[Ash]

I'm not surprised at both the poll and the majority sentiment here.
But I suppose people responding to the thread would chiefly be those who'd agree with the poll results.
Cohabitation/companionship is one basic human desire, the way I see it though is if one willingly chooses to meet this 'need' with multiple partners, there would eventually be a void in their lives that they just don't fill. That's without poverty, children and raising them complicating the issue.

Marriage isn't irrelevant to the person who believes it's good, right and the way to a harmonious relationship; and it's not limited to those granted a piece of paper after an expensive ceremony. A high divorce rate does not tell me that marriage is outdated/useless/obsolete, it simply tells me we are becoming less tolerant and committed to making relationships work. Nothing complex or deep about the concept here, just obvious observations...

[MetteHHH]

Hmm. I was very anti-marriage until I got married.

As a teenager I thought most of the marriages in my surroundings made very little sense, and I did not see any reason to get married myself. The ceremony means nothing to me, and I don't think a relationship gains any sort of validity by purchasing an expensive party and a piece of paper.

But when I had been with my partner for seven years and I was expecting his baby, and he proposed to me - I just couldn't think of a good reason to say no either. It made legal issues related to parenthood easier, and it WAS a beautiful ceremony. The vicar was an old friend of our family, and he said at the altar that we were really just making public what we had already had between us for seven years.

I still don't see any general reason to get married. It did not alter my attitude to my partner. Well, there is a semiotic reason I suppose, if you are English speaking: "Boyfriend / girlfriend" sounds sort of ridiculous after some years, and "partner" sounds a bit same-gendered. In Danish we say "kæreste" meaning "beloved", and I still call my partner that, rather than "husband".

What I don't get at all is people getting married several times. Monogamy is not for everyone, and I am fine with that, as long as they are honest about it - people are different after all. But if you want to keep shopping around for relationships, or want the liberty to give in to biological impulse, then marriage is totally out of place in my view. In our culture there is nobody forcing you into it, after all.

[GeneV]

In answer to the post from Newart, I think the poll is talking about legal marriage. Outside of the legal terms, marriage may mean different things to you depending upon your culture and religion. (In many cultures, it may mean a contract made for you by your parents) However, from a legal point of view, marriage enters you into an agreement which includes a lot of important terms about living together and separating which people don't think about. It is not obsolete.

For example, it sounds like it is easier to walk away from a long term relationship when one isn't married, but if the couple has been together for any length of time, lived together, and purchased property together, or, most importantly, had children together, the opposite is true. If you sat down and wrote your own contract, you might be able do better than marriage, but very few people will do so. Disputes with unmarried couples are getting more frequent and nastier.

[Ash]

The ceremony means nothing to me, and I don't think a relationship gains any sort of validity by purchasing an expensive party and a piece of paper. But when I had been with my partner for seven years and I was expecting his baby, and he proposed to me - I just couldn't think of a good reason to say no either. It made legal issues related to parenthood easier, and it WAS a beautiful ceremony. The vicar was an old friend of our family, and he said at the altar that we were really just making public what we had already had between us for seven years.

I still don't see any general reason to get married. It did not alter my attitude to my partner. Well, there is a semiotic reason I suppose, if you are English speaking: "Boyfriend / girlfriend" sounds sort of ridiculous after some years, and "partner" sounds a bit same-gendered. In Danish we say "kæreste" meaning "beloved", and I still call my partner that, rather than "husband".

This makes sense, though there is a general reason for the wedding ceremony, even though it may not change things between already cohabiting couples - it's not just a day for the bride to dress up and feel proud and pretty or make family law issues more black & white, it has significant social relevance, even if just for the parents of the couple. It says to the community that this is a couple that is honoured to present themselves as one that is committed for life and happy to announce this to the people that mean something to them. Personally speaking, the wedding ceremony is far less contrived than many other things we place value on in life...

