Marriage.

"Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togeder tooday. Mawage, that bwessed awangement, that dweam wifin a dweam... And wuv, twue wuv, will fowow you foweva... So tweasure your wuv." I never fully appreciated The Princess Bride as much as... well, everybody, but i have to say that the "Mawage" scene is pretty good. But that's off topic.

I was thinking about marriage the other day as I sat, confounded and deeply sorrowful about Nick and Jessica's recent split. As I sat, I thought to myself, "Why do they bother to get married anymore anyway?" And by "they" I'm referring to non-Christians who don't believe in the sanctity and holiness of marriage. Think about it (think think about it).

Today at the annual company Christmas party, I had the chance to catch up with an old co-worker whom I haven't seen in quite a while. She just got married in September and I hadn't seen her since June-ish. Of course, the first question out of my mouth was, "So how's married life??" I asked this in a girly gossip tone to where it could easily be interpreted as "Seriously, tell me all about it, I'm so excited for you!!"

Her answer? "Umm... well it's not really different than before. We've been together for six years so there's nothing really different at all, it's exactly the same as it was before." "So there's nothing different, at all?" I prodded. That's when she spilled the beans: "Well, I guess we have a joint savings account now."

Lame. Or gaids, if you're privy enough to know what that means. So, I started wondering to myself, what's the point of them getting married if it didn't change a thing? Obviously they weren't saving themselves for marriage; they moved in together three years ago. And from knowing her, I know that she doesn't have any religious beliefs, therfore she wasn't aiming for the sacred union between two souls thing. So why'd they bother to get married? A cultural norm? I don't know.

And divorce. It's not even a bad word anymore, it's just kindof a normal thing that happens whenever a married couple has "irreconcilable differences." Today's secular society takes divorce very lightly, despite the fact that it's quite a hassle to go through. Lawyers, assets, custody, visitation rights, more lawyers = expensive, yuck. You'd think they'd figure out that they could avoid the hassle of divorce if they just skipped the marriage part. Living together is essentially the same as being married if you take out the spiritual elements. So why do they bother to get married?

You might say, "For the kids." Well, I would say that it's pretty hard for a kid to go through a divorce. Spare them. "Tax benefits." Hey I know, you can set the money aside that you save on taxes, and you can put that toward the divorce fund.

Or, you could say... "I'm gay, and I want the same rights as straight people." Why the heck would you want to be married to your same-sex significant other? Marriage is what straight people do, and homosexuals are all about pushing the envelope and showing how it's okay to be different. So why do they want to be the same as straight people all of a sudden? I don't know. If they had any kind of a consistent thinking mechanism, they would create something new and radical, like Gayrriage... they can even use that name if they want to, I don't mind. Or maybe they could come up with a better name.

So I'm back to my original question: Why do they bother to get married anymore anyway? And I still don't know the answer. So yeah.