Marriage: Is there an alternative?

Viewing the latest slogan A Healthy Marriage, The Ideal Is Possible set me thinking about the institution of marriage and how in our younger days we used to retort cynically: Yes, but who wants to live in an institution?

Marriage, a happy marriage, is definitely ideal but a lot hinges on the possibility or probability of it being a happy one. The alternative, an unhappy marriage, could be hell. So should we not be seeking other alternatives to marriage to avoid the ever-increasing possibility of this turning into an unhappy one with all the dire consequences?

What other alternatives are there to marriage?

Well, boy meets girl and what's wrong in living together without the encumbrance of a contract? The emotions are there, they are mutual, and when something goes wrong each one could go one's own way without breaking any contract because there never was one in the first place.

Yes, this could be convenient if the relationship is not meant to grow with further accumulation of assets. However, if this togetherness is not to remain just that - unstable and with no goals in mind - it has to have the comfort that each and every commercial company seeks when things could start going wrong. And, as would be the norm, things will go wrong to a greater or lesser extent at one time or other.

To resolve these difficulties when they arise, one needs to be guided by a contract and, in the case of a human partnership, where, among other assets one could have children, this is even more necessary. Without such a contract the male could very well dump the children and leave their mother with no maintenance money. Without such a contract the female could very well deny the male of fatherhood to the children. No contract, no commitment, either way. So, such a way of life - togetherness with no strings attached - is no alternative to marriage.

But what if cohabitation were recognised by society and legal rights are given to the couple after, say, a few years of having been together? I am sure that this would offer the safeguards that were sorely missing in the aforementioned arrangement.

The right of a partner to a decent living, the right of a father to parenthood - these are now guaranteed but either partner could walk out on the other without having to have recourse to lengthy and costly court separation proceedings. This is an alternative to marriage for a couple with no ambition of making a relationship grow, for a couple with no positivity, for a couple fearful of challenges.

A couple who would like to see their union grow would build on rock, with all the necessary safeguards in place beforehand and with constraints happily taken on themselves willingly to keep them together when things start going wrong.

A couple with intentions that are good would want to make their union their own. They would be jealous of it and would want to put a seal on it. It would make more sense to own a residence than just move into a makeshift house on a temporary basis. If you owned your own house you would do all the necessary changes, spend good money to do them well, the best this and the best of that. You see you're investing in your own and making your investment grow and appreciate accordingly.

Not so if you make these changes to a house that does not belong to you. This house, from the onset, has no future for you, so money spent on it is kept to a minimum. There is nothing in it for you eventually.

In like manner is a union cast in marriage, a union which the couple make their own. All the sacrifices made, the patience taken, will appreciate with the initial investment. One enters into such union with determination to make the project succeed. Not half-heartedly labouring under the eventuality of failure.

If one has to go for the ideal, if one is looking for success, growth, then the union should be in marriage. Cohabitation is for the couples seeking only half measures. I concede that marriage is not for the squeamish, faint-hearted or selfish - as is no other challenge in life.

Of course, there would be couples who have no other choice but to live together outside of marriage - but that is another story.

Of course, if one has to go for marriage, one has to have the right intentions and prepare oneself well for it... and that is yet again another story.