Ready to Give Up? Just Get Married!

May 25, 2005

A friend of mine is getting married in a couple of weeks, and I’ve been scrambling around work trying to get off so I can go back to Texas to watch this historic event. I call it historic because, of all of the people I’ve known over the years, he is probably the last one that I ever thought would settle down and get married. I know quite a few of the marrying types… the ones who long for it… the ones who’ve pined away over it for years and years… wishing… hoping… praying… that they’d find “the one” and end up making beautiful music together. But this guy isn’t one of those… or so I thought.

It’s got me thinking about marriage and the whole institution of tying the knot. My views on the subject have lead to many hot debates in the past. We touched on the subject in a personality theory class I took years ago, and my opinions sparked a class-wide argument that lasted the entire hour (we never did go back and pick up the information we were “supposed” to discuss that day). I’ve talked about it with friends, co-workers, and even strangers on numerous occasions. I’ve hit the subject with married and non-married folks. And the common thread among all of these conversations is that I’m apparently a freak and a non-American (I don’t recall how that one came up… but it probably had something to do with the politics of marriage).

You see… I’m not a fan of the institute of marriage. Not because of any desire to go out and play the field for life or anything. And I’m not in the “gotta sow the seeds” camp either. My beliefs have nothing to do with living life as a “playa” or whore or any of the other things that sometimes lead people down the dark road of marriage-avoidance. And despite what some shrinks would say, it has nothing to do with commitment issues… I can commit whole-heartedly to things I believe in!

My thinking is actually quite simple in statement: Marriage is an outdated, archaic practice that goes against human nature and stifles personal development.

Like I said, it’s very simple in statement. But it’s not as easy to explain…

To fully get why I say what I say, we must look at some of the basics of human development. There are a lot of hotly debated ideas floating around on the what, when, where, who, how, and why of development. Some of those ideas work their way into my marriage debate, but I’ll save debating them for another day… haha. During the debate in the personality development class that I mentioned above, a guy repeatedly countered everything I said with the statement “That’s because they’re not self-actualized” (honestly… that was his response to everything… the idiot… haha). What is self-actualization you ask? Abraham Maslow coined the term self-actualization (SA) to describe the pinnacle of human development… the optimum potential that each of us can achieve. In his own words, Maslow defined actualization this way:

“A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. This is the need we may call self-actualization … It refers to man’s desire for fulfillment, namely to the tendency for him to become actually in what he is potentially: to become everything that one is capable of becoming …”

Self-actualization is not something most of us can ever expect to achieve. Maslow himself said that very few people, if any, will ever actually achieve this state. But none the less, it’s something that we are constantly seeking, whether consciously or not. Phrases like “know thyself” and “to thine own self be true” can be clumped together with SA because they all focus on the individual exploring self… spending time inside… figuring out who and what we are to the deepest possible extent. Most people don’t do this. In fact, many people, particularly young’ens like myself, never explore themselves in anything but the most basic of ways (and no… I don’t mean in the shower with a hand mirror… haha). For the three or so people who have read some of the other stuff I ramble on about here, you’ve noticed a lot of mention of self exploration in my writing. I truly believe that one must get inside and find out what makes the clock keep ticking on a personal level before any hope of figuring out the rest is possible. I’ll quote an older post of mine here, dated 12/11/04:

“When you ask ‘why’ you are going deeper than what’s on the surface. You are not your outside. You are your inside. The only way to get to the inside (other than with a sharp knife) is to ask ‘why’. Ask yourself right now if you could answer the ‘why’ question about some of the things you believe in… some of your thoughts on current issues of debate… or about why you behave a certain way.”

The same thing applies to our relations with others. Without understanding ourselves… without asking the why… we can never expect to fully understand others with whom we get involved with. And if you don’t know yourself how can you ever really know someone else? How many times have you asked someone “well what is it you’re looking for” only to have them respond “I don’t know”. They don’t know because they don’t know what makes them want to have someone. Why do they want someone else? What are they hoping to get out of a coupling with another person? Companionship? The bubbling feeling of love? Someone to take the trash out? A steady roll in the hay (cause we know how often married folks do that)? What? What are they looking for?

Pardon the Psych 101 here, but it’s so true: people who crave the affection of other people do so because they don’t have any affection for themsevles. Or at least not enough to make them happy. These people feel that if someone else loves them, they won’t have to worry about loving themselves. And if they have someone else, they can funnel all of the affection they should be paying to themselves to someone else. You don’t need to explore yourself if you’ve got someone else to explore. You know the people who simply aren’t happy unless they have a significant other? The ones who jump from meaningless relationship to meaningless relationship just so they won’t be alone… the ones who jump about until they find someone else who is tired of jumping so they can mutually settle? These folks hate to be alone because they’re not happy with themselves. Not in a superficial way… in a personal way. They’re lacking something in themselves that makes them happy, so they search for that in other people instead of working on finding it in themselves. I believe we all have it somewhere in us… those things we look for in other people. We just have to look for it (I know… surprisingly optimistic for me… haha).

