The Nature Of Marriage

There is only one truly monogamous animal in existence. There are a few species that have a pretense of monogamy but there is existence of philandering in all of them save one, the California Field Mouse. It would seem that as so called, "Higher order creatures" we humans would be able to improve upon this average, but sadly no. What does this say about marriage? It says that it goes against our basic nature.

The marriage rate in America is roughly 7.5% of the population every year. The divorce rate is around 3.6%. This figure isn't entirely reliable because it fails to take into account divorces where the couples reconcile but it is also impossible to obtain a reliable figure on the number of people who are cheating on their spouses at any given time. I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that half of all marriages either are not monogamous or end in divorce.

Freud argued that civilization is founded on the repression of instincts. It seems clear that our instincts lead us away from monogamy and celibacy too for that matter. It's just basic, animalistic instinct. The numbers of divorce and unwed parents are increasing. The swingers movement is also on the rise and websites like redclouds.com (With over a million members) are making marriage count for less and less all the time. Is the idea of marriage sanctimonious or simply idealistic? Was marriage created by the church to control the amount of fucking going on? Take a minute and think about how many married couples you know and how many divorced couples you know. Now think about the married couples; how many of them talk about how awesome marriage is? Not every marriage ends in divorce but there are plenty where they are sleeping with other people and plenty where they are miserable and should be sleeping with other people. If there were a way to honestly add all these numbers up I'm fairly certain that the number of happily married couples would be in the minority.

I'm not sure if I believe in marriage anymore. It just doesn't seem plausible. I'm having a hard time as it is not losing faith in relationships entirely, but marriage? The idea of meeting your soul mate and living the rest of your lives together? And don't get me wrong, I realize that it's a constantly evolving thing where all parties involved have to adapt to survive, but it's just so much easier to go out and fuck somebody else and that's what our society is moving towards. Marriage, and many other things, are supposed to be noble because you're oppressing your instincts and doing what is supposedly right and goodly but many people are just doing what they're programmed to lately. And by many I mean the majority. Traditional values have taken a backseat to hook-ups and one night stands. Pre-marital sex is at an all time high and so are teen unwed mothers. There are many women who have multiple children by multiple fathers through multiple marriages and not only are they not ashamed but the government supports them. How many times do you have to make the same fuck up before you learn the fucking lesson?

Where does a gentleman fit in? I don't know. If you are only looking forward to the night ahead and not the awkward morning after you seem to be in the majority nowadays. Where does that leave me? Do I need to adapt to survive or just hold out until that fabled soul mate comes along? One is definitely easier, but what will I lose in the trade off? I don't really believe in marriage anymore but I haven't lost my faith in relationships entirely yet. Should I stay the course and repress the urges or should I just give in and go home with the first piece of poon that presents itself? If I did, would it open Pandora's box to all of the other instincts I repress?

I'm different. I get that. But this is one of the hardest things to be different on.

So until next time, True Believers...
The bottle is empty
And the well is dry
August 2007

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