What I don't get at all is people getting married several times. Monogamy is not for everyone, and I am fine with that, as long as they are honest about it - people are different after all. But if you want to keep shopping around for relationships, or want the liberty to give in to biological impulse, then marriage is totally out of place in my view. In our culture there is nobody forcing you into it, after all.

Good point - this works on the premise that marriage is a lifetime covenant. However, it's been diluted through modern liberalism and culture shifts, devaluing the real meaning of marriage. As a personal opinion again, an anti-monogamist is likely to have more selfish motives in seeking temporary intimate relationships, notwithstanding this also occurs with those who marry multiple times.

Monogamy may not be for everyone, and this infers that marriage is not for everyone, but the innate desire for companionship is rarely satisfied if it's presumed as only a temporary relationship.

[jeffkrol]

Good point - this works on the premise that marriage is a lifetime covenant. However, it's been diluted through modern liberalism and culture shifts

didn't realize Henry VIII was a liberal.........

His desire to provide England with a male heir—which stemmed partly from personal vanity and partly because he believed a daughter would be unable to consolidate the Tudor Dynasty and the fragile peace that existed following the Wars of the Roses—led to the two things that Henry is remembered for today: his wives, and the English Reformation that made England a Protestant nation.

One wife for life is a artificial construct based more on economics and social status...
monogamys one thing.......

Monogamy refers to a form of marriage in which an individual has only one spouse at any one time. However, monogamy may also refer to the more general state of having only one mate at any one time and as such may be applied to the social behavior of all animals.[1] In current usage monogamy often refers to having one sexual partner irrespective of marriage or reproduction

Monogamy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Serial monogamy has always been closely linked to divorce practices. Whenever procedures for obtaining divorce have been simple and easy, serial monogamy has been found.[25] As divorce has continued to become more accessible, more individuals have availed themselves of it, and many go on to remarry.[26] It has been suggested, however, that high mortality rates in centuries past accomplished much the same result as divorce, enabling remarriage (of one spouse) and thus serial monogamy.

Reflecting on the topic based on a Judeo-Christian viewpoint skews the discussion.
As to marriage......

"In almost all societies, access to women is institutionalized in some way so as to moderate the intensity of this competition."[17]

For most of European history, marriage was more or less a business agreement between two families who arranged the marriages of their children. Romantic love, and even simple affection, were not considered essential.[19][dubious – discuss] Historically, the perceived necessity of marriage has been stressed.[2]

In England, under the Anglican Church, marriage by consent and cohabitation was valid until the passage of Lord Hardwicke's Act in 1753. This act instituted certain requirements for marriage, including the performance of a religious ceremony observed by witnesses.[31]

As part of the Counter-Reformation, in 1563 the Council of Trent decreed that a Roman Catholic marriage would be recognized only if the marriage ceremony was officiated by a priest with two witnesses. The Council also authorized a Catechism, issued in 1566, which defined marriage as, "The conjugal union of man and woman, contracted between two qualified persons, which obliges them to live together throughout life."[32]

In the early modern period, John Calvin and his Protestant colleagues reformulated Christian marriage by enacting the Marriage Ordinance of Geneva, which imposed "The dual requirements of state registration and church consecration to constitute marriage"[32] for recognition.

In England and Wales, Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act 1753 required a formal ceremony of marriage, thereby curtailing the practice of Fleet Marriage.[33] These were clandestine or irregular marriages performed at Fleet Prison, and at hundreds of other places. From the 1690s until the Marriage Act of 1753 as many as 300,000 clandestine marriages were performed at Fleet Prison alone.[34] The Act required a marriage ceremony to be officiated by an Anglican priest in the Anglican Church with two witnesses and registration. The Act did not apply to Jewish marriages or those of Quakers, whose marriages continued to be governed by their own customs.

In England and Wales, since 1837, civil marriages have been recognized as a legal alternative to church marriages under the Marriage Act of 1836. In Germany, civil marriages were recognized in 1875. This law permitted a declaration of the marriage before an official clerk of the civil administration, when both spouses affirm their will to marry, to constitute a legally recognized valid and effective marriage, and allowed an optional private clerical marriage ceremony.