To sum all this ranting up, the quest for marriage is the quest for that person who fills in the holes we find within ourselves. How many times have you heard that ridiculous line “you complete me”? Why aren’t you complete anyway? What’s missing from you that can ONLY be found in another person? Once those holes are filled in with something from someone else, they cannot be filled in with anything else… with anything from inside us. The quest to figure out those things for yourself stops when you let someone else figure it out for you. Now change gears for a moment and look at divorce. “We just grew apart”… or “feelings change”… simplified ways of saying “I figured out what I was missing… I found it somewhere else… you are no longer needed to fill in the voids”. Seriously… think about it. When couples grow apart, it’s usually because one or both of them have come to some realization about themselves OR someone has found another person who fills in their void more completely. Don’t ya think? (On a random side note, taken out of context, that last paragraph could sound very dirty… haha)

There you have my take on how marriage stifles human development. But what about the human nature bit I mentioned?

As I’ve mentioned numerous times in other ramblings, I think humans are social creatures. Even the anti-social ones (scroll down to the bit on attention-seeking). We all make friends, forget friends, make new friends, date around, screw around, forget dates, make new ones… and the cycle repeats. When people think they’ve grown tired of the cycle, they get married. Things are great for a while, and then inevitably they start longing for the people they left behind. In the meantime, they may have made new friends as a couple… other couples who share something in common with them, such as work or kids on the same soccer team or something equally as trivial. But many marriages are not strong enough to allow the members of the match to go out and make a lot of new random friends, particularly those of the opposite sex. They both try to hold on to their old relationships, and some even find a way to work the old gang into the new marriage. But how many people do you know who’ve gotten married and then suddenly forget they had a life before their marriage? I swear… I loose more friends to marriage than anything else! Haha. Am I bitter about that? Hell yes, I am.

Human nature dictates change… new places… new faces. Even people who don’t like change (like myself) get the itch to see something different or see someone different. Vacations are the processed American cheese food of human nature… a temporary relocation to somewhere new and different to break up the grind. Folks don’t normally just uproot and permanently change locales just for the hell of change. They go… they visit… they enjoy… and then they drag themsevles back to their little world.

New people are also a great cheese food to break up the rut that life almost always digs out for us. There are enough things in the world to add fuel to life’s backhoe… work… school… bills… social expectations. Getting hitched just throws more gas on a fire that’s already blazing out of control. Does it make a lot of sense to add someone who you supposedly love to the hatred that is your daily routine? Even routine freaks like me hate the fact that a routine even exists! It’s a double-edged sword. For instance, I love how smoothly things go at work when everyone has been there long enough to know their job well. Part of me grumbles every time someone new shows up. But at the same time, I savor the introduction of a ripple in the pond. I know I’m not the only one. Now don’t get me wrong… I’m sure two people who really care for one another on a deep level will be just fine waking up next to the same face for the rest of their lives. You know… seeing the same person day in and day out for 50 years sounds like a great idea right? And not just seeing them… waking up with them… pantomiming your routine with them… eating with them… and going to bed with them… every day… for years and years and years. Sounds like a lot of fun, doesn’t it? The married folks out there will never be able to convince me that they haven’t turned over in the morning and had the urge to scratch their partner’s face off at some point. The routine of it is in direct contradiction to the way people operate. Or at least the way they *want* to operate. Don’t try to say it’s not. You know it’s true.

The touchy part of the human nature debate revolves around the way men and women are wired. Just to get it out of the way now, I’m going to be making several generalizations here. I *really* do understand that they are generalizations, much the way that a lot of what I say is. There are always exceptions to the rules, and I am living proof of that! So if you don’t fall into one of these neatly categorized labels, don’t pee in my Mountain Dew and then tell me how great it tastes… just realize that I’m generalizing here.

As much as some people hate to admit it, humans are animals, plain and simple. Divine creation and religious ideas aside, we exist on this planet in the very same fashion that all other animals do. We adapt to our environment, we make tools, and we compete in the food chain. We are driven by many socially created motives and fall victim to what we’re told is worthy, but we also have intrinsic drives that cannot be ignored. These drives are part of the essence that makes life… well… life. ALL animals share some of the basic drives. The basics of survival are food, shelter, and safety… but our inherent drives don’t end there. They differ between the sexes and, as much as some hate to admit it, there is concrete proof throughout nature to back up the assertation that men and women are often wired quite differently in regard to the nature of their beast.

