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I Didn't Want Marriage
I figured out this morning, while showering, that what I didn't want to be married. What I wanted was to live together with Rachel for the rest of my life, doing what we wanted, caring for each other, but not feeling responsible for the things she did in her life, and having her not feel responsible for the things I did in mine. I think that the fact that marriage is commonly understood to be the way that people who care about each other live together for a lifetime blinded me to the fact that I didn't actually want the structure of marriage as it was commonly understood, where you also are supposed to take on some large responsibility for the life the other person leads.
I think, in retrospect, that this was utterly obvious. Since I was 14 or so, I've been telling myself metaphorically, and not in a subtle way either, that I didn't want marriage. But I thought that marriage was the only possible way to live with and love the person(s) I cared about, and since I wanted to live with and love the person(s) I cared about, I picked marriage (and the attendant social baggage and responsibilities that came along with it). I confused the socially sanctioned way of living with and loving others for the only possible way of living with and loving others by conflating the two (and I'd been conflating them since I was 14, too, with the same metaphor I used to tell myself that I didn't want marriage).
Wow, no wonder I felt so lonely. I didn't want the socially sanctioned way of having partner(s) for life, but I thought that was the only way to have a partner. I don't necessarily want the socially sanctioned way of having any relationships, but I thought that was the only way to have any relationships.
I am utterly sure I also had this problem with other relationships, too: my friendships, and my family. Why do I have this problem? I think I had it instilled in me by my family that the only permissible relationship to have with them was the socially sanctioned "loving child/parent" relationship, so no wonder I was struggling under a crushing guilt-burden of social sanctions and appearances when the relationship we actually had was not loving at all. Furthermore, once I was finally able to acknowledge that the relationship was actually abusive rather than loving, I still struggled under the guilt-burden of social sanction, unsure what to do with the social-sanction concept now that it was not tethered to the relationship anymore, but social sanction still remained the most important factor in how I understood relationships.
No wonder I worried so much about what everyone else thought of me and my actions--my relationships with myself--if was monitoring that feeling of social sanction, rather than the love present in any actual relationship, all the time. I felt a lot of pressure to take only socially sanctioned actions, be a socially sanctioned person. And I'm just not, most of the time. :D
That was why I was happiest when I was alone--there was no "social" for me to feel was sanctioning me or that I had to monitor for appropriateness. But after I realized I also needed and deserved humane, loving relationships, to get them I kept putting myself into social situations, and during any interaction with any other person I would put all this social sanction pressure on myself, and manufacture it where it didn't exist. Because without social sanction, I couldn't see a relationship as a relationship, since social sanction was what I understood relationships to be.
[Addendum: I think that I started being able to see that relationships were different from social sanctions of relationships when I came out, but since I still had very little idea that what I ought to desire from a relationship was the relationship rather than the relationship+social sanction, wherever any of my relationships were not socially sanctioned I kept trying to make them be, which came at the expense of the relationships and therefore also at my own expense.]
This is really important. I feel really freed and happy.
I think, in retrospect, that this was utterly obvious. Since I was 14 or so, I've been telling myself metaphorically, and not in a subtle way either, that I didn't want marriage. But I thought that marriage was the only possible way to live with and love the person(s) I cared about, and since I wanted to live with and love the person(s) I cared about, I picked marriage (and the attendant social baggage and responsibilities that came along with it). I confused the socially sanctioned way of living with and loving others for the only possible way of living with and loving others by conflating the two (and I'd been conflating them since I was 14, too, with the same metaphor I used to tell myself that I didn't want marriage).
Wow, no wonder I felt so lonely. I didn't want the socially sanctioned way of having partner(s) for life, but I thought that was the only way to have a partner. I don't necessarily want the socially sanctioned way of having any relationships, but I thought that was the only way to have any relationships.
I am utterly sure I also had this problem with other relationships, too: my friendships, and my family. Why do I have this problem? I think I had it instilled in me by my family that the only permissible relationship to have with them was the socially sanctioned "loving child/parent" relationship, so no wonder I was struggling under a crushing guilt-burden of social sanctions and appearances when the relationship we actually had was not loving at all. Furthermore, once I was finally able to acknowledge that the relationship was actually abusive rather than loving, I still struggled under the guilt-burden of social sanction, unsure what to do with the social-sanction concept now that it was not tethered to the relationship anymore, but social sanction still remained the most important factor in how I understood relationships.
