, should ill fortune befall the marriage, a circle of protection will already have been drawn around the relationship. But remember: this Godfather of marriage may one day require of you a favor. You may have to sacrifice something for the marriage.
Marriage is impossible because it is archetypal. Like art, it attempts to bring the mythic image to life in the flesh, be that image Hera and Zeus, Mary and Joseph, Abraham and Sarah, or Ozzie and Harriet. Perhaps marriage is the ultimate performance art.
Speaking of performance, one common belief about marriage is that sexual passion is sacrificed at the altar. For example, after congratulating me on my recent wedding, a single friend asked, “So, have you stopped fucking yet?” I think this change in sexual behavior that my friend feared can best be understood using the metaphor of the hunter-gatherer and the farmer-cultivator.
Single people are hunter-gatherers. They know that “game” constantly shifts to different grazing areas, and that today’s bright berries may wither on the bush tomorrow. They stay on the move; they play the field; they can’t be tied down. They don’t call or write. The hunter-gatherers are masters at the art of attracting prey. An old married friend of mine (who, I suspect, missed the hunt) used to call women’s perfume “buck lure.” Some die-hard hunters never marry. Others undergo a transformation and become the marrying kind.
Married people are farmer-cultivators. They seed a single field, store grain for the lean times, seek to understand the cyclical nature of things, and are masters of delayed gratification. Or, to use a different metaphor, married types are “domesticated” creatures, while single types are wild, roaming animals. The sexual behavior of the single type is like that seen on television nature shows: the animal’s nose to the air, on the scent of the opposite sex, in indiscriminate rut, seeking God-knows-what with God-knows-whom. The married couple’s sexual behavior is better depicted by oxen “hitched” to the plowing yoke: gone is the charge of sexual attraction that drives the singles. Instead, the married type sublimate some of their sex energy to “pulling the plow” — the day-to-day tasks of working on the marriage. At night, they fall exhausted into the barn and do whatever they have energy left to do.
If all this sounds as though single people have it better, consider that many of them go days, weeks, months, even years without finding what they’re looking for. And in further favor of the married types, the vacuum left by the departed sexual fervor is soon filled with other delights, unavailable to the wanderer.
One final crazy idea: make all marriage licenses expire after five years. Instead of separated couples going to court to get divorced, couples who wish to remain married would go to court to present their case for marriage-license renewal. Husband, wife, children, relatives, and in-laws would all submit testimony. Attorneys would get depositions from all those in the community who support the marriage. Maybe all who were present at the wedding would be reinvited. After all, people support the arts by turning out for plays, concerts, and exhibitions. Why not have a public show of appreciation for those who continue to attempt the impossible?
This essay originally appeared in Spring Journal.
— Ed.
