pinkfloydpsw's Blog

Is traditional marriage an outmoded financial transaction between a man and the father of the bride that guarantees that the woman is treated as an owned item, as property? The traditions that we associate with it are those of a transaction; the asking for the hand of the daughter and the father paying for the wedding.

What if we were free of the boundaries that we create in this process? Imagine that you were not married, not cohabiting with, did not have joint finances and did not have children, how would your relationship with your partner be less real than if all those conditions were so reversed ? It may be that it would be intrinsically more real than any other type of pairing. Free from the boundaries that we build to keep us inside this formal institution or contract we could be more assured that we reside within it for the purposes of the gratification we get from it. A sex life could be seen in the same light, say you were free to indulge in sexual relations with anyone, without the boundaries of social acceptance or the falsehood of jealousy, if you then picked a partner and stuck with them you would be being more true to them and your needs than if society or particularly a religion forced you into such a coupling. The things that we see as realities may have been provided for us to pursue within a framework created by others that benefit more by it than ourselves.

Do we create the relationship, build barriers to keep us in it then concede to needing the framework that we have built, then live in the illusion that we cannot exist without it and that it is created by ourselves and for our own purposes, or do we realise that it is a structure created by the powerful to make us live in a manner that serves them best? Marriage, when critically analysed, appears to be a form of slavery that we enter into believing that we are liberated by it. We soon realise that it changes nothing about love and may even diminish it in many ways by turning love into a prison, a series of duties and expectations. Do we build this prison on the foundations of what we know to be inevitable, that love does not last and that in time we will have the need to continue our pairing by removing the mechanisms of our possible escape from it? In truth all that can be gained by marriage is a stability that we decide we will someday need when love inevitably wanes. If you think that your partner, while living inside the boundaries of your shared existence, will continue to be able to enlighten, inspire and amuse you as the years together mount up you may already be engaged in a delusion. Constantly we find that the new is the exciting, the road less traveled is the most appealing, the changing landscape holds the chance of possibilities unforeseen and the voice most seldom heard is the most inspiring.

Paul Simon Wilson