Marriage

The Institution of Marriage

The purpose of marriage is usually to raise kids. That is because human offsprings are particularly hard to raise. Children are not like young ducks, which just come out of the egg and start swimming.

Marriage has been called the only universally accepted condition in which sex is permitted.

Traditional marriage is a sort of trade-off. One the one hand, you get the certainty that another person will be there for you. On the other hand, you give up the option of sexual variety.

At least, that is the common perception.

According to some psychiatrists, the one true indicator of how good a marriage is, is the sex.

A female friend once said: "I like sex. Not just because it feels good, but because I like the feeling of being wanted, desired." Who says sex is only a physical thing?

Demi Moore and Bruce Willis made headlines in the tabloids, because they had a very passionate sex life. They did it often, they talked about it, they hired strippers, had naked horse rides and phone sex.

Tom cruise and Nicole Kidman were said to enjoy nude swimming, isolated week-ends and sex marathons.

In traditional societies, the issue of premarital sex did not really exist. It was sidestepped by marrying young people as soon as possible. Essentially, as soon as they reached puberty and their sexual desire woke up.

After that, people were expected to have between 7 and 15 kids.

Unfortunately, that approach does not work too well anymore. Puberty tends to come earlier and earlier (somewhere around 12 or 13), while at the same time, the responsibilities associated with marriage keep growing. One needs an education, a job, a house... People get married later and later.

The result is an ever-increasing lapse of time (sometimes up to 15 or 20 years) where people have a sex drive, but no officially sanctioned partner.

Something has to give, or people would build up serious sexual dysfunctions.

As far as I am concerned, there should be no marriage before sex.

Despite conservative whining about abstinence till marriage, many people seem to think that the best sex is before marriage.

The best time to experiment sexually, is before marriage. Once married, chances are things will become fairly uneventful.

It would seem foolish to promise eternal fidelity to someone before knowing that you will get along. Especially in bed.

I consider getting married with the first person you had sex with (or worse, as a virgin) a recipe for disaster. It is only a matter of time before one of the two starts wondering what it is like to be with someone else.

They used to say: "First you sleep together. Sometimes you fall in love. Sometimes you get married". Now, with political correctness and all that, you don't hear that saying quite as often. But many times, it actually worked.

Nowadays, at a time in history where people hesitate much longer before sleeping together, one can only notice that less and less people get married.

To some, being virgins means doing everything but having intercourse. It does not make a whole lot of sense, but at least it is more realistic.

Here is my advice to single men. If you date a woman and she doesn't want sex before marriage, that is suspicious. Maybe she is not quite mature, or she is too heavily into religion, or she may have psychological or physical problems, or a low sex drive. Don't hurt her feelings, but check into the possibility of finding someone else.

I am hesitant to give advice to women, since I am a man. But I would be tempted to say the same thing as for men, but turned around.

Protestant women are said to take marital sex more seriously than Catholic women. Pleasing one's man sexually, is actually recommended by the church.

Most guys are in no hurry to get married. In general, marriage means the end of their freedom.

Many men reason that it is after 30 when they start making really good money, and that is when the best opportunities come up in terms of women. They can afford to take a date to the nicest restaurants and on exotic trips. Why let marriage interfere?

Men tend to have more of an urge to have more partners. Part of it has to do with how society raises boys. But it also has to do with evolution theory, competition and the need to propagate genetic information. In the wild, there is almost always competition between the males, for the females. Females tend to concentrate more on raising the young.

Women tend to be raised believing that marriage is the goal. A white, romantic wedding is often a girl's fancy. There is a saying: "A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn't. A man marries a woman expecting that she won't change, but she does. "

Between men and women, women are probably the more sexual beings. They tend to be more physical, more sensual, and are apt to produce more frequent, intense and longer-lasting orgasms.

Unfortunately, most girls are raised to suppress their sexuality, rather than to enhance it. That partially has to do with the fear of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, but also with a deep-rooted practice of male-dominated societies to consider women as exclusive personal properties.

A sexually experienced woman tends to be considered a slut. Although many men will desire such a woman, they will often not consider her good marriage material. This usually has more to do with societal pressures than with reason.

The effects of this double standard, seem to be rather disastrous. According to a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), 31% of American men and 43% of women are sexually dysfunctional.

Another study I heard about on the local TV news, claimed that within a marriage, women are 3 times as likely as men to suffer from a low libido.

According to some psychologists again, an imbalance in sex drives will eventually result in an affair, or in a break-up, or both.

Women who raise kids, often complain they cannot find the energy for sex. Where sex often means relaxation for men, it does not always work out that way for women. This can be a cause of marital conflict.

In my view, jealousy about a partner has only one cause: insecurity.

The institution of marriage has really not changed a whole lot over the years. But there is no fundamental reason why it could not.

One could conceive of a marriage where:

• assets are kept separate (like with a prenuptial contract)
• people agree to stay together only for a limited time, and then renegotiate
• remove the limitation of sexual fidelity (like for swinging couples, or couples who allow each other to sleep with others one day a week, or on demand)

Divorce

A lot of marriages fail today (somewhere in the order of 60% after 5 years, I believe). Religious conservatives immediately conclude from these statistics, that this is because marriages are too liberal, or because divorce is too easy.

I disagree. Divorce is usally the result of a marriage that has not lived up to its expectations of collective happiness.

It is amazing how easily people enter into as restrictive a legal contract as marriage. They think more about buying a car, than about marrying someone. They bet their entire life, happiness and possibly fortune on a person they may only have known for a short time, and who may not even be quite mature yet.

In my mind, that is a good reason to keep divorce easily accessible.

Sometimes, a divorce is the result of one spouse being selfish, dishonest, unscrupulous or an opportunist (found somebody "better", or "cheated"). Sometimes, one spouse is abusive. In those cases, the other spouse might actually be better off not being married to that person anyway.

Marriage can have some financial disadvantages. It is well known that in some cases, married people pay more taxes than unwed people living together. But the difference is relatively small.

The real problem, especially in "community property" states, is that you double your liability. If one of the spouses goes bankrupt, or has a judgment against him or her, the other spouse is liable too.

In Texas, it used to be that the homestead was sheltered from bankruptcy. No matter what happened, creditors could not take your home (provided you either owned it or kept making regular mortgage payments). That also meant that you could not make home equity loans to finance new cars and other luxuries, which I thought was elementary financial responsibility anyway.

Today, that has changed. Home equity loans are permitted. And the federal government wants to abolish the homestead protection.

Overall, marriage is not a bad solution. I am married, and it works for me.

Marriage is a source of stability. Marriage and the resulting family unit are really a good foundation upon which to have and raise kids.

I would not want to give the impression that marriage is boring. I would rather say that in order to keep the passion in a marriage, one has to keep an open mind.