It’s been a long time since I posted. Not because I don’t have something interesting to share, but because the free hosting service I use, PhpNet.us, has been “updating its structure due to many hosting requests”.
A while ago, in a post by a colleague from the university, the topic of abortion came up. For those who read it, I should clarify that in my second comment I went off topic, thinking the conversation had taken a direction it hadn’t. Anyway, in one of the comments he made, he said something very true: “If someone declares themselves anti-abortion they’re labeled as religious, and if they wear a cassock, it’s more than enough to disqualify everything they say, no matter how reasonable what they convey is.”
In this post I want to share with you some words from journalist Dennis Prager, in which he mentions five non-religious arguments in favor of marriage instead of “living together”. I hope these words will be useful for those who think this act is just a “piece of paper”. Enjoy!
Five non-religious arguments in favor of marriage instead of “living together”
I have always believed there is no possible comparison between living together and marriage. There are enormous differences between being a husband or wife and being “a partner”, “a friend”, or “a significant other”; enormous differences between a legal commitment and a voluntary association; between standing before society and publicly announcing your commitment and simply living alongside another.
Attending the weddings of two of my three children this past summer, I saw the differences more clearly.
First difference: from the moment you marry, you see the relationship more seriously
It doesn’t matter what you thought when you were cohabiting; the moment you marry, your relationship with the other changes. Now you have made a commitment to the other as husband or wife in front of almost all the important people in your life. Now you see each other in a different, more serious light.
Second difference: words do matter
Words affect us deeply. Living with your “boyfriend” is not the same as with your “husband”. And living with your “girlfriend” or whatever other title you give her is not the same as making a home with your “wife”. When you introduce that person as your husband or wife, you’re making a more important statement about that person’s role in your life than with any other title.
Third difference: legality does matter
Being legally bound and responsible for another person is something that matters. It’s an announcement to him/her and to yourself that you take this relationship with the utmost seriousness. No words of affection, promises of commitment, etc… no matter how sincere they are, can equal the seriousness of a legal commitment.
Fourth difference: you will never gather so many people you care about
To see how important marriage is to the vast majority of people you care about, think about this: there is no event, no occasion, no moment in your life when so many people you care about will gather in one place as at your wedding.
Not the birth of any of your children, not a major birthday, not the confirmation or bar mitzvah of your children… There is only one other moment when most of the people you appreciate and who appreciate you will gather in one place: it’s at your funeral. But unless you die young, by then almost all the people you love who are older than you will have already died.
So your wedding is the greatest concentration of loved ones in your life. And that’s for a reason: it’s the greatest moment of your life. Such a moment will never happen if you don’t have a wedding.
Fifth difference: only marriage turns strangers into family
Only through marriage will your man or woman’s family become your family. The two weddings transformed the woman who was in my son’s life into my daughter-in-law, and transformed the man in my daughter’s life into my son-in-law. And instantly the weddings made me a father-in-law, when before I was just “his/her boyfriend/girlfriend’s father”. It was the idea that impacted me the most. Now I was a relative of my children’s partners. Their relatives and parents became family. Nothing comparable happens when two people cohabit without marrying.
Just “a piece of paper”?
Many women call my radio program saying that the man in their life sees no reason to get married. “It’s just a piece of paper”, these men (and now some women) say.
There are two answers to this argument.
One is that, in fact, if “it’s just a piece of paper”, what exactly is he afraid of? What does he fear about a piece of paper? Either he’s lying to himself and his partner, or he’s lying only to his partner because he knows it’s not “just a piece of paper”.
The other answer is what we’ve given above: getting married means that I am now your wife, not your co-habitant; I am now your husband, not your partner. It means we’re going to have a wedding where most of the living people who mean a lot to us will be. We will commit. It means we’ve decided to bring all these people we appreciate into our lives. It means we have legal obligations to each other. It means my family becomes yours, and yours will be mine.
Thank God my children, 30 and 23 years old, decided to get married. Their partners are now my daughter-in-law and my son-in-law. They are mine to love, not just people who love my children.
When you realize that all this is achieved by marrying and not achieved by living together without marrying, you wonder why anyone would voluntarily choose not to marry the person they want to live with forever.
Unless, of course, one of the two isn’t really making plans for forever.