The therapist Erich Fromm made this observation concerning mankind, in his book, The Art of Loving (1956).
“Man-of all ages and cultures is confronted with the solution to one and the same question: the question of how to overcome separateness, how to achieve union, how to transcend one’s own individual life and fine at-onement ” (p. 9).
One of the ways you overcome separateness is joining with another person through marriage. Marriage serves many purposes for people.
For some it’s merely a matter of living with another person, or having a room mate with special privileges, it has no deeper or special meaning. Marriage for them is a box they check on their tax returns and serves as their present living arrangement.
There are others for whom marriage serves a deeper purpose. For them marriage is having a special deep relationship with another person. It is about having a special sense of connectedness and union. They believe it is joining two people as one on many levels at once.
With all the misunderstandings about marriage, many couples miss this deeper purpose of developing intimacy, and instead think that the marriage itself is the whole purpose of the institution.
They go through the ceremony for societies approval, to give their children two parents and for special tax status. When they make marriage the whole end purpose of going through the ceremony, this misunderstanding leads to many people re-evaluating marriage in terms of its importance.
Rather than marriage being a special event, it becomes nothing more that another business deal. A factor contributing to this situation is the movement away from the church sanctioning of marriage to the legal sanctioning of marriage.
In previous ages, there were no marriage licenses. Governments role in marriage was limited, therefore, no license was needed. The government had no say so in who was married.
It was the church who decided whether or not you were married. With marriage in the church, the specialness of the ritual and ceremony was upheld.
“Is Marriage Loosing Importance?”
The question “Is marriage loosing its importance?” can easily be answered with a simple –NO. Marriage is very important to people.
Many citizens of the US are clamoring for Congress and their State legislators to pass bills concerning marriage. The importance of marriage is increasing.
The underlying reason for such a question and what is meant by the question is an intriguing area to explore.
The concept of marriage and family are changing. Although marriage is more important than ever, what people mean by the term marriage’ is changing.
In Biblical times, marriage was a blood covenant. Being a covenant, the joining of the two people was a long term commitment. In a covenant, the two parties joined all their resources and the arrangement was life-long.
Not only was it life long, the convenant extended beyond their lifetimes.
Even during those times, there was controversy as the covenant minded people dealt with those who were influenced by the Ancient Egyptian culture where the term marriage was used for who you were currently co-habitating with.
It was more of a current status term. In the royal families marriages were arranged with family members in order to keep the wealth in the family.
So even in the Biblical times of the patriarchs, there were clashing definitions of what marriage’ meant.
In 19th century America, when people used the term marriage, it referred to a church sanctioned joining of two individuals.
As more people wanted a spouse, but either did not want the obligations and accountability associated with the church or the church was not so readily available, there was an increase in civil marriages.
With a civil marriage, you have all the benefits of marriage without the accountability. It was a way of getting married without the stigma and issues they’d have to resolve with church accountability.
People were married under the authority of government, rather than the authority of the Church and by extension God’s approval. Although on the surface, the system worked, it carried with it some legal baggage that arose when the question of divorce arose.
Marriage evolved into a form of contract rather than a covenant. When you view it as a contract, you can dissolve the contract if either one of you failed to keep the contract or if you mutually decided it doesn’t work.
By turning marriage into a contract rather than a covenant, the matter of divorce became a concern of lawyers rather than for ecclesiastical persons to rule on matters.
At first, the divorces required some determination of who is ‘at fault’. Over time, with no-fault divorce laws, that stigma was removed and the burden of proof removed. With those changes, divorce became the decision of the couple to end their relationship and status as a ‘couple’.
The subject of marriage still remained a sticky one since people wanted the appearance of the covenant with all its pomp, sacredness and ceremony, yet some also wanted the ease of dissolution of the arrangement allowed by contracts.
The use of contracts also made the dissolution of the joint estate much easier to negotiate. The public blended aspects of cohabitation, contract and covenant into a common term.
The legal entity of marriage also took on new significance when governments began taxing your income. Since couples are taxed at a different rate than singles, many saw the marriage designation as having a tax advantage.
When governments used duties, fees and imports to generate tax revenues, the tax advantages of marriage were non-existent. Since governments have done so, now what constitutes a marriage’ has tax implications.
Part of the tax implications is that co-habitating couples are taxed at a different rate than married couples. The co-habitating couples don’t want a heavier tax burden, so there’s been a push for redefining marriage driven more by taxes than by morals.
With all these changing definitions of marriage, the question, “Is marriage loosing its importance?” takes on some new angles. Depending on your definition of marriage, whether one of who you are co-habitating with, who you legal tax partner is, or who you are joined with in the eyes of God the question of whether or not that concept’ is loosing its importance is a more pertinent and meaningful question.
This is where my video, How To Rekindle Closeness And Bring Back Intimacy In Your Marriage comes in.
It shows you ways of bringing back the intimacy along with where to start. You may want intimacy, but are unsure where to begin. This video guides you through the obstacles in the way of you having the intimacy you want.
Best Regards,
Jeff
