here<\/a> for the story.\u00a0 While she says she doesn’t believe in marriage, she also says she enjoys the recognition that comes with using the words “married” and “husband”.<\/p>\nThe fact is, marriage is a social contract that has evolved over time into what it is today – and that can be a variety of things.\u00a0 I’ve met married people who don’t spend the workweek in the same town as their spouses.\u00a0 I’ve met others that include three or more people\u00a0 in their marriage (though only two can be recognized legally).\u00a0 I’ve known married couples who despise one another but can’t seem to make the leap to divorce.\u00a0 And I’ve known other couples who were completely devoted to one another and never needed the legal or societal recognition of a “marriage”, but still considered themselves married.<\/p>\n
Long ago, marriage was only a social contract dealing with property.\u00a0 A girl was the property of her father until she (and her dowry) became the property of her husband.\u00a0 Many marriages were arranged.\u00a0 Either the spouses learned to love each other or they learned to satisfy their needs for love elsewhere.<\/p>\n
In modern times, marriage has evolved to become the legal recognition of a couple’s love and devotion to each other.\u00a0 Arranged marriages are seldom seen in Western society.\u00a0 Couples now are able to define their marriages for themselves.\u00a0 Legally, there are no guidelines (as far as I know) beyond some archaic adultery laws that aren’t even enforced any longer.<\/p>\n
I can’t even really define what it must mean when people say they don’t believe in marriage.\u00a0 Are they saying that they don’t agree with the patriarchal history?\u00a0 Are they saying they think people don’t take the vows seriously enough?\u00a0 Are they young and trying to differentiate themselves from their parents?\u00a0 How can a person not believe in something that really, truly does exist?\u00a0 It’s like saying you don’t believe in the sun.\u00a0 The semantics of the statement are baffling – marriage exists (just like the sun) whether you want to recognize it or not.\u00a0 And if you don’t want to recognize it, well then you shouldn’t.\u00a0 But I would say that means that you can’t attend other people’s ceremonies or celebrations.\u00a0 That you can’t send anniversary cards or gifts.\u00a0 That you refuse to recognize the legitimacy of other people’s marital commitments.<\/p>\n
Stating that you “don’t believe in marriage” is just plain stupid.\u00a0 It oversimplifies any legitimate objections you might have to the social, legal, or religious instutions and the impact that marriage (or singlehood) has on an individual or couple.\u00a0 And it makes you sound like and idiot who can’t explain the reasoning behind your dislike or opposition to a long-standing human tradition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You probably know at least one person who has refrained from getting married because s\/he says “I don’t believe in the institution of marriage.” or something similar.\u00a0 While I understand many of the arguments people make for retaining their “single” status indefinitely, I think “not believing” in marriage is, well, a load of crap. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[28,36,55,71,75,83,86],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture","tag-family","tag-life","tag-politics","tag-religion","tag-society","tag-stupid-people"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3aAvV-2k","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}