Why marriage is a useless social construct

Marriage is dumb.

The institution requires you to spend the majority, or all of your life, with the same person. And what’s the solution if you decide you hate them? Well, now you’re out thousands of dollars because you, ‘thought you found someone you liked enough to spend the rest of your life with’. Gross. 

Marriage is something society has conditioned us into thinking is a necessary part of life. Society tells us that at some point in our lives we’re supposed to meet someone, fall madly in love with them, and then add stress and debt to our lives so we can be legally bonded to this person for the rest of our natural-born lives. Or in some cases, divorce them within the first ten years. When it’s put that way it sounds crazy right? However, that’s exactly what about half the population’s dreams of marriage amount to. 

Millions of years ago someone thought legal bondage would be a good idea, and ever since, both families and society have put so much unnecessary pressure on us to get married. The idea of marriage may have made sense when the average lifespan was a quarter of what it is now, but today a lot of marriages don’t last. According to the American Psychological Association, between 40 and 50 percent of couples in the United States will get divorced, which means only about 50 or 60 percent of couples who get married at any time in their lives will stay married. 

However, I am aware that some people stay married until death actually does them apart. And some of these couples are genuinely happy through all those years despite what life throws at them, but this situation is the exception, not the rule.

The reality is that many unhappy couples stay together to reap the benefits of what appears to be a perfect marriage, such as the well-being of shared children, social security or money. Marriage is rarely this beautiful, pure thing you do because you want to spend the rest of your life with someone that you love, it’s what society has told you to do. So maybe instead of marrying the person you think you love and want to spend forever with, you should just wait it out because chances are you’ll hate them if you give it a little time.