A Marriage By Any Other Name

In a recent post I mentioned that perhaps the best feature of getting married is having somebody who is fully and completely committed to being on your team. The following question was posed by Acksiom in the comments:

And the marriage-neutral response (i.e., MGTOW indifference to it, not MRA opposition) remains, as always, that they can do it right and manage it with the right person without getting married at all, so why should they bother?

The answer is pretty simple, but I thought it worthy of its own post.

To put it bluntly, if you “..can do it and manage it with the right person” then you are in a de facto marriage, whether you call it that or not.

I’m sure by now that all of my readers are well aware of the great debate about gay “marriage” in the United States. My position for some time has been that I no longer care. I do believe that it weakens the institution of marriage – I just also believe that the legal institution of marriage is so far gone that it just doesn’t matter anymore. I also agree with the traditionalist position on this one: this is another attempt by leftists to redefine words so that they no longer have any real meaning.

Words have power when they mean something. Extremists of all sorts know this – it’s why they go to such great lengths to control how words are used and what they mean. When words stop meaning things, they lose their power. As the word marriage has come to convey less and less of its original meaning it has lost more and more of its power. Easy and common divorce was the biggest blow to the word. If marriage no longer means “’til death do us part” then it’s lost a big chunk of its power as a word.

But by the same token, The Bard had it right all the way back in 1582:

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;

If you enter into a relationship where you’re living with a woman, she’s “on your team” no matter what, you love each other, you’ve got a sexual relationship, and your financial lives are intertwined, that relationship is a marriage whether you call it that or not.

A little known fact: out of the seven sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church, marriage is the only one that is not administered by a priest. When two baptized Christians are married, they are administering the sacrament on each other.

The husband and wife must validly execute the marriage contract. In the Roman Catholic tradition, it is the spouses who are understood to confer marriage on each other. The spouses, as ministers of grace, naturally confer upon each other the sacrament of matrimony, expressing their consent before the church. This does not eliminate the need for church involvement in the marriage; under normal circumstances, canon law requires the attendance of a priest or deacon and at least two witnesses for validity (see canons 1108–1116).

Neither is this kind of tradition only Catholic. For centuries English Common Law (which forms the basis for much law in all of the English speaking world, not just in England) recognized common law marriage for centuries. Many jurisdictions in the Anglosphere (including Washington, DC and ten states) still do recognize it. In short, if you act like you’re married, the law considers you married (in these jurisdictions).

Call it whatever you want. Hell, the term “marriage” is pretty battered and bruised as it is. It’ll probably appreciate getting ignored for a bit instead. But a rose by any other name is still a rose.

Off Sides

As a counterpoint to yesterday’s post, if you and your spouse are not on the same side then your marriage is doomed to failure. It’s a question of when, not if. If you’re not absolutely sure that your partner is truly willing to commit to being on your side, don’t get married. That is all.

Anniversary

My fourth wedding anniversary is this week. It approaches shortly in the wake of a… well, let’s just say a rather large and unexpected slap in the face from my parents, of all people. It’s a bit of a story, and the details would just be a bit too identifying if certain people stumbled across it. Besides that, there’s not much of a way to talk about it without just sounding whiny. Last but not least, it’s more than a little embarrassing that my parents would behave that way. But it’s big enough that Hermione, Primus and I will be pulling out of an upcoming family event in response.

What does this have to do with my anniversary? Well, it puts me in mind of another fictional quote:

I am not altogether on anybody’s side, because nobody is altogether on my side.

–Treebeard, from The Two Towers by J. R. R. Tolkien.

A simple quote, but anybody who has swallowed the Red Pill is well familiar with it. It’s applied to me my whole life. Politics? Democrat or Republican, none of them is on my side. Cliques in school? None of them is on my side. Employers? None of them has been on my side (except perhaps my current job – I’m extremely lucky in that). Even “best friends” and surrogate father figures (another story for another day), not altogether on my side. And right now, as so many other times in my life, even family – not altogether on my side.

When I was dating Hermione, long before we got married, my uncle asked me a deceptively simple question: “Why her?” What is it about her that makes her so special? At the time I didn’t have a good answer for him. The best I could vocalize was something along the lines of, “Just because.” But over the years I’ve come to understand exactly what it is. Once upon a time I was lucky enough to find one person who is altogether on my side, or at least who was willing to be. All she asked in return was that I be willing to be altogether on her side. So I did the only sensible thing: I married her.

There’s a strong anti-marriage sentiment in the manosphere. I get it, I really do. The rules of the institution have been twisted, and they’re pretty stacked against us men right now. It should make men think pretty hard before they go through with it. But for those who question so much why they should risk it, there’s one simple answer – the same answer for both men and women. If you do it right, and you manage it with the right person, you really can find somebody who is altogether on your side.

My marriage, like all marriages, isn’t perfect. If it were, this blog wouldn’t exist. But there’s one thing, the most important thing, that we managed to get right from the beginning: we’re on the same side. And that alone is worth everything else, even if I need to be reminded of it sometimes.

Thanks, dear, and happy anniversary.