I'm 21 and open to ideas and arguments, and recently I've been thinking about a "stupid" question: why do people still get married?
At first glance, it sounds utterly idiotic, but think about the reasons you believe marriage should exist.
The way I look at it, it's a system that is inherently sexist towards women and fiercely suffocating for men. When a woman gets married, she sacrifices an unreasonable number of things for the male counterpart. And don't make the mistake of thinking it's a zero-sum game, meaning a man gains when a woman loses. No. A man has his own challenges; they're just not as visible as a woman's. But the biggest of all of them is when they wish to separate.
At least in India, we can all agree that the system is heavily biased. As society discriminates against women, the law discriminates against men.
And don't think that I'm arguing against companionship, love, loyalty, trust, friendship, or even sex. I'm not against them. I'm arguing against the idea that relationships need the stamp of society and law—a social and legal justification for the personal matter of two people.
Love has been described by many people throughout history. But the love we know today is a quite new concept. It came from the Victorian era—the romantic era as we know it. That was the source, and pop cultures of every generation adapted the ideas proposed at that time.
But you would argue that we hear about love in ancient texts—like Krishna is the God of love. Similarly, Christians say that "God loves you."
But frankly, they meant completely different things. Attraction has existed from the very beginning, and even marriage is a very ancient concept (though its meaning changed as per history and geography). But love as we know it today is different.
Krishna meant love through spirituality. (It's only ISKCON which, with its high budgets and beautiful music and paintings, tried to modernise the concepts.) Similarly, care, forgiveness, etc. are also ancient, and Christians' love is that care.
But today's concept of love and romance is different. If you leave two humans on an island, they will discover sex, affection, and care, but they will not really discover "romance" as we know it. It's a learned concept—just like God. We know it because we're taught to believe.
It's the illogical passion—"Tere vaaste falak se main chaand launga." And it's perhaps one of the very few things that humans have created that doesn't have a net negative effect.
That being said, I'm not against it either. I'm arguing particularly against the institution of marriage.
There's only one logical reason why someone should get married—maybe if they want to have kids, because, to date, statistically, a kid is any day better off with "parents."
But then again, why do you want to have kids? If you have a solid reason that you can justify to your future self without any emotional argument, then by all means, have as many as you want and as many as you can afford. And get married.
Otherwise... May God bless you.
And by the way, a married person lives longer and happier (the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which began in 1938 and is the longest-running study on happiness, has said this in its ever-evolving reports). So if that's something you're looking forward to, you should.
It'll be bad if I don't mention the caveat. It's done in a society where women have higher gender equality and the law sees men and women somewhat more equally. So I still cannot be fully convinced by the institution of marriage.
But it's just me. Me at 21. It can change from person to person and from time to time.