Q&A: Is Marriage Necessary?
Hello Ashwita. Is marriage truly necessary. Concepts like – better half, one’s partner completing oneself and the Hindu concept of Marriage being one of the samskaras. Are they to be followed or is it OK and perhaps good in a certain way to not marry.
I have also heard a spiritual teacher say something like – some people come to this world to fulfill a bigger purpose and they aren’t meant to have a family.
Please share what according to you is the right perspective on this.
Things like ‘better half’, ‘completing oneself’ etc come from a space of deep unfulfillment and rarely bring sustainable joy. Ultimately, it is simple, vinasha kaale vipreet buddhi – when your time is bad, you’ll take all the wrong decisions, shun people who can guide you in the right direction and support you, and turn to those who will mislead you.
You ask ‘is marriage necessary’, and I ask ‘for what’?
As an antidote for loneliness, marriage is useful for about 2 years if you find the right partner, after which you will find yourself back at where you started. Ultimately you are lonely because you have abandoned yourself. The presence and the distraction of a partner can mask this for a couple of years. If you have a child after 2 years, you can mask it for longer, but you are only masking. Of course, if you marry the wrong partner you will simply be miserable and lonely for many years, so the point is defeated.
Many people think that life will become easier after marriage as there will be someone to share responsibilities. More often than not this is rarely the case. If anything, marriage doubles your responsibilities. If you want a man so that you’ll have someone who will.. I don’t know, pay the bills, drive you around, or if you want a woman who will maybe cook for you, do your laundry, take care of your parents – please, just learn to do all this yourself. Be the man/ woman you want to marry first, because if you don’t, any situation where your partner is incapable of fulfilling these needs will tear your marriage apart.
If you want a partner to raise children with, it may not be a bad idea, provided you find someone who will last with you peacefully until they’re old enough. Quite a hard task these days, but it may be worth trying. A child being raised in a toxic household is probably not a good idea, and single parents might just do a better job, so again it is debatable from this perspective.
If you want to ensure you will not end up alone in your old age, then it is pointless because chances are high your spouse will die 10-20 years before you do, your children will likely be abroad or far away and meet you once a year. If your spouse is alive, you will probably not be able to stand each other after a few decades of rubbing each other the wrong way – look at any couple that’s been together for 3+ decades and you’ll know what I mean. Very rare to find people who are genuinely happy spending time with each other and capable of talking to each other deeply after spending decades of growing apart and ignoring each other while they focus on kids and on making money. So in such a case it is better to simply marry when you start getting older so you find someone you are actually compatible with at 50 and someone who looks fit enough to last another 3 decades with you.
To increase the population and make sure human race is not wiped out from the face of the earth, marriage is a useful tool, yes – although this is a purpose that is long gone, what with 7.5 billion of us threatening to wipe out all other species instead.
To keep an order in the society, maybe marriage is a fairly useful tool… probably. As a therapist especially in India I have very little regard for marriage as I have seen marriage more as a tool which pushes people to have extra-marital affairs. People stay in marriage for the sake of the society and go have relationships with whoever they want, too afraid to be honest and open (even with themselves) about what they really want. This is slowly changing but anyone who is open and supportive enough to have friends who share their personal stories knows how rampant this still is.
Is marriage truly necessary if we want spiritual growth? No. For spiritual growth, nothing is truly necessary except brutal honesty with oneself and utmost sincerity and dedication towards the path. Everything else that you need to develop, the universe will bring into your life and you will surrender because you will know that that is right at that point in time, no matter what others, the society or the sacred books tell you. (Note that this is a dangerous thing if one is not brutally honest and completely sincere with oneself because then one can follow one’s wild fantasies in the name of ‘doing what feels right’ – this is what many of Osho’s disciples did and went completely haywire, and I still see a lot of people on the spiritual pathway doing this)
So – am I saying marriage is completely unnecessary? Well, yes and no. Is it necessary? I don’t believe it is, no. Unless maybe you’re going to need the paperwork or moving to Dubai where you will get arrested if you live without marriage, or unless you are having children and your country needs the parents to be married. If you do find a person you love deeply, who loves you back equally deeply and you both want to commit to each other, then marriage can be a truly beautiful, divine thing. But as with most divine things in the world, this is usually just defiled and used as a means to a whole lot of other ends.
Bottom-line? If you meet someone with whom giving seems natural and effortless, and it makes you want to spend the rest of your life making that other person happy, do it. Otherwise, take a good hard look at what you are really seeking and whether marriage really is going to fulfill that need.