No wonder I worried so much about what everyone else thought of me and my actions--my relationships with myself--if was monitoring that feeling of social sanction, rather than the love present in any actual relationship, all the time. I felt a lot of pressure to take only socially sanctioned actions, be a socially sanctioned person. And I'm just not, most of the time. :D
That was why I was happiest when I was alone--there was no "social" for me to feel was sanctioning me or that I had to monitor for appropriateness. But after I realized I also needed and deserved humane, loving relationships, to get them I kept putting myself into social situations, and during any interaction with any other person I would put all this social sanction pressure on myself, and manufacture it where it didn't exist. Because without social sanction, I couldn't see a relationship as a relationship, since social sanction was what I understood relationships to be.
[Addendum: I think that I started being able to see that relationships were different from social sanctions of relationships when I came out, but since I still had very little idea that what I ought to desire from a relationship was the relationship rather than the relationship+social sanction, wherever any of my relationships were not socially sanctioned I kept trying to make them be, which came at the expense of the relationships and therefore also at my own expense.]
This is really important. I feel really freed and happy.
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Yes it is. Go you.
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I mean, the whole post is a great thing, because it's good to know yourself, but I am happy that you feel happy. :)
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What is "marriage," then? What's the difference?
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I am very glad to read this.
What I wanted was to live together with Rachel for the rest of my life, doing what we wanted, caring for each other, but not feeling responsible for the things she did in her life, and having her not feel responsible for the things I did in mine.
Would you marry someone if this was the definition of your marriage, or is the concept itself problematic?
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Would you marry someone if this was the definition of your marriage, or is the concept itself problematic?
I guess in short, the question is--do I care what I and the other person think, or do I care what they think--or do they care what I think? I guess that gets right to the heart of a what a marriage ceremony is for, huh?
I think that a marriage ceremony is you and your partner inviting other people, and the state, to validate what you already think about your relationship--that it exists, and that it is important to you, and therefore deserves to be recognized formally as a relationship by other people and the state.
I support other people and the state generally recognizing that you and your relationship, you know, exists and is important to you, so they are able to treat you and people that are important to you with respect during interactions.
(Not that people shouldn't treat you with respect anyway, but rather, people must be aware that a thing is before they are able to decide what to do with that thing, and how they should do it...whether that thing is a relationship, a tomato, race, the rainforest, a problem, or other people's opinions.)
In that sense, I think that marriage ceremonies are the legal and social way we have of recognizing the existence and importance of a relationship between two people, so that they may interact with that relationship as a thing separate from, but composed of, the two people in it. (And yes, I think that the duality currently built into marriage ceremonies is arbitrary and screws over people who are in other long-term committment configurations).
I would like to have a relationship legally recognized as a thing separate from, but composed of, the two people in it; in that sense I suppose I would get married, if my partner and I had reached an understanding that we were not responsible for each other's individual actions.
I do not see how it would be possible for a couple undergoing a marriage ceremony to limit the definition of marriage to just the understanding of the two people at hand, since the whole point of such a ceremony is to bring additional societal and legal expectations into the relationship, regardless of if the couple needed, intended, or even wanted to have them.
HOWEVER, my partner and I would not need to be bound by the definition of marriage imposed on our relationship by other people; we would hold no responsibility to live up to other people's expectations (except perhaps in the heads of those other people, and if they held us to an expectation we did not have and intend to keep for ourselves, they and their expectations would be the ones who would be incorrect, not us for not living up to them).
Just as my partner would not have to be responsible for the things I did, and I would not have to be responsible for the things they did, unless we agreed that we ought to be for each other.
...and this is where I see that I was already not responsible for the things she did in her life, and she was already not responsible for the things I did in mine, except that she asked me to be (and I was) responsible for making certain decisions for her, and that agreement was the thing needing tweaking or discarding.
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This strikes me as true. I mean, there are limits--if you're an Orthodox Jew, most of the people at your wedding are probably Orthodox Jews, and their expectations will be different than, say, those of people who come to a hippie neo-pagan agnostic kind of wedding-thing-- but in general, I agree. And that was striking, when Lila and I got married-- how much we were bringing the community into our relationship, and how different that felt.
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I've found it helpful to know of and be in social contact with other couples who have chosen to stay unmarried, as validation, I guess, in the face of social pressure. If you want to explore the concept-space more [sometime later, not now], I have a fair amount of articulated thoughts on why I don't want to be married, and how I have shaped my life and my relationship(s) to handle that.
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Would Kin/Rik/Peggy count as another of those committed-but-not-married folks? Although they're not exactly a 'couple'.
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There's a book called "Unmarried to Each Other" which may be a good resource to look at. I found it very useful in the "hey, there are other people like me" sort of way.
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I think this is a good thing to know about yourself, and I am very glad of your feeling free and happy.
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I have had experiences just similar enough to what you describe that, even though my experiences are clearly not the same as yours, I feel like I can understand at least some of what you're talking about here.