In contemporary English common law, a marriage is a voluntary contract by a man and a woman, in which by agreement they choose to become husband and wife.[35] Edvard Westermarck proposed that "the institution of marriage has probably developed out of a primeval habit".[36]

Marriage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Old book:

"On the other hand, modern civilization has proved destructive to the old rituals and has had practically nothing new to add instead.
This is a natural consequence of the fact that the large bulk of marriage rites have originated in the magical ideas which have vanished along with the progress in intellectual culture".

p 595 1922
http://www.archive.org/stream/historyofhumanma02westuoft#page/594/mode/2up
http://www.archive.org/details/historyofhumanma02westuoft

[Ash]

didn't realize Henry VIII was a liberal.........

He was more than that - he was a rebel, a pretty bold one in his time too...

One wife for life is a artificial construct based more on economics and social status...

Everything we do is an artificial social construct if you want to look at it that way.

If finances determined marriage's relevance, it would have been abandoned by now (in the western world at least).

If social status played a part in a 'one husband for one wife for life' concept today, Hollywood marriages would be the pinnacle of marital stability! If only...

As for the issues with serial monogamy, better ask the ladies whether in today's age they'd tolerate being in a polygamous relationship.

[mikemike]

As for the issues with serial monogamy, better ask the ladies whether in today's age they'd tolerate being in a polygamous relationship.

Hide anything breakable or throwable and ask your best friend to put some sheets on the couch before you discuss this with your wife

[Ash]

Hide anything breakable or throwable and ask your best friend to put some sheets on the couch before you discuss this with your wife

Mike, my wife comes from a country where polygamy is accepted, despite being a matriarchal society! Her grandmother is one of three wives of her grandfather. Luckily, the grandfather was a teacher and saw to it that all the children came out with a decent education - each of them now in professional roles and marrying just the one wife.

So my wife may not react the same way other women in the western world would. I'll let you know when I do discuss it with her

[GeneV]

BTW, one of the things that is most interesting about this forum is that we have participants from so many different continents with many different cultural backgrounds. I wish more Americans had more extended conversations with persons outside our borders--even other former colonies of the same Europeans.

Which brings up another question. This poll was taken in the U.S. Is there something about marriage in the U.S. that would be seen as more or less obsolete than elsewhere?

[Ash]

Hide anything breakable or throwable and ask your best friend to put some sheets on the couch before you discuss this with your wife

She didn't even flinch, Mike, but between you and I, she'd learn to hate for the first time if it became a reality in her case... and she said to pass on that we already have couch covers - young children make that a necessity.

Gene, that's one of the main reasons I too immerse myself in these P&R discussions - so much diversity and ways of life to share. But as far as marriage is concerned, the concept itself seems to be an accepted one the world over - I wonder whether there are any cultures that don't celebrate a wedding ceremony in one form or another, and most of these being between one man and one woman.

And as for those societies that accept polygamy, it's well appreciated that a man's troubles are multiplied the moment he ventures into it. In the communities I know, the men only get into a polygamous relationship to gloat about his social status, which is becoming less and less a widely respected one. It's much easier for them to just have concubines - and consequently STIs, especially HIV/AIDS, start becoming holoendemic. It makes a lot of sense to be faithful to one person, not just because of a religious conviction.

[MetteHHH]

But as far as marriage is concerned, the concept itself seems to be an accepted one the world over - I wonder whether there are any cultures that don't celebrate a wedding ceremony in one form or another, and most of these being between one man and one woman.

Speaking as a biologist, it is common for species with heavy investment in parental care to have lasting pair bonds and at least seemingly monogamous pairing.

We should not look to biology for moral guidance, but it is always useful to know the source of our basic inclinations and preferences.

