Why you don't have to get married

How views on marriage have changed

If you ask a modern person why marry at all, the answer is likely to be this: to connect your life with a loved one with whom we are united by interests, romantic feelings, sexual attraction and a relationship of mutual support.

However, this concept of marriage did not emerge very long ago. Since ancient times, marriage has been perceived as a political or socially useful event, not a personal one. In particular, this is why Romeo and Juliet became so famous, who migrated into Shakespeare's tragedy from Lope de Vega's drama Castelvins and Montesa. Instead of looking after family interests, the couple chose to twist love - scandal and drama!

It was only when the bourgeois class spread and took a leading position in the Western world that people discovered that marriage could be based primarily on the spouses' tender feelings for each other.

Over time, when more and more women began to acquire material and social independence, in the countries of the first world, marriage became a personal matter. Simply put, you can now join it not for the sake of dynastic necessity, children or survival, but simply because you want to. At the same time, in order to be with your loved one and support each other financially and emotionally, a stamp in your passport is not at all required.

However, the social pressure expressed in the question “When to get married?” Has not gone anywhere. First of all, it is aimed specifically at women. Indeed, historically, when they had few opportunities to get an education and build a career, a successful marriage was considered the highest point of success. However, now everything is changing, and if for some reason you do not want to get married (now or at all), you can not give in to provocations.

Why marriage is not necessary today

1. Marriage does not guarantee happiness

There is often a desire to achieve personal happiness behind the desperate desire to get married. It is not for nothing that many fairy tales end with the words "And they lived happily ever after." However, spiritual harmony has nothing to do with marital status.

You can be happy without being married and not in a relationship at all - or be unhappy in your marriage.

Research on subjective well-being often finds that marriage is positively correlated. How's Life at Home? New Evidence on Marriage and the Set Point for Happiness with a level of happiness. However, other scientists note in The New Science of Single People that people who are already in it testify to their satisfaction with marriage - their level of spiritual harmony is compared with the level of single people. Whereas for complete statistics it would be necessary to ask the same question to people after a divorce.

One way or another, marriage in itself does not save you from psychological problems. On the contrary, already existing dissatisfaction with oneself, anxiety and neurotic states can migrate into relations with another person and undermine them from the inside. Other people don't share happiness like Wi-Fi. We bear responsibility for our experiences ourselves. Even Immanuel Kant taught to treat a person as a goal, and not as a means.

2. Marriage does not guarantee stability

There is a misconception that after the wedding, a woman's life will be arranged. Behind this word lies the desire for stability - both material and personal (the search for "the one" is over, and this is forever).

The attitude to search for material well-being at the expense of another person is, in principle, rather dubious.

After all, it is precisely the understanding of relations as a union of equal people that assumes that they stay together because they want to, and not because it is beneficial for someone. Of course, support, including material support, is part of the relationship. And sometimes there are cases when a stamp in a passport makes it easier for situations related to obtaining citizenship or property issues. However, the main reason for this should still be mutual desire (of course, unless you plan to enter into a marriage of convenience with pre-agreed rules).

Even when it comes to great love, one must remember that nothing eternal exists. Usually grooms and brides do not believe that this can affect them, but about half In 2016, the number of registered marriages decreased by 15%, divorces - by 0.5% of marriages in Russia ends in divorce. Does this mean that you do not need to get married, because the relationship may end? Not at all. However, this is one of the possible outcomes to consider. And looking for something permanent should definitely not be the motivation for marriage.

3. Marriage is not a panacea for loneliness

Loneliness is one of the main fears of a person. Even the development of diseases is associated with it. According to some data, Loneliness is a unique predictor of age-related differences in systolic blood pressure, among lonely people there are higher rates of morbidity and mortality from cardiovascular problems. At the same time, the study deals with older people who are in general social isolation.

On the whole, a person has a lot of opportunities to find a company for himself outside of marriage - among relatives, colleagues, friends of the same interests. And certainly the body does not care whether you and your partner have stamps in their passports.

At the same time, you can be single and married. Complaints about misunderstanding and lack of emotional intimacy with a spouse is something that psychologists often have to deal with. According to How's Life at Home? In the New Evidence on Marriage and the Set Point for Happiness, which examined the relationship between marriage and life satisfaction, the well-being of those whose husbands or wives also succeeded in becoming their best friends was found to be the highest.

The question is not whether people are legal spouses, but how their relationships are built.

4. Wedding is expensive

And the point here is not only how much we can afford, but why it is needed at all. For many, it is important not only to sign at the registry office, but also to arrange a big celebration - with a cake, a fluffy dress and mountains of flowers. In the English-speaking world, brides who begin to obsessively desire "the perfect wedding" and bring this to those around them are jokingly called "bridesilla" - from the words bride and godzilla.

No matter how gorgeous the wedding ceremony is, it will not affect the success of the relationship in any way. In fact, this is just a vanity fair.

For the sake of the wedding, they take out loans and go into debt. This money goes mainly to the organization of the event, food, costumes for the bride and groom. According to representatives of wedding agencies, in Moscow the average cost of an event was 2–3 million rubles for 2017. And this despite the fact that the size of the state duty for a marriage certificate is only 350 rubles.

Meanwhile, today more and more people are thinking about conscious consumption and whether it is worth spending money on things that we will use only once and which have no value other than status. It would be more rational to invest wedding money in housing or buying a car.

5. External pressure is also not a reason

Even if phrases like “As you don’t want it, everyone wants it” only make you laugh, the pressure of significant people is difficult to ignore. This can be one of the main annoying factors associated with a prospective marriage.

Remember: no matter what your relatives or friends say, you are the one who makes the fateful decisions.

It is not necessary to get involved in disputes, it is enough to understand your desires. Following the parental scenario is as dubious as the preference for the anti-scenario, in which the subject seeks to do everything in spite of (for example, in spite of society and parents). But mindfulness of actions helps to achieve inner freedom.

Some are heavily influenced by photos of others' weddings on social media. The obsessive fear of missing something important is called FOMO - fear of missing out, or loss of profit syndrome. Seeing snapshots of important events from the lives of friends, it is easy to fall into a similar trap: if they are doing this, maybe I need to? However, comparing yourself to others is not always productive. Your needs and wants may differ, and that's okay.

Sometimes one of the partners wants a wedding, but the other does not. This is a much more serious problem than someone else's Instagram photos. If you come back to this conversation more and more often, it may be worth continuing with a family counselor.

Outcomes

Maybe your relationship is good anyway, so a stamp on your passport won't make it better. Maybe you have no relationship at all and you are not yet striving for one. In any case, the right to marry belongs to you as much as the right not to marry.