What is Marriage?

[drwex]

The titular question was posted in a friend's locked entry. I want to write a response and utterly failed to do so within the confines of the LJ comment. So I'm trying it here. This post is unlocked so that person, and maybe others, can respond anonymously if they choose.

Please also add in the appropriate leavening of "for me" in the paragraphs below. I'm speaking of my own beliefs and ideas, with the recognition that they're embedded within a class, gender, and culture context.

Dear Anonymous

I think you're coming at this from the wrong angle. What is a marriage? A marriage is not the set of rights and obligations bundled up with the legal and religious marriage license, though those are tremendously important and extensive. Focusing on those things doesn't get at the core of what I think you want to get at.

A marriage is a commitment to the creation and maintenance of a shared entity - which I shall call "a life" - that is somehow co-extant with the people involved, be they male-female or otherwise identified. When Bill Gibson was asked to define 'cyberspace' he used the analogy of two people talking on a telephone. The people are in separate physical locations but they talk and somehow the conversation doesn't happen in either of the two places where the people are. The conversation happens in a space that is defined by the boundaries of the people and the interaction - a third space. Marriage is like that: it's a life that is created and co-exists with the lives of the people involved, but isn't either of their lives. It's something they share uniquely and that ends when they leave it.

The marriage license and ceremony are the formal conveyal of the bundle of rights and responsibilities we've put together because we (society) found marriage to be a useful and worthwhile life and we wish to promote it. There are all kinds of threads that go into that bundle, such as the state having someone to point to as responsible for children. But none of these threads IS marriage, nor is it the meaning of the marriage. Religions also try to assign meanings to marriage (e.g. "holy matrimony") and thereby invest the creation with a spiritual and often obligatory dimension. But whether or not you buy into that, the religious layer isn't the marriage.

In order to nurture and grow this new life two things have to happen. One is a shift in the mindset of the people involved. That shift is often not concurrent with the ceremony. For some people it is the "man and wife" bit or similar that causes them to feel _really_ married; for myself it's different. I have known when I was married and when I stopped being married the first time, and shared that knowing with my partner at the time. The ceremonies came later.

The second shift is a reordering of priorities. The importance of the shared life is placed above most other things. Just how far up the priority chain it goes depends on a lot of things, but the marriage gets consideration in most everything from when it's formed to when it's done. The people in the marriage commit to working on it, maintaining it, defending it from threats both internal and external. That means a whole range of different things I couldn't possibly enumerate in detail even if I tried. But I feel the details aren't as important as the attitude, priorities and treatments that the people in the marriage adjust to.

Now I want to backtrack slightly and layer on a second claim that a marriage is also a place. Pygment has a picture of herself leaning her head on my shoulder. She asked what she should call it. My response was that I would call it "home." That's the place where you're most yourself, where you're least threatened and most secure, where things are set just so and you need agreement, not permission, to repaint the walls. One of the most important defining aspects of marriage in all cultures I've seen is where the married people live. Sometimes they're expected to go out and start a new home; sometimes one of them moves into the other's household. Regardless of which way the shift happens, there's a strong correlation between marriage and home. It's a little odd to think of a person as a place, but there it is.

((I want to write more - I feel like this is both incomplete and not adequately expressive - but I've run out of cycles I can devote to this right now. Have at.))

Comments

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

The way you've phrased it, there are bits where I'mn confused whether you mean "creating a life" to mean "having a child" or "living a lifetime together".

[drwex]

Yes, both. I think they're more similar than people may immediately classify.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

But only one is integral to the definition of marriage.

[missionista.livejournal.com]

Marriage is like that: it's a life that is created and co-exists with the lives of the people involved, but isn't either of their lives. It's something they share uniquely and that ends when they leave it.


I like this. Nicely said.

[quezz.livejournal.com]

I was actually going to respond to it, saying that there is something missing in that explanation.

Marriage is like that: it's a life that is created and co-exists with the lives of the people involved, but isn't either of their lives. It's something they share uniquely and that ends when they leave it.

