"Ken and Marian were on their third date when he decided to lay down his cards. “Before we develop a real relationship, if you have any notion of ever marrying, let’s stop now,” he said.
Ken braced himself for Marian to leave in a huff. Instead, she smiled and asked, “Can you promise?”
Since then, the couple has been happily together for seven years. “I always joke that the best way to get rid of Marian would be for me to propose marriage,” says Ken, a field biologist living in Boulder, CO. “People occasionally ask me why we’re not married, and my answer has always been, ‘Why would I get married? What possible reason would there be to do that?’ These questioning people, who usually are long-married, seem dumbfounded by my response. They usually fall back on thinking it’s a societal norm — which these days, of course, it is not. It might be a grand statement to our friends and families of our commitment; it seems unnecessarily complicating to me.”
Ken and Marian are both familiar with the complications that marriage can entail: Ken has been married twice; Marian only once, but for 20 years. Both are in their sixties and have grown kids and grandkids, and they both can see why marriage was important back then. “Marriage is a very real convention for the benefit of children or to solidify property concerns,” says Ken. “Otherwise, I think it’s an antiquated institution.”
Marian agrees wholeheartedly. “Our relationship is probably much better this way than if one of us complied with the other’s marriage demands,” she says. “We love one another and we love our independence.”
May I comment on this article? I did not marry Mark because it was a societal norm. I did not marry Mark because it was a benefit for the children we hoped to have. It certainly did not solidify property concerns. Has marriage been complicated? Yes, indeed. So why should people still choose to get married if it is an antiquated institution? Glad you asked:)
Marriage is a sure-fire way to reveal how selfish you are, if you really want to know. You can go on through life pretending like you're not. You can continue in your pretend world of "What a nice person I am." Or for some, you can continue in your pretend world of "I am not nice and I really do not care." It is a character developer, for sure. I can choose to approach marriage in a Biblical way or I can choose to approach it from a worldly perspective. Unfortunately many Christians approach marriage in the same way the world does. If you are a believer and have read God's word on the subject, it is a non-negotiable. Marriage was God's idea to begin with and he knows how to make it work. The rewards are incredible, life-changing, character-changing, serendipitous and they delight our soul. "Ken and Marian" are missing the point. Are you?
