in manus

Living in the post-post-modern age (how many posts should be present?) that is 2010 I've found it increasingly difficult to pin down the meaning of marriage. People do not marry for the reasons they did thirty years ago and there seems to be a plurality of reasons for which people are marrying today. There are so many people who are just not marrying at all despite cohabiting and living happy lives with their partners. Watching friends marry and seeing others actively choose not to has made me question what marriage means or may mean to me.

The quickest answer is that I do not know presently and that I will not truly know until the time comes to choose, if it does. However, I'm choosing now to think that I can have an idea of what it may mean before 'the time'.

Women do not need to marry to be financial secure anymore. Despite that, there is the strength in numbers argument. It makes sense that financially and even emotionally people are stronger in a two-person team than individually. I would not choose to marry for the sole purpose of being strengthened, attractive as it is.

There was one point in my life that I felt I had found a man I could marry but as life marched on and habits set in I found myself insulated by the comfort it brought me. I bemoaned taking the TTC at times because my boyfriend had a car. Soon I began to realize that our values and goals were different and I couldn't have the life I wanted with him and so a couple breakups later, it ended.

I never want to marry out of fear: either through fear of losing someone or fear of being alone. I never want to marry because I need someone. I want to marry out of pure choice. I want the luxury of saying 'I choose to be with you because I want to be, not because I need to be.' There is such meaning in that choice. It's the act of that choice that is sublime.

The ritual of marriage is second to the choice and I've questioned its meaning to me as a secular person. I consider myself an existentialist, if we're considering. The joy will be in the feeling and thoughts of the moments. It will be fleeting just as everything in life is. As the moments pass all we have is the memory of having perceived that moment in time.

I hope to have the memory of marriage however, to be technical about it, if I dream about marriage tonight then I will have it. That's really a subject for another time and place.