Why I regret getting married
Marriage doesn’t add anything to a relationship and I wish I hadn’t decided to get married
While the title of this post might appear to be clickbait, it really isn’t. I actually regret getting married. That isn’t a reflection on my wife but rather the institution of marriage, the social and cultural conditioning it’s responsible for and the reinforcing of gender and societal expectations. Needless to say, I’m not a fan of marriage.
I’ve always been open with my views on marriage so this won’t come as a surprise to my wife or those who know me. I’ve even co-written, with my wife, about why I don’t believe in the sanctity of marriage and she’s voiced her rationale for why she does. I’ve just always felt it to be a largely administrative and social construct that isn’t necessary if you’re already in union with another person. My decision to get married was because I was already in a committed relationship and ‘married’, albeit not in the legal sense.
By that token, getting married made absolutely no difference to me (hence my relaxed stance on something that would, on the contrary, make a difference to my wife).
Some years later, I feel differently and wish I had stood by my principles. I see a wedding as an expensive pantomime and a party under the guise of misleading us that marriage is a necessity for a relationship. Indeed, if weddings were generally more modest, it might be somewhat more convincing. So why did I allow myself to be an actor in a performance I wasn’t down with? Why did I not allow myself to be a champion of the unmarried in a committed relationship that eschewed marriage?
But more importantly, I’ve seen the notion of marriage permeate my relationship in ways that I’m not happy with. Furthermore, it’s arguably allowed my relationship to be overcast by shadows that may not have appeared had we remained unmarried.
My wife and I lived together before getting married, which was much more of a commitment than marriage itself. And now we have a child. Both are much more significant symbols of commitment than marriage. Yet for my wife, getting married remained important.
For context, my wife is of Indian descent. Within her culture, marriage is a huge…
