- marriage week - day 3

(Photo was taken a year after I got married by a friend who was studying photography.
She is now, incidentally, dating my ex.)

Marriage is a decision. A commitment.

I used to believe that marriage is about love, but I no longer believe that to be necessarily true.

I shared this thought with Adam yesterday, and he thought it sounded cold and depressing... and I agreed. But when you get down to it, that's what marriage is. An agreement. A decision. A commitment.

There are two funny myths about marriage.

Myth #1: Once you get married, everything changes.

Myth #2: Once you get married, nothing changes.

Does a soirée involving a white dress, some rings, and a cake change everything? Of course not. Once married, you are still the same two people, the same couple. But what often changes are expectations, both from the two lovers and from the rest of the world. Suddenly, you are expected to get joint bank accounts, to file your taxes together (happy belated tax day, by the way!), to spend holidays together, to not attend family gatherings partnerless, to have children, to agree on stuff.

And sometimes, one of you holds expectations about the roles you both should play-- sometimes without realizing that you hold that expectation. She expects that he will always have a job. He expects that she won't have a social life without him. Or about characteristics based on your parents' relationship: he expects that she will nag him, she expects that he won't respect her freedom.

The key, I think, is to be clear on what this commitment means to both of you before entering into it, what meanings you attach to the idea of "marriage", from day to day behavior to the role this person plays in the grand scheme of your life... and to realize that some of those meanings or expectations may be unrealistic.

The relationship that makes up a marriage and the marriage itself are really, if you think about it, two entirely separate entities. I have seen married couples who don't have much of a relationship by my standards, yet their marriage is going strong. And I have seen couples with a strong and powerful relationship whose marriages don't work out, or don't even exist.

Perhaps it is important to understand this, to really think about how marriage relates to your relationship, and to honestly rank one as a priority over the other. To my ex, and initially to me, marriage was more important that our relationship. He would have rather stayed married in an unhappy relationship than be close but no longer married. But I came to want a healthy relationship more than an strong marriage. And I think he, too, now values that we still have a friendship more than resents the fact that we got divorced.

I am sure there are people who disagree, but I at least think it is an interesting idea. Which is more important to you? A happy relationship, or a lifelong marriage? If you had to choose one without the other, which would it be?