Let’s think about married life in this piece and ask some important questions, shall we? Why does the institution of marriage exist? Why exactly? What is marriage, after all? Are marriages made in heaven or hell? Why is marriage important? Is marriage about sex?

If you search about marriages on the internet, people are asking all these questions. I am sure some of the questions are coming from singles who wonder if marriage is the right decision for them. Should you get married, if you are single?

What is the purpose of a marriage in the 21st century?

Does married life exist to create a family? Why do marriages exist?

But families can exist and grow even without the legal formalities. Can’t they? Of course they can.

Does marriage control men who would otherwise be promisucous? Maybe, it is a plausible answer.

How about women? They seem to have too many ‘options’ at hand. May be the purpose of marriage is to contain their confused mind since they cannot quite decide which of their so many lovers they actually love and want to be with. So let’s consider the purpose of marriage to make a man and a woman stick to each otherwise and make it legally coercive for them to go wander and go away from each other.

Why should a man and a woman live together and create a family?

Well, the generally accepted answer would be because it is our responsibility to advance the human race forward and only when they live together, they will create a family which will lead to the next generation and so on.

Considering that the purpose of human existence is reproduction, this rationale holds true.

However, I do not agree with this purpose of human existence.

I see the purpose of human existence as individual happiness.

Married life as seen from the prism of happiness

If I look at the institution of married life from the prism of individual happiness, it seems entirely redundant to me. A man and a woman should work on creating a life together only when they love each other and the output of their being together is visceral happiness, which clearly emerges from each others’ companionship. One feels happy from the others’ company and love and vice versa. Marriage is a piece of formal paper that gets stamped on a relationship. Without love, that paper has no meaning.

Imagine a world where marriage does not exist

Let’s assume that we live in a world that the institution of marriage does not exist for discussion sake. Now, in such a world, a boy and a girl meet each other in their 20’s and they happen to like each other. Also, please understand that nobody in this fictional world of ours is married including the parents of the couple in question.

This boy likes the girl and they work at the same place. He asks her out and they start dating and it goes on for a year. What would be the culmination of their relationship in a world without marriage? They decide at the end of one year that they are so happy with each other that they would like to spend their life together.

The boy asks the girl, ‘Would you want to spend the whole of your life with me? I love you so much and I will ensure that yours is a beautiful life and the reason is me?’

She accepts.

They start living together as a couple and announce to their family and friends of their decision of being together. Now, let’s say 2 years down the line as life goes on, they want to have kids and become parents. Well, they have kids and those kids go to school and within a few years they grow up and life moves on in this society with gaiety.

Nobody is married to anyone in here and people live with each other because they are happy to be with each other.

Else, they don’t.

Let’s look at an important angle on married life from a prism of another story

A friend of this couples’, Jack and his girlfriend Julie also feel in love and started to cohabit at the same time as they did. They had 2 kids within 5 years. However, within 5 years, Jack and Julie realized that they are not as much into love with each other as they were.

They tried to make the relationship work but it did not work.

Well, since they are not married and there is no stopping them to go away from each other although with a lot of pain, they decide to get separated.

Shit happens.

Out of sheer respect for Julie as she wanted, the kids now stay with Julie has a job and is currently not in love with anyone.

Even Jack is single and is an entrepreneur and keeps at work mostly these days. Both of them hope that the love lasted but it didn’t.

They still respect each other and Jack visits Julie sometimes and she visits him with the kids whenever they want.

Why did any of these couples need to be married? Why?

Marriage is an institutionalized formality. It is an institutionalized social formality. It is an institutionalized legal formality.

Nevertheless, it is a formality.

Thank you for reading.

The purpose of this blog to help you find your happiness. Please read the other posts on the blog, and follow so that you get updates when new posts are published. Please share any posts you like with your friends so that they can also find their happiness. If you have any feedback for me, please leave in the comments and I would be happy to work on it.

I appreciate the time you spent in reading the blog and wish you happiness.

Love,

Amarvani