A New Thought on "Why We Marry"

The other day, someone asked me this question: "Why do people get married?"

Several pretentious "Scientific" answers immediately flash through my mind,

"For reproduction, biological reasons." 

"For the stability of society's structures."

"Monogamy is a manmade concept."

But none of them is my answer.

Looking around, I was sitting by the beachside waterfront, and there were green fields and oak trees aside. I thought for a long time, and finally it came to me.

"I think......people are like seeds from a tree, once we mature, we are released and detached from our family-- seeking a new place to land. Some choose to land right next to where their family is, some go afar.

Marriage is like the seed finding the soil it likes to grow a root in. It's one's decision to say, 'Yes, this is where I belong.' Whether to belong to a family, a person, a culture, or a financial situation. We choose to be a part of it through marriage.

Similarly, people divorce when they no longer feel like they belong-- to a family, a person, a culture, or a financial situation.

Now the challenge is, people may not easily change who they are, but inevitably, we all evolve through time. Through the ups and downs in life, we become a better or worse version of ourselves. Therefore, once we feel like we belong, it does not mean we will always feel so.

So, like many wise men proposed, Alan Watts being one of the advocates, it'd be foolish to build a marriage, something considered permanent, on something so ever-changing.

Many others proposed to lower one's expectations.

The argument of those who used to live in the village and married their neighbor likes to reminds us that: what we used to expect of a whole village, now we want it from one person. Hence, people should learn to manage a more reasonable expectation from their partner, and enhance the virtue of being grateful. Voila! That's the solution to a happy marriage.

But that only speaks of one side of the story.

Since what we used to be capable of becoming: the seed that almost always falls next to its tree (community), and what we are capable of nowadays: to end up on the other end of the world, are also drastically different.

People only know or expect what they can comprehend-- when the village is your whole world, that's all you can desire. The simple lifestyle wasn't because they were more virtuous, but because there were fewer possibilities. In the modern world, where the possibilities are wide, so are the expectations.

Now, how much we know about ourselves: of what we want and what works for us, will be the key indicator to whether these "wide expectations" become a distraction or an opportunity (to become what we never could have before). "

Perhaps marriage can come in different forms for different people.