Why Do People Still Get Married?

11 Reasons Marriage Probably Is (Or Isn't) For You

Humans are creatures of conditioning through genetics, familial and societal conditioning. A child younger than eight years takes in information from its environment. In the beginning, it is the home and later from public places.

Why marriage? Here's how it begins

Early on you learn that partnership is what makes up a home. This implies that a mom and dad, grandparents, uncles, and aunts, etc make up a family through marriage. You believe there must be two sets of adults to make sure you are always provided for. After a while, you meet others like you. It could be in classrooms, parks, parties and everywhere. Then you notice children like you with care providers the size of your parents.

Children around you always seem to have someone to run to or cry out for in times of need or distress. Adults seem to stop their world and rush to the child and care for it or find help. This gives the partnership of adults a positive image for the child.

The idea begins to solidify

Growing up you might have noticed adults either upset in silence or screaming and yelling. Yet they stopped tending to their needs and came to attend to you in times of your need. This gave partnerships a positive association in your memory bank.

Between the age of eight to sixteen, you identify with your sexuality. Slowly but surely you have a semi-serious definition of who you want to be and what you don’t want or feel you can do differently. As a teenager, you felt validated via sexual attraction. More or less you felt seen and a sense of belonging grew in you. This was in sync with your hormonal play, turbulent for many. Knowing if you are a man or a woman, felt almost as good as the parent of your sexual identification with.

Over time you learn you are no longer a child. You begin to feel you are physically bigger and stronger than your parent and hence somehow different, maybe even better. Parents or caregivers are around fifteen years older now since you were an infant. Somehow they feel more exhausted and mentally more rigid in their ways. You have possibilities and are seeking emotional support from peers to fulfill you. Marriage could mean an escape from parental-control to teenagers. Also, it means a commitment to and from your lover followed by feelings of support for nearly all your dreams and plans.

Marriage to many is an escape from the clutches of parental control. Also, it means freedom - a bridge to a better life. For many, it means taking a relationship to the next level.

What is marriage

Marriage is and is not a piece of paper. For many, seeing parents married and sticking it out together feels like a commitment.

Initially, it started as a mutual personal commitment. When partners fell out of love they walked away and usually one parent was stuck with a child. So elders brought about the vows and commitment in front of a higher force, God if you will. This is to keep a couple married and responsible towards each other and their children.

How did marriage turn serious

Over time, religion solemnizing a marriage wasn’t enough. Hence, thinkers decided to legalize marriage and make a man and wife legally bound to each other. The reasoning was to manage property and obligations towards children and each other. Yet people despite vows, laws, etc. fail each other – for one reason: lack of love and overwhelm in life.

So people marry because they “think” it is the next step in their life. Marriage is like the next nice thing to do as “grownups” or to give a boost to a relation. I have heard people say “marriage was a good thing for their finances”. I have heard people say “if we got married, I would be hurt financially”. Marriage often seems more to do with money and less to do with love.

Marriage for many feels like this

The other day I was with a few women coloring and chatting away. I was the only one without a husband. In this case, everyone had something negative to say about their partner. Yet I know each of them will stay in their relation till “death does them apart”.

Why do people still get married is quite personal? Most people do not remember why they got married. In my practice when I ask my clients why they got married, the response is often a justification, not "we were in love". An emotional decision is often justified with logic and reasoning. I realize the person who was in love has fallen out of it and is hurting, so can't remember.

It is like going to a store buying something out of emotion and faced with a choice upon reaching home. It's whether to return the item due to buyer’s remorse or keeping it and rationalizing the purchase.

Above all, like every partnership, marriage is work. Any day you take your partner for granted, that is the day your marriage begins to end.

11 Reasons why marriage is or isn’t for you:

Each reason listed here is what I gathered from fourteen years of professionally working as a hypnotherapist, life coach and healer. If something doesn't resonate with you yet, just skip it and proceed.

1. You gain financially from the union.

2. You know for sure that you need a partner or are convinced that you do not have it in you to work on a relationship. Either way, you are right.

3. You love the one you are with and would love to grow old with the one you love.

4. In modern society, insurance is a big thing and is cheaper when you are married than single.

5. Tax-factor: you get better tax cuts when you are married than when you are single.

6. You love your independence and you are willing to die for it.

7. You need someone who will provide for you.

8. You need someone who will put up with you.

9. You never had a good family growing up and you want one for yourself.

10. You had an awesome family growing up and now you want to repeat what your parents did for themselves and you.

11. You aren’t sure but want it because this is the right thing to do now.

Some logic about love

Usually, marriage is an extremely personal preference. Like all preferences: how you wear your pants, butter your bread or which side of the bed you want to sleep. It is what feels right to you.

Lastly in a partnership, you can’t bring half of you in it and expect your partner to make it whole by bringing his or her half in.

While in math two halves make a whole, it is not true in human life. As a child growing up half a mom and half a dad wasn’t good enough, was it? Surely, you needed a whole mom and a whole dad. Similarly, your partner and you need to be wholly vested in it to live a wholesome married life.