Wedlock
Considering the prospect of marriage.
No. 34: Wedlock
There aren’t many cultural universals, but marriage is one. To some, the idea of getting married evokes rosy images of love, doves, and flushed cheeks; to others, the terrifying strictness of binding commitment.
For me, it’s a bit of both. I see both the promise — a lifelong partner, a mother to my kids, the stabilizing intelligence of a woman to check my wandering, often idiotic notions — and the perils — the potential for catastrophic divorce, massive responsibility, the stabilizing power of a woman’s company to check my wandering, often idiotic notions — of that thing they call wedlock.
Weighed on a scale, the pros and cons seem to, in effect, cancel each other out. This is little help to me. Over the years, I haven’t closed any ground or moved any further away from the idea of marriage. Instead, I’ve circled the idea like a choosy fish investigating a baited barb. I’m afraid to get hooked.
One thing’s for sure, if I’m going to get married, I want a say in how it goes down. But apparently, I’m wrong for that. It’s been made especially clear to me by certain women that a wedding is her day, and that the soon-to-be-husband is kind of . . . pretty much . . . for all intents and purposes . . . along for the ride.
To my future wife, wherever you are, I insist that it’s his day, too. In me, bridezillas should be prepared to find a neutralizing opposite, the doomgroom.
After all, isn’t marriage “the formal union of a man and woman, by which they are to become husband and wife,” as reported by the Oxford English Dictionary? It takes two to tango, select a venue, arrange the menu, invite the guests, determine the colorways, design the floral centerpieces, choose the style of music, and find an ice sculptor specializing in anatomically-correct replicas of rare or extinct North American birds.
I’ve entertained hypothetical conversations with certain women about The Big Day in the past, and each time I’m quickly reminded that my desires are at best displeasing and at worst irrelevant.
My hot take?
Church wedding or its illegitimate. This is distasteful in the age of outdoor — usually beach — weddings, but these open-air ceremonies are just too easy. Put out some lawn chairs, erect an arbor, throw some flowers on the ground and, bam, you’ve got a wedding.
Where’s the pain, the suffering, the sacrifice?
If it’s not a priest waving his hand around in some occult ritual, where metaphysical forces unseen yet powerful swirl then burst then dissipate at the moment bride and groom lock lips, what is it? I need the heaviness of ceremony, not the lightness of a beach day made serious by donning suits and dresses — and that’s to say nothing of bare feet.
Before there was marriage, there were loosely organized families of hunter-gatherers made up of as many as 30 people. Several men shared a few women, and every couple of months litters of children were born to an array of dads. While disorienting, this willy-nilly approach to making a family met the needs of their survival-first lifestyle. The more the merrier meant improved efficiency, better protection, and good company. Only after these nomadic groups dropped anchor and began settling into agrarian civilizations did they see the need for more stable, organized relationships.
The first evidence of man and woman tying the knot dates back to ancient Mesopotamia, in the year 2350 BC. The original purpose of marriage was to serve as a legal bind, relegating love and religion to nice-to-haves. The union tied a woman to her man, guaranteeing that little Osiris was in fact his father’s biological heir. If, for some reason, a wife couldn’t carry out her childbearing duties, husbands could return their wives like a malfunctioning MacBook Pro and marry someone else.
It wasn’t until Council of Trent in 1563 that the church got involved in the marrying business. As the Roman Catholicism grew to become the most powerful institution in Europe, the sacramental nature of marriage was written into canon law and the blessing of a priest became a requirement for marriages to be considered legally binding.
Romantic, isn’t it?
The reasons people decide to get hitched today seem to have nothing to do with the original purpose of the marriage ceremony, which was purely legal then both legal and religious. There are of course advantages to becoming one legal entity instead of two, but after digging into the tradition, it becomes apparent that marriage today is symbolic and indicative of love and sexuality only if man, wife, and culture decides it is.
And they have.
This doesn’t bode well for my church wedding argument.
If my idea of an all-powerful holy spell is a hoax, leaving only the legal and symbolic ramifications, the metamorphosis of becoming man and wife can happen anywhere — beaches and bare feet included.
For me, though, it’s about more than the legal and the symbolic, even if, technically, it isn’t. It’s about the weight of the moment, and especially the feeling found in the solemnity of a cavernous cathedral versus the chaos of a beach, where a rogue beach ball is liable to smack me in the head as I read my most poetic vow. It’s about the decorum of the priest at the altar versus a mustachioed man, ordained online, in sunglasses and board shorts ankle-deep in damp sand. And it’s about the understanding that marriage is something sacred, not a free-for-all, open bar party.
When I marry, I want to believe I’m committing to some kind of blood pact before God — that I’m making a promise impossible to reverse and thus worthy of dignity, respect, and ceremony. Take that away, and what’s left for my efforts but a legal certificate I’m liable to lose, burn, or feed to my dog?
Still, I guess it’s not up to me. It does, after all, take two to tango. ♦
Weekly Three
HEAR: "Heavenly Father, You've Been Good" is a beautiful track from Johnnie Frierson, who got his start in the mid-'60s as a gospel act. The whole album is worth listening to.
READ: "The Referendum" by Tim Kreider is a short opinion piece from the New York Times about how we compare our lives to others', especially as some wed and have kids while others stay single
VIEW: This 1884 painting by Johannes Gehrts depicts an ancient Germanic married couple, Arminius and Thusnelda, engaged in an encounter before Arminius heads to battle
