Why I was wrong about marriage

I owe an apology to my friends and family.  I’m sorry I didn’t celebrate your weddings with sufficient enthusiasm. 

I was happy for you of course.  It’s just that when it comes to marriage, aren’t there more questions than answers?

Maybe I’m just stubborn - or rather, nonconformist?  Certainly, if someone tells me something is normal, and good for me too, my natural contrariness predisposes me to distrust and disobey.

Healthy scepticism perhaps?  On being told (nagged, pushed) to get married, I don’t say ‘Ok’ but rather ask ‘Why?’. ‘It’s about time’ and ‘Everyone else does it’ are pretty weak reasons to do anything.

Why this pressure?  What is it about happy bachelors that people find so threatening?  Maybe unmarried adults somehow remind us that at some level we all remain untamable free spirits who reject the unnatural bonds of wedlock.

Births, marriages, deaths - can you spot the odd one out?  Whilst marriage is an important rite of passage in many societies, it’s not universal: births and deaths are natural, unavoidable events, whilst marriage is different - a choice, a social construct, more akin to a coming of age ceremony, which some societies hold dear - but others don’t.

And from where should we take our moral lead?  Hijacked by organized religion, churches preached the sanctity of marriage and condemned those who lived ‘in sin’ and ‘out of wedlock’.  Thankfully such bigoted attitudes are now disappearing, in the UK at least, but they left me deeply suspicious – particularly when the best reasoning is ‘because I / we / our God says so’.

Or would you rather trust a politician?  In the UK, populist politicos champion marriage, eagerly pandering to Mail-reading middle England.  When a government tells you what’s good for you - even bribes you through the tax system (your money) – aren’t you just a bit reluctant?  A sell-out prime minister offers our health service to his business buddies, taxes pensioners to pay rich friends, and sells meal-tickets to access policy-making - hardly an ethical role model.

(And the last bunch were just as bad – engaging with Bush’s illegal war, Ecclestone to put greed before health, Berlosconi to party – and stridently pro-marriage.  No partnership advice from you lot either, thank you).

Is it any surprise that people increasingly ignore such pro-marriage pleading?  Despite church and state telling us what’s good for us, recent Census data shows the rate of marriage has plummeted by a third since 1981.  Pretty much all couples sleep together, and live together, only then may or may not think about marriage (and quite right too:  you wouldn’t buy a car without getting in and having a test-drive).

Ok, but what could be more charming than an Asian wedding?  I hoped that volunteering abroad might expose me to captivating, exotic ceremonies.  Wrong!  In Cambodia at least, they are both excruciating (bad food, terrible ‘music’, repulsive showiness) and objectionable (couples are pressured to marry too young, often for others’ interests rather than love).

But aren’t weddings back home great fun?  I’ve witnessed nuptials in castles, cliff tops and safari parks and partied with wonderful guests in remarkable places.  How else would two disparate groups of friends and families ever meet and get to know each other?  In fact, when else would we see our own extended families?  Yet it hardly justifies marriage - if the best reason for weddings is the need for proper parties and regular reunions, there must be easier (and cheaper) ways. 

Indeed:  more questions than answers.  In fact, wasn’t this meant to be an apology for being wrong about marriage?

Well, yes. The truth is I have met a girl I love, and she wants to get married.  Why?  It would make her happy.

And that, I have come to realize, is the only thing that matters.  Probing questions and logical arguments are just no match for emotion.

So, as I dropped to one knee and proffered a sparkly ring last weekend, I was thankful that I finally asked the right question - and that the answer was yes.