[jeffkrol]

Speaking as a biologist, it is common for species with heavy investment in parental care to have lasting pair bonds and at least seemingly monogamous pairing.

We should not look to biology for moral guidance, but it is always useful to know the source of our basic inclinations and preferences.

Parental care or self preservation??? At least for us.
found this interesting.......

Consider that in 1967, two-thirds of college women said they'd consider marrying a man they didn't love if he met other criteria, such as offering respectability and financial security.

Is marriage becoming obsolete? - CNN.com

Today, however, there are plenty of other ways to grow up, seek financial independence, and meet one's needs for companionship and sex. So what might have seemed a "good enough" reason to enter marriage in the past no longer seems sufficient to many people.

Marriage has become another step, perhaps even the final rather than the first step, in the transition to adulthood -- something many people will not even consider until they are very sure they are capable of taking their relationship to a higher plane.

Couples increasingly want to be certain, before they marry, that they can pay their bills, that neither party is burdened by debt, that each has a secure job or a set of skills attesting to their employability. Many are also conscious that as rigid gender roles erode, marriage demands more negotiation and relationship skills than in the past.

They often want firsthand experience with how their partner will behave in an intimate relationship, which is why the majority of new marriages come after a period of cohabitation, according to census figures.

These higher expectations are good news for many marriages. People who can meet the high bar that most Americans now feel is appropriate for the transition to marriage -- people who delay marriage to get an education, who have accumulated a nest egg or established themselves in a secure line of work -- typically have higher quality marriages than other Americans, research shows, and their divorce rates have been falling for the past 25 years.

But these higher expectations pose difficulties for individuals with fewer interpersonal and material resources. Over the past 30 years, job opportunities and real wages have declined substantially for poorly educated men, making them less attractive marriage partners for women. When such men do find stable employment, they often tend to be more interested in a woman with good earnings prospects than someone they have to rescue from poverty.

Today, several studies have shown, economic instability is now more closely associated with marital distress than it used to be.

If a low-income woman finds a stable, employed partner, she will likely be better off by marrying. But if the man she marries loses his job or is less committed and responsible than she had hoped, she may end up worse off than before -- having to support a man who can't or won't pull his own weight.

So the widening economic gap between haves and have-nots that America has experienced in recent decades is increasingly reflected in a widening marriage gap as well. Today two-thirds of people with a college degree are married, compared with less than half of those with a high school degree or less.

[Ash]

Parental care or self preservation??? At least for us.
found this interesting.......


Is marriage becoming obsolete? - CNN.com

The risk all of this philosophical overthinking of a simple concept such as marriage has is that we can reduce it to a mere utilitarian phenomenon when it is primarily designed to establish and develop a lifetime relationship of companionship and mutual complement: where children are the culmination of this lifetime relationship. It's a deep friendship, a way of bringing common desires and aspirations together into a safe and always welcoming environment, not just a business deal or partnership.

Pragmatics are fine, but marriage is not limited by our notions of economic stability - it's far more than ensuring such stability in life. Then again, if that's all we consider it to be, then we forge our opinion on marriage based on this. So I personally disagree with much of what this CNN article has to say, as an example of what marriage becomes - a goal of financial security..

Perpetuation of our own 'gene pools' and self preservation are down towards the bottom of marriage's own Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Self-actualisation would be akin to the sense of complete assurance of unconditional love, forgiveness and willing selfless servitude for the other life partner based on mutual trust and care. This is not a romanticised notion, it's a realistic goal for married couples that would transform the way so many people view marriage.

[Parallax]

Ash, that is unequivocally the best explanation of what marriage is, or should be, that I have ever seen. Well said is an understatement, but; well said!

[rparmar]

Anyone who has lived for even a portion of a lifetime with eyes open would know that there are no magic recipes for success, no wonderful plans for immortal happiness and no prescriptions for what relationships make humans happy. All should be permitted and tolerated equally without any interference or encouragement from the State.

Anyone who believes otherwise is simply selfish, arrogant or pompous.