the other day, i found myself saying to a friend, ” i wish i wasn’t married.”

now, let me quickly point out that not wanting to be married is a) not the same as wanting to be single and b) not the same as wanting a divorce. i’m happy in my relationship with j, and have no intention of changing things.

it’s just that more and more lately, marriage feels like a security blanket that i no longer need.

i liked marriage. i liked it so much, i did it twice. i got married with my whole heart and soul in it – i stood in front of family and friends and a minister and took vows eagerly, joyously. they were carefully considered vows, and i meant every word of them. it felt incredibly right.

and there are a lot of good, solid reasons for marriage – there are a lot of really good reasons for committing to someone, and binding yourself legally (and for many, religiously). i believe it’s a good, valid thing for families and couples that want it, and it’s an institution that should be freely available to all consenting adults.

but it is, just that: an institution.

as an institution, it is something which is not always taken up freely. as an institution, it’s not available to everyone. as an institution, it’s only for couples. as an institution, it shapes our ideas of family and our ideas of what is valid. as an institution, it has become interwoven with religion.

as an institution, it has started to chafe a bit.

and more and more, it feels like gratuitous validation of something that i don’t need validated. there’s a woman i know from my last job, who knew me when i first met jonno and we got married. last year, we met up for drinks and she said to me, “if i didn’t know better, i would never guess that you were married.”

that stuck with me for a while – in fact, it made me smile. i kind of like people not knowing. after all, what business is it of anyone else’s if i’m married or not? i don’t wear a ring, i rarely say “my husband”, i didn’t change my surname, i go by ‘ms.’ as a title. why should it matter to anyone but me what my marital status is?

which, if i don’t believe it should matter to anyone else, logically brings me to the next question: why does it matter to me?

and it turns out that the answer these days is: perhaps it doesn’t. and as i have slowly come to that realisation, i kinda wish that it never mattered to begin with.

i’m not in any way denigrating marriage. but i no longer feel the need for the legal scaffolding around my own relationship. in fact, as i get older, i really like the idea of long-term ‘at will’ relationships.

because really? all relationships are ‘at will’. documents and rings guarantee nothing in this world. jonno and i are together only as long as we both want to be. the strength of our relationship is a private, personal thing which has no bearing on witnessed vows or state-sanctioned papers.

i’ve often said that a marriage has nothing to do with a wedding, and i’ve always believed that to be true. but it’s only just now that that’s beginning to feel real for my own life, and i’m left wondering why i ever needed the wedding in the first place.

like training wheels on a bike that i’ve finally learned to ride steadily, solidly, those little marriage wheels are just vestiges of a stage in my life when i needed to believe that they would help keep me upright if i wobbled. which isn’t true, of course – nothing can prevent you from falling over.

but i have the rings and the papers, i took the vows. if i were to do it all over again, i might choose not to do it at all. but i am married, and happy, and far too lazy to get divorced just for the principle of it. so i guess we’re just stuck, being happily married, for only as long as we both want to be.

there are worse things

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