I don't think a marriage "ends" for many people, even when the papers are signed and the parties involve settle into new lives. The marriage of minds is something that leaves a lasting impression, good and bad, and the impression remains with whomever was in it. I think in general this is a good thing: to simply say that the creation of this "third life" simply ends with no acknowledgement of its existence is like saying that a person, a life, we once loved simply "ended" and leaves us with no impression. Of course they live on in us...and I think one of the mistakes that we tend to make when we end relationships is believing that the relationship simply ends. If it is like life -- the lives of those around us, the life of a tree, a flower, a dog...then it never really ends -- it remains with us. In treating a marriage that ends with the same reverence we do with a life that ends...I think we become better people who learn how precious it is, how much we can learn from it, and how much easier it is to move on when we see it as "the life of its own" it becomes. I feel very blessed to have learned that -- the end of my marriage has been an extraordinary and uplifting life lesson that I will carry with me into every life I create, whether it's a new marriage, a puppy, or a child, or something else less concrete I cannot see.

[drwex]

You're right that the explanation is incomplete, but I would disagree that the memory/effect/trace of the thing is the same as the thing itself.

[quezz.livejournal.com]

I can see what you mean. I think I see it as I have when I've lost someone in my life by death: they have to become a memory, and that takes time. Not everyone effectively mourns the death of that "third life" because we're kinda charged to "put it behind us" but not in the way we do for more tangible lives we've lost. I think it's hard to see a relationship as a separate life, whether it's going on or it's ending.

[drwex]

Thank you.

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you, Wex.
My (unwritten) definition of marriage is different from what you've written here, but I want to thank you for this phrase: "A marriage is a commitment to the creation and maintenance of a shared entity."

When I fell in love with the person you address and hir spouse, I also fell in love with their marriage, with the entity and the home that they had created together. Describing their marriage in this way allows me to voice my grief and fear now that their marriage is...well, now that it's not well. I know that they will continue to be my beloved friends in the future, but I will be sad if the life of their marriage ends.

[drwex]

You're welcome. I feel your pain and I'm glad I helped a bit.

[hlmt.livejournal.com]

Oh, this was beautifully expressed. Thank you for sharing, and for the time you took to think about it.

[drwex]

Thank you.

It's all your fault, you know. You were the one who kept asking us the questions before we got married.

OK, not *all* your fault. But I do still draw on those conversations when I think about this topic.

[mrw42.livejournal.com]

I really appreciate what you wrote here. I've been struggling with this topic for a while now, for unrelated reasons, and your comments helped to advance my thinking on the subject. Thanks.

[drwex]

You're welcome. Glad it was helpful.

[sweetmmeblue.livejournal.com]

*smooch*

[awfief.livejournal.com]

I know this post is explicitly not about the ceremony, but since ours was so very recent, what you said made me think of something our officiant picked for us, and read:

A man and a woman sit near each other, and they do not long at this moment to be older, or younger, nor born in any other nation, or time, or place. They are content to be where they are, talking or not-talking.

Their breaths together feed someone whom we do not know.

The man sees the way his fingers move; he sees her hands close around a book she hands to him.

They obey a third body that they share in common. They have made a promise to love that body.

Age may come, parting may come, death will come.

A man and a woman sit near each other; as they breathe they feed someone we do not know, someone we know of, whom we have never seen.

I thought it was really beautiful, and captured the "magic" of marriage, especially in those mundane-yet-special moments.

[drwex]

That is very special, thank you for sharing it. Do you know if there's a nameable source?

[awfief.livejournal.com]

Many sources quote Robert Bly, including this source: http://kairoscentre.com/index.php?s=34 -- the title of the poem is "The Third Body"

http://www.panhala.net/Archive/The_Third_Body.html

[taura-g.livejournal.com]

I especially like the last paragraph about marriage also being a place. That hits dead on for me.

Because even when things have been bad and I didn't want to go "home", it was still "home" nonetheless. That life we have built together is still what I always come back to and it is still home.