Husband translates literally to house master, and wife to woman, in effect, master and slave. I now pronounce you house master and his woman.

I never wanted to get married legally. Once upon a time, marriage meant setting up house with someone. Registration and filing fees didn't come into the process.

If one or the other marriage partner wanted out, he or she simply left the house or set (threw, burned) the others items outside the home. One of my sister's ex-house-partners strew the yard with her clothing and urinated on them. The experience hurt her feelings, but it didn't cost her any money or lose her any belongings, although her stuff needed laundering. She simply walked away.

I never wanted to get married. Nonetheless, I've married twice, both times for the financial incentives. I do enjoy the bonding ritual of a wedding. However, I don't refer to the financially ruinous modern wedding. Expensive weddings, in my opinion, negate the main value of marriage, the financial benefits.

Some people fear marriage because it's a difficult and expensive trap to get out of. I had that experience the first time around. My first love and I got married so we could share health insurance, tax deductions, and make joint purchases on credit. Those benefits turned into expensive complications when I left the house. I couldn't just walk away. I had attorney fees, court filing fees, joint debts, . . . .

After the couple of years it took to end my first marriage, I never intended to marry again.  However, a couple of years into my next house-sharing-partnership, I again gave in to the financial incentives, which multiply with the addition of each shared child.

In my present marriage, I'm the husband. My partner gifts his children and me with food and shelter, for which we express supreme gratitude, but I'm the master. I have the experience, skills, and natural authority to make the home and feed the family. I'm no servant-wife. I know my value to my family.

I and the man whom I love and share home and children with, we don't really relate to one another any differently than we did pre-marriage, cooperatively as friends (as if we weren't married.) Our roles in the family compliment one another. We make that plain and value it.

However, by my observation of people I know, marriage more often changes the relationship so that one or the other or both partners act out ownership of each other. Apparently, the house-master and his woman ownership tradition pushes on, even when it goes the other direction or both ways between man and woman.