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Gender, Cassie Logan
Marriage is a delicate thing to rant about, because hey — it’s pretty popular.

I would love to meet someone and just fall into a perfect and permanent relationship with them, never growing bored or taking them for granted, and vice versa. I just don’t believe it works that way for many people. That’s why I’m not opposed to all individual marriages, just the idea of marriage as a universal goal.

Here’s why.

If you’re evaluating every person you date through wedding-coloured glasses, you’re upping the odds of glossing over things that make you incompatible.

This could lead to marrying someone just because you want to get married, instead of because they’re great for you, even if that decision isn’t conscious.

Humans are wonderful at deluding themselves.

Surely I’m not the only person who has been tricked (usually by a pretty face) into thinking someone is prime dating material for a few weeks or months before realising “Oh my god, he’s boring” (…or stupid, or self-absorbed, etc). We’ve all been blinded by silly infatuations. But even legitimate relationships continue to evolve after months and years, so it seems misguided to predict how any relationship will ultimately end up and enforce it legally.

I think Whitney Houston summed it up well in her 1985 hit single “How Will I Know?” And then she married Bobby Brown. Just because marriage sounded glamorous when we were young doesn’t mean that it is. I was a fairly sheltered, naïve kid, and watched many movies with happy endings.

These movies made romance seem like the thing to look forward to in adulthood, and it was understood that the culmination of any great romance would be a wedding. Entering adulthood and coming to the understanding that love lives are rarely that tidy was difficult to accept.

A marriage  — or any long-term relationship, for that matter – at best requires effort, patience, and sacrificing the ability to smooch anyone else when you feel like it. At worst, it devolves into resenting one another, taking one another for granted, adultery, emotional aloofness, or divorce. I genuinely fail to understand why so many people can’t wait to throw themselves into this experience.

Another reason that I’m personally resistant to marriage is because of the sexism that surrounds it. I’m sick of women my age being represented as whiners that have nothing better to do than worry about whether they’ll find “the one” and live happily ever after.

Sure, many women in their twenties and thirties do think about settling down because they’re interested in beginning families. But the portrayal of marriage as being such a drag for men and something that women goad or manipulate them into is both insulting and inaccurate; particularly considering that in addition to working full-time jobs, women still shoulder the brunt of child-rearing and housekeeping duties in marriages.

On top of that, there is the scam of the wedding industry. People pay thousands of dollars, undergo months of stress, and exhibit distasteful “it’s my day” entitlement all to experience an uncomfortably formal, cliché ritual. There are plenty of couples who are creative and reasonably budgeted when it comes to planning their weddings, but it seems as though many are completely sold on the vision of their perfect dream day… which results in a wedding more or less like everyone else’s perfect dream day.

In previous eras, marriage was a necessary arrangement — men wanted to have their homes cared for, and women required the economic provisions offered by a husband. But now nobody actually needs to get married. Women can go to school and be self- sufficient. They can buy one of those things that help you open pickle jars. Men can cook and do their own laundry. I’m not saying that love and sex aren’t some of the greatest things in the universe. They are, and we should revel in them.

It’s just that engaging in the institution of marriage isn’t a guarantee against anybody’s loneliness. Relationships, in my opinion, should last only as long as both parties are happy; and it’s near impossible to gauge when that will be in advance.