About Marriage

By Reza Ganjavi

A friend and I were talking about marriage in general whose cousin told her to ignore the divorce rates. It's not about optimism or pessimism. One has to be a realist that about 50% of marriages fail and in a 100% of these the couple swore they'll stay the rest of their lives together. Of the rest, statistics show at least half of them are unhappily married. The point is, if somebody wants to get married, what s/he does to reduce the chance of divorce, up front? And the answer seems to be in getting to know the other person really well before marriage.

About the argument that whether not marrying will make a person lonely, a loner, abnormal or anti-social, it depends. The short answer is of course not necessarily because there are many people who never married and are perfectly happy. And to be is to be related so we are in relationships whether we like it or not - at least with nature, books, others, ideas, and in some cases, pets :) -- but the bigger question is, what is "normal"?

It seems there's a lot of suffering among "normal" people too so having a partner is not a recipe for happiness, but companionship is good and is generally healthy, if it's in harmony because conflict is poisonous and deteriorates the mind but some people thrive by it because it gives them energy -- but that's a far different quality of energy than energy of peace.

Another factor is the structure of society. In some places in America for example, it seems very hard to live alone because everything is so spread out and you only meet people in cars -- so being married is a big help. Whereas in many places in Europe for example, you go out and you're with people and you have a chance to randomly meet quality people anywhere instead of just in a night club for example!

And as a result people are less afraid of "strangers".

This noodle has a long head... as they say in Persian "reshteh sare deraaz daarad"...

Alone and lonely are different. Loneliness is a disease. Alone is all-one...