Why did you get married?

Why is it that people get married? Let’s start with where marriage comes from. I’d like to believe that marriage came about when a man from the Old Testament realised he had no particular interest in the opposite sex, or sex in general, decided to dedicate his life to serving God by becoming a priest/monk/rabbi/imam whatever they were called then. He then thought to himself “hold on, why are these people having sex all willy nilly, let me make their lives miserable and deny them sex before they perform an almost endless yet pointless ritual called marriage.” Of course i’m just assuming this. So marriage came to be, you could not deflower a maiden till you beheaded a dragon or gave up half your families wealth, it differs from region to region.  Now in this day and age of freedom and democracy, where people own their sexuality and wear it like a scouts badge. Some claim their vaginas have brains and some feel their temples have been remodeled into flashy night clubs. Why is it that people still marry then?

Sex is freely available in this age, freely being a truly subjective term, you can sleep with whoever you want, whenever you want, granted that you both consent and are of the legal age of consent. I think there’s a few reasons people still get married. Firstly, for women, it’s embedded in their DNA from a young age that they need to get married, since playing with Barbie and reading fairytales of Prince charming saving the Princess from a life as a spinster, all little girls start planning their big day. Barbie then becomes baby dolls and teaches women that having kids is awesome, you rock them a little and their eyes close, easy stuff, but it’s best to have one when you’re married so Prince charming takes care of you and baby. As the young lady grows older she learns she has to perform heinous acts such as sex to catch Prince charming, then cast a spell on him using an ancient sorcery from the temple of doom, called love.

On the other hand, little boys grow up all nonchalant and mostly annoyed by this strange creature called girl, it does things differently, like peeing and playing so they avoid it and only tolerate it cause it sort of resembles mother. See, mother is a beautiful creature, bearer of all things good like food and hugs and birthday presents, we like her very much. Then comes a strange time in little boys life, when his balls drop and voice breaks and one night you wake up with wet undies. Embarrassed, scared, but mostly surprised as to what the new student teacher was doing in your dream and what you were doing together. This young man has experienced one of life’s greatest pleasures, he learns that that feeling he felt is in the power of his hands and with this power comes great responsibility, like making sure he only does it 48 times at one given go, never more or he could die. Time goes by and the feeling of shame and regret after handling the battles of reaching this feeling he realises it’s way better when girl helps out in the process.  From now until eternity boy chases girl in search of this great feeling.

As boy grows into a man, he realises that chasing women is expensive. If you stay with one woman the sex becomes cheaper. From dinners and movies every week to win different women over, you gradually get to use “please come over tonight” smses at liberty, granted you act accordingly and prioritise one woman. Now the woman isn’t resting on her laurels during this courtship period. She gets to practice her sorcery and poison the man’s heart with the spell of love. Using the dark magic of warm food, ironed socks and being attentive to man’s needs. Then one day when the magic has consumed man’s heart entirely he drops down to his knees, as his sword crashes to the ground he pops out a diamond ring and proposes marriage. Yes! Finally Prince charming has arrived to rescue the Princess from all the frogs she’s been kissing and can now have her fairytale happy ending and bare children to dress up like little dolls. Man here is thinking that he’s found an endless stream of happy feelings, but alas those that fell before him did not warn him that the well runs dry soon after, the happy feeling is but a dripping faucet not sufficient to quench his insatiable thirst, just enough for him to get by.

My mind is quite content with believing this to be the only reasonable explaination why people still get married in this day and age. Ideally all men want to live like George Clooney, bed supermodels, have a succesful career and do some humanitarian work to save the world, then bed more supermodels. We just can’t afford it.

But what do I know, I’m just a mad goat.