What do you think of when you think about marriage?  The institution of marriage.  According to the Merriam-Wesbster online dictionary, institution is defined as:  a significant practice, relationship, or organization in a society or culture.  That doesn’t sound so bad.  Much better than what normally comes to mind (atleast mine) when you think of an institution.  I am thinking about this today because of a message I received from one of the many groups I’ve joined on Facebook.

The message title is Nature knows no marriage. The message is to not take marriage seriously but rather as a joke, because “One starts leaning on the other more. One starts taking the other more for granted. One starts behaving more and more like a wife and like a husband -- not as two human beings, “ when you take it seriously.  The message also talks about marriage being a social institution placed on us to make society feel better because love, which is a natural state, is not accepted and trusted by society perhaps because it is free and something that is free and unbound is not so easy to define and pigeon hole and the unknown is always scary.  Therefore society tells us we must be married and bound to each other, taking responsibility for that love in essence. 

So we marry and do so with all the seriousness we can muster of the solemnity of the occasion and with the weight of taking responsibility for daring to love another being.  Just as a side note, isn’t it funny that some people think gays should not  take their love so seriously yet feel that straight’s are duty and honor bound to do so, but I digress from the train of thought here.

The line that captured my mind though was this “One starts behaving more and more like a wife and like a husband -- not as two human beings”.  I remember reading years ago an article about why marriage is better than two people living together.  It made the point that when you marry you enter into a contract binding you together thereby saying to each other “I’m taking this seriously.  I am committed to you and I can’t just walk away.”  The idea there being that when you are just living together and know the other person can just walk away at any time with no obligation to you that you will always be on your best behavior as will your partner and therefore it is a false relationship because you are both hiding a part of yourself.  It sounded good at the time and it went on to quote statistics of how long married relationships lasted versus “living together” relationships. 

Obviously there are a few potholes in that article and as I started thinking about the statement that once married “One starts behaving more and more like a wife and like a husband -- not as two human beings”, a little light went off in my head.  Yes, it was a scary moment to have inside my head illuminated.  Haha.  Maybe our long held societal beliefs on the importance of marriage is a bunch of hoo-haw.  Maybe we’ve misunderstood what it means to love one another.  Maybe love was never meant to be bound and tied but rather to be free and open.  Perhaps marriage was born out of societies fears of something so free and unbound, and anything born of fear cannot be a good thing.

The message does go on to say that if you marry to make your family happy, then fine, just by all means, do NOT take it seriously.  It’s when we get caught up in what we perceive to be our roles as a married couple by societies standards that we forget why we came together in the first place.  Love, given freely with no expectations.  And if you have expectations, maybe you aren’t really loving.

Just some wild random thoughts I thought I’d throw out there.  What are yours?