Traditional Pressure To Get Married

By Reza Ganjavi

Some traditions have put a huge burden on people to get married. Some go as nasty as calling, especially women who don't get married by a certain age, as "pickled". From a psychological standpoint, this is a major burden because a person can be perfectly happy with or without marrying just as one can be miserable with or without marriage. So marriage in itself should not be the determinant of happiness and I don't think anybody should feel miserable by the pressure to get married or by not having got married.

In my case, I resisted marriage because since I was a kid, jokingly or not, I heard numerous people say they made a mistake. Of course, I have good friends who are married and I have seen some successful marriages -- and I've seen many unhappy marriages, conflictual, dull, manipulative, and ultimately divorce with its own set of repercussions: complications of managing assets, the burden on kids, alimony, and so on; I've had several friends who were taken to the cleaners as a result of divorce -- and all of those cases, they stood before God and society and vowed to stay together forever no matter what.

And in the modern world, there are other forms of relating that I don't want to discuss here now, which are rooted in responsibility. But in my life, I have not regretted not getting married at all. In fact, there’ve been some occasions where I've seen some wives that I've felt, thank God I don't have one like that (LOL) -- or some conflicts in relationships because of being "stuck" with someone for various reasons, legally, religiously, economically, socially, etc. -- where I've felt thank God I don't have to deal with that.

This is a long story. The message to my friends in some cultures whom I see burdened with this pressure: it's ok not to marry. Marriage is secondary. Primary is to be psychologically free, to be happy, to have a learning mind, to refine one's life, to remove those elements which make one suffer, to change habits that are destructive by learning about them, to learn about oneself in the mirror of relationship, etc. -- and to not be married doesn't mean to be isolated. To be is to be related. We're always in relationship -- with people, things, ideas, nature, books, etc.

SOME READER COMMENTS

Perfect

Thanks for sharing, Reza. You can help a lot of people to become more aware of the dangers of relationships like this.

Nice write up brother.

Thoughtfully stated,

Very well said... I’m on your side...!!

By the way thanks for your post, it feels so good to see that a least a few people think by themselves.