Why Bother With Marriage?

it's tempting to think of marriage as old-fashioned why not just live with someone and be done with it what need for a public ceremony why the weird traditions all those churches temples hymns vows and prayers marriage must be a silly relic from the religious childhood of humankind not designed for the more logical modern world and yet it survives the essence of marriage is to tie our hands to frustrate our wills to put high and costly obstacles in the way of splitting up why do we do this originally we told ourselves that God wanted us to stay married but even now when God is not invoked we keep making sure that marriage is rather hard to undo for one thing you carefully invite everyone you know to what you say you'll stick together you willingly create a huge layer of embarrassment were you ever turn around and admit it might have been a mistake furthermore even though you could keep things separate marriage tends to mean deep economic and legal entanglements you know it's gonna take the work of a phalanx of accountants and lawyers to prise you apart it could be done but it will be ruinous it's as if we somewhere recognize that there might rather strangely be some quite good though uncomfortable reasons why making it difficult to split up a union can be an advantage for its members the marshmallow test was a celebrated experiment in a history of psychology designed to measure children's ability to delay gratification and track the consequences of being able to think long term some three-year-old children were offered a marshmallow but told they would get two if they held off from eating the first one for five minutes it turned out a lot of children just couldn't make it through this period it was too tempting the less immediate benefit of gobbling the marshmallow in front of them was stronger than the strategy of waiting crucially it was observed these children went on to have lives blighted by a lack of impulse control and fed much worse than the children who were best at subordinating immediate fun for long-term benefit relationships are perhaps no different here too many things feel very were angry and want to get out were excited by a new person and need to abandon our present partner at once and yet as we look around for the exit every way seems blocked it would cost a fortune it would be embarrassing it would take an age this isn't a coincidence marriage is a giant inhibitor of impulse set up by a conscience to keep our labeed honest ungrateful wild desiring selves in check what we're essentially buying into by submitting to its dictates is the insight that we are as individuals likely to make very poor choices under the sway of strong short-term impulses to marry is to recognize that we require structure to insulate us from our urges its to lock ourselves up willingly because we don't trust ourselves it's a very unusual marriage indeed in which the two people don't spend a notable amount of time fantasizing that they weren't in fact married but the point of marriage is to make these feelings not matter very much it's an arrangement that protects us from what we desire and yet no in are more reasonable moments we don't truly need or even perhaps want at their best relationships involve us in attempts to develop mature and become whole we often get drawn to people precisely because they promise to etch us in the right directions but it's too easy to seem kind and normal when we keep going out with someone new the truth about us on the basis of which self-improvement begins only becomes clear over time chances of development increase hugely when we don't keep running away to people who will falsely reassure us there's nothing too wrong with us over time the argument for marriage has shifted it's no longer about external forces having power over us what we are correctly now focused on is the psychological point of making it hard to throw it all in for the last 50 years the burden of intelligent effort has been on attempting to make separation easier the challenge now lies in another direction in trying to remind ourselves why immediate flight doesn't always make sense in trying to see the point of holding out for the second marshmallow you

Channel: The School of Life

Views: 1,745,704

Rating: 4.5400791 out of 5

Keywords: alain de botton, tsol, sol, therapy, philosophy, study, education, learning, think, thought, wonder, information, why, marriage, wedding, love, relationships, engaged, rings, life, well being, sermon, lecture, Why Bother with marriage, sacrament, how to marry, should i marry?, is marraige right for me?, PL-Relationships, casamento, mariage, matrimonio, शादी, 婚姻, ehe, Relacionamentos, des relations, Relaciones, रिश्तों, 关系, Beziehungen, amor, amour, मोहब्बत, 爱, liebe, namoro, sortir ensemble, Citas, डेटिंग, 约会

Id: kp4FLeY6F9g

Length: 4min 51sec (291 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 29 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/poopfaceone]

Ok, so the argument for marriage is :

CONS: Legal/financial penalty and social judgement
PRO: Knowing that we've tricked ourselves into being disciplined?

That's the 2nd marshmallow??? Call me crazy, but that's not a very compelling argument. I'm not a red piller, but I just haven't heard a good reasoning for marriage.