I Never Will Marry

I have for some time now been obsessed with the institution of marriage. Anyone who has heard my concept album The Color Suite and read the accompanying chapbook of poems and stories likely came away with with their head spinning from all the images of golden rings lost and found, husbands and wives in delicate dances, marital bliss eclipsed by marital darkness. I have found multivalent uses for the marriage metaphor in my quest to heal the masculine and feminine archetypes within myself, and to deepen my relationship with God. Nonetheless, I have also been quite preoccuppied with literal, everyday marriages: how they work, how they fail, and whether or not I might ever have the opportunity to make a go at one. Regardless of my rapidly shifting expectations and conceptions about marraige, I never doubted that the institution of marriage would play a central role in my life.

Until about a month ago. I can't remember when or why exactly the thought came over me, but suddenly I started saying to myself: "Maybe I don't want to get married after all." In my personal psycho-symbolic world, this is something akin to blasphemy. Which is perhaps why it was such a delicious thought to have.

And this isn't like my past phases of "giving up" on my romantic career in a fit of melancholy—of deciding to become a nun so that at least I don't come across as some kind of lonely failure at the age of 50. No, this time I really think I might rather not get married. After all, I have a lot of other things to do: move to Bolivia as a missionary, do comparative anthropological fieldwork on immigration in Brazil and the U.S., write a practical guidebook on spiritual disciplines and social change, give workshops about sexual morality from a non-heteronormative non-repressive perspective, become fluent in at least three more languages, and develop a new musical genre based on on Andean Folkloric music and Motown Soul.

Aside from not knowing how I'll fit conjugal life into my rather busy schedule for the next 40 years, I have started to wonder if my mythological desire to get married is not altogether shaped by that age-old trope of a woman defining herself by her relationship with a man. I certainly wouldn't be the first to observe that our culture encourages women to define themselves by relationships, and men to define themselves by worldly achievements. If such a strict binary can even be drawn between these two aspects of life. But I don't think there's anything wrong with defining yourself by your relationships; humans are naturally relational creatures. The problem is defining yourself primarily by just one relationship, and expecting that to fulfill the majority of your relational needs. It has, of course, previously occurred to me that it might not be the healthiest thing to define myself primarily by one other person. But sometime in mid-January the idea started to creep from my head down into my heart. I could actually imagine feeling happier if I spread my energy between friends, colleagues and the people I serve without having to reserve a big chunk of it for a spousal unit.

Just days afters this feeling started creeping into my heart, I stumbled across this article by Kate Bolick that seemed to confirm all my suspicions about the relative superfluousness of marriage. The premise of her article sounded like some fem-journalism fluff to me: the fact that educated female professionals now significantly outnumber educated male professionals, leaving a severe shortage of suitable mates for the modern cosmopolitan woman. Which I could care less about, because I would marry the garbage truck driver if he maintained a sincere spiritual practice, acted out of sound social justice convictions, and knew how to dance the night away. But as I read further about the rising phenomenon of the "single lady," I realized Bolick was in fact challenging modern notions about marriage itself. For example, she points out that

the complexities of modern life, and the fragility of the institution of marriage, have inspired an unprecedented glorification of coupling... This marriage myth—“matrimania,” DePaulo calls it—proclaims that the only route to happiness is finding and keeping one all-purpose, all-important partner who can meet our every emotional and social need. Those who don’t have this are pitied. Those who don’t want it are seen as threatening. Singlism, therefore, “serves to maintain cultural beliefs about marriage by derogating those whose lives challenge those beliefs.”

Apparently, before the 19th century, when marriage was more about consolidating property and wealth than finding an ideal mate to fulfill all your needs, people focused more on neighbors, friends and other family members for their emotional needs. Same-sex friendships often took on the same sort of intensity we normally reserve for "significant others." As the marriage bond became increasingly romanticized, people neglected these other social bonds to focus on the spousal relationship. Yet overall happiness seems to be greater when one maintains a flexible, diverse social network. What if, for example, I could be just as happy calling up my friend Louis when I need a massage, or making Valentine's Day cards for my friend Amy when I wanted to express my uniquely romantic vision of the world to someone who will understand?

So, with a sincere Valentine's Day spirit, I have decided to share my adaptation of an old traditional. I wrote new verses to update the hopelessly disempowering tale of a woman who threw herself into the sea to avoid having to marry anyone else after her fiancé died. I feel that I have much better—and more romantic—reasons why I (Maybe) Never Will Marry.

I never will marry

I'll be no man's wife

I intend to live single

All the days of my life

I've got a good friend

She loves me more than a man could

And we write love letters

To all the creatures in the woods

They say, "Do not fear friends

We've got our ears to your hearts

We won't leave you lonely

Till death do us part"

(Chorus)

This grove of deep shadows

Will be my own bed

I've learned to grow cabbages

I can sell by the head

I must paint flowers

And hold church for the squirrels

My tasks here are many

And my time is short in this world

(Chorus)

I'll cast my fair body

Into the hot thick of life

I'll get my hands dirty

But I'll be no man's wife