In the song “Ask”, Morrissey says “nature is a language… can’t you read?” (and yes… I did just quote a song… sue me… and yes… it’s the same artist who’s song my blog is named after… sue me again… and then listen to both songs… they’re both quite good… haha). Look around… read the language of nature… males are wired to breed… females are wired to rear. After you’re done gritting your teeth into a chalky powder, recall that I said GENERALIZING earlier and keep reading… I’m getting to a point here I promise. We’re talking other animals here… birds… rabbitts… foxes… snakes… etc. Female penguins, for example, typically hunt down two male penguins when their biological clocks start ticking: a big, strong male-penguin-whore to mate with… and a nice, caring male penguin with which to raise the babies. They don’t mate with caring penguin… they mate with macho penguin… and then let caring penguin help raise the bastard children (thanks Mandy for the great example). For those female penguins it’s not about love… or soul mates… or filling in gaps… it’s about continuing the species and raising babies. For the butch penguins it’s not about love… or soul mates… or filling in gaps… it’s about breeding. When you take out the species that have the killer females (praying mantis ring a bell?), most animals operate in much the same way: the female members of the species are driven by the instinct to have babies and the males are driven by the instinct to knock up the ladies. It’s how they survive.

Now look at humans. We’re not all that different from other animals. There are macho male-penguin-whore men who like to mess around with as many women as possible and there are women who seek them out to raise a family. Exceptions abound, of course. There are some female-penguin-whore women and caring penguin males out there, too. But the underlying instincts are there, regardless of whether or not they are suppressed. As humans, we have the advantage(?) of having free will and the ability to make decisions that go against instinct. Other members of the animal kingdom lack these abilities, and therefore are completely instinct driven. But we’re not. That ability has done great things in catapulting us to the top of the food chain and creating our “civilized” societies. But it has also guided us in directions that counteract the nature of what we are. Imagine, for a moment, all of the animals on earth being given free will and the ability to override their instinctive impulses. Things would be pretty different wouldn’t they? Would animals start partnering up too? Would Ms. Robin bitch-slap Mr. Robin when she found him sitting in Ms. Cardinal’s tree?

You can put all of the restrictions, traditions, and social expectations on human beings that you want… but the fact remains that we are creatures of instinct, just like every other carbon-based life form on the planet. These restrictions, traditions, and social expectations are the only things that separate us from the rest of the kingdom as far as behavior goes. Don’t get me wrong… many of these restrictions, traditions, and expectations are for the greater good. Imagine a world without them? Scary. My point is that marriage is one of these R/T/SEs (restrictions/traditions/social expectations). Marriage is an age-old tradition amongst humans… many cultures expect adults to marry and have families… and there are laws restricting how marriage is carried out, who can do it, and when they can do it. You can suppress the instinct… but that’s one of the crazy things about instincts… they don’t go away… ever.

Now to pull this entire thing together, let me offer up a few additional thoughts on the subject that don’t fit anywhere else. Regardless of my thoughts on the subject, I actually am glad that some people choose to get married. For one, it aides in the continuation of the human race. Not that you have to get married to help populate the earth… but a good marriage makes for the optimal environment in which to raise little ones. I also think tradition is a good thing, particularly for those of us living in the States (we’ve gotta hold on to all of them that we can). And again, I realize that marriage is not a United States specific tradition… but it is one that we’ve always had because those who founded this country brought it with them. In addition, I’m always all-for whatever makes people happy. So if marriage is what someone thinks they need to be happy, more power to them. I just hate the fact that so many marriages come at the sacrifice of personal understanding and growth. Yes, both can be had simultaneously… but it’s very rare.

My brother and I have yacked about a lot of things over the years, and we’ve both agreed that many of things we think about ourselves and want for ourselves are not necessarily what we think and wish for society at large. Marriage is one of those things for both of us. I am not at all interested in it for myself, at least at this point in my life. But like I said a minute ago, I’m glad someone is doing it. I think it would be devastating for society if marriage was suddenly an obsolete practice. Society is already degrading at an alarming rate and marriage could quite possibly be the last sturdy board holding up the roof.

So there you have it. Go out and get yourself hitched. Just remember that you existed before the marriage… and that you still exist after it. At the end of the day, when you lay down in bed with your spouse, remember that if they weren’t there next to you, you’d still have yourself. And that’d be ok. Right?

And damn it, don’t forget about us single folks that still think you’re worth knowing ;)

P.S.: For all of you “just wait until you meet the right person” people out there… I’ve thought about that. Maybe you’re right. But I have yet to meet anyone, even the people I care for most in the world, that I would want to wake up with every single day for the rest of my life. My personal happiness is too important to me to sacrafice for the sake of routine, stability, and all of the other things the marrying folks look for. So all of you out there holding your “Get Hitched to Phillips” cards… sorry to disapoint. Haha… yeah… cause I know there are SOOO many of you out there… lined up around the corner… just waiting to wake up and scratch my face off…

Posted in Human Nature, Noteworthy, Relationships

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