Chicken Underworld

Nikhil and I have decided to have a small commitment ceremony this summer with our families.  Immediately upon sharing this news with anyone (especially anyone more than 10 years older than me), their first questions are, "Is it legal? Are you getting married?"  Our families have been generally very supportive of us, but several questions keep resurfacing.  I wrote this today in response to a rather aggressive email from a well-meaning person about what this commitment ceremony is all about, why anyone should bother coming if it's not a wedding, etc.  It's my "manifesto" about why we have chosen this commitment ceremony for ourselves instead of a "wedding."  While I am very critical of marriage and weddings, I don't mean to suggest that people can't have a thoughtful, aware approach to their own wedding/marriage.  These opinions are really about my beliefs and our personal relationship.  Read on:
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Nikhil and I love each other and plan to spend the rest of our lives together, to have children and raise them in a loving family, to see each other through accomplishments and hard times for all the rest of our lives.  Although we have had a strong commitment to each other for about 7 years already, we want to have a commitment ceremony as a public proclamation and celebration of our love and commitment.  It is a celebration with our families and in part marks the formal joining of our families. 

Why aren't we calling it a "wedding"?  The short answer to this question is that neither of us is drawn to gendered symbolism or the highly commercial nature of modern American weddings.  Specifically, I dislike: that men generally ask women to marry them, as though it is a one-way decision; that only women usually wear an engagement ring, so that she is symbolically off the market but her mate wears no such public symbol; that the woman wears white as a sign of "purity" (a feature not apparently of importance for her mate); that she is "given away" by her father to her husband like a piece of property (which historically was exactly the meaning of this legal transaction); that the woman's family traditionally pays for the whole wedding, a convention that has roots in the dowry system (in which a man's family receives money and land as a form of payment for taking on a wife); that women historically made a vow to "obey" their husbands (which has recently been removed by some "progressive" couples); that she traditionally loses her last name and in some contexts her first as well (e.g., "Mr. and Mrs. Joe Schmoe"); that the "wedding day" is called the "most important day of your life" when in fact it is just one celebratory day and many other life events (births, deaths, moments of true joy) should be and are at least equally important; that getting married is held up as an end and a goal in itself for girls and women everywhere, when really it should mark only the beginning (or middle) of a phase of life with ups and downs and many struggles. 

Are we getting "married" and will this be a legal commitment?  The short answer to this is that we are not sure if we are getting married but we will have some legal documents drawn up either way.  However, my strong belief is that the point of a wedding is to celebrate the love and commitment and the formal joining of two lives, not to celebrate community debt/property and the formal joining of two tax returns.  The tax benefits and legal mergers that accompany marriage are rarely mentioned in wedding vows or on invitations (as in "Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Schmoe invite you to the marriage of their daughter, Josephine, where she will be joining financial assets and liabilities with John Doe").  These things are important and, I think, such rights should be conveyed to more classes of pairs of people who want to share their lives, co-own property, and care for each other even in an unromantic way.  (The state has the ability to convey more than 1,000 rights on couples who choose to get married, but these rights cannot be enjoyed by people who do not wish to or cannot get married, which does not seem just).  However, I also think these legal pieces are private and will and should be determined between the two of us. 

Further, the idea of a legal commitment as something that protects people from splitting up or specifically protects women from being abandoned does not ring true for me, in either experience or statistics.  Similarly, the idea of marriage as a sacrament that helps people maintain their promises to each other does not, in my experience, seem true.  For example, one couple I know, who married legally in the Church and had children, were in no way immune to infidelity (the ultimate breach of the marriage contract), and the woman was left in a very bad financial situation following the divorce, regardless of alleged legal protections marriage offered her.  In terms of marriage providing economic protections for women, a look at divorce statistics presents a strong challenge to this argument.  It is a fact that women tend to decrease in financial and economic wellbeing following divorce, while men tend to be better off.  And divorced women with children face a much higher risk for poverty than their married peers.  So if marriage is supposed to protect women from being abandoned with children and having limited means of supporting their families, then it does not seem to be doing a very good job because divorce is always a possibility.  The divorce rate may also be high because often times, people rush into marriage, are pressured into it by families, do not think realistically about it, or treat it as an end goal.  If these and other cultural meanings of marriage were different (e.g., not treated as an end in itself, not treated as a mandate for any and all women to achieve full woman-ness), then perhaps the divorce rate would be lower.  If men and women truly shared childrearing and care-giving responsibilities and if women were paid equally for the same market work as men, then perhaps eventually fewer women would be left out in the cold following failed marriages. 

To bring this back to us, Nikhil and I have spent a long time thinking about our lives together and our longterm plans, and we've worked through challenges and grown the commitment between us.  We've worked through many of the kinks that challenge people in their first years of marriage.  We've been together for about 7 years, which is the average length of a marriage that ends in divorce, and we are now more than ever ready to celebrate our commitment publicly and make an even deeper and more permanent commitment to each other.  We're confident in us, and our decision to eschew "marriage and wedding" terminology does not take away from that.  Instead, these choices indicate that we've thought critically about what a life commitment means and questioned things that are usually assumed about marriage.  Our untraditional approach is part of our strong belief in what we are and will be to each other.  And since that is not enough to satisfy inquiring minds, I'll also say that whatever legal documents we choose to use will be thoughtfully written but will be our private decisions.