Why Our Kids Will Never Get Married (And Why It's Okay)
Besides the fact that I’m convinced we will all be dead in 50 years due to radiation from Fukushima, there are other reasons our children may very well opt out of getting married. Marriage, as an institution, came about as an answer to a problem. Men wanted to make sure their women would have sex with them and stay faithful.
This is not to say that they didn’t plan on rolling around with other women in the bushes, or whatever they did back then, but marriage was most likely created as more of a business transaction, where a man would barter safety and care for exclusive sexual rights (I say "most likely" because marriage precedes its written word, so we’ll never exactly know for sure).
Some men -- we now call them Mormons -- were better negotiators and managed to lock in several wives while basically providing the same amount of safety and care. Nowadays, many argue that marriage is already an outdated practice. Other than for saving on your taxes, marriage doesn’t serve much of a purpose save keeping with tradition.
Sure, you can argue that there is something very special, sacred even, about promising to love and care for someone for the rest of your life. I’ll go one step further to even say it’s flipping magical. The problem is, magic doesn’t exist. You can promise to love someone for the rest of your life whether or not you plan on marrying that person and there will always be a chance of you deciding to go your separate ways.
The only difference is that if you get married, you’ll spend a fortune on attorneys. Maybe I’m just hoping that our children are smarter than we are and avoid getting married. I’m in my 20s and I already know more than a handful of friends who either are getting, or have already gotten, divorced. It isn’t a pleasant experience and it’s an avoidable one. Not to mention who ever said we're meant to have sexual intercourse with the same person for the rest of our lives?
The idea of a soul mate is a beautiful thing; it’s a perfect thing. But perfect doesn’t have much of a place in our world. I’m sure we’d all like to think that human kind is evolving continuously and escalating in intellect, correctness and righteousness. We like to think that our children will be better, smarter, wiser, kinder and stronger versions of ourselves.
Maybe the next step in humanity is accepting that we aren’t meant to love only one person for the rest of our lives. Maybe we aren’t created to only procreate with one other person. Maybe we aren’t meant to share our lives with just one partner. Maybe there is something better out there -- a better system that will result in less pain and more happiness.
The only way our children will be getting married is if we are able to get married and stay happily married. Now, look at all the things you see on TV, all the things you hear in the news, on the radio and all over social media. Do you honestly see our generation, Generation-Y, being the hallmark of happy and healthy marriages? Do you think they created a molly strong enough to keep us smiling for the rest of our lives? Do you think we can even learn to adapt to the simpler life that is family life? I very much doubt it. We have consumed so much garbage and bullsh*t information that our realities have already begun to change dramatically.
We no longer see the world the way our parents saw it. We can no longer hope for the same lifestyles as they hoped for. We are different. Marriage isn’t natural, and therefore, we won’t find it natural if we attempt to adapt it as our own. Marriage doesn’t fit into our nature or our reality -- at least not like it did for our parents. Sure, there is still some of our generation that will get married and will have children, but most likely fewer than in previous generations.
Even fewer of these marriages will succeed (we are a very egocentric generation) and most will result in a miserable experience for everyone involved. Therefore, the number of our children that will be willing to enter into a marriage, thanks to their experiences growing up in such unloving households, will likely be miniscule.
Photo credit: Moonrise Kingdom
