The Viable Alternative

You know, as I’ve gotten older I’ve been getting questions from all corners as to when I’m going to get married.

I’m not only getting it from my parents, but also from friends, friends of family, relatives, friends’ parents, friends’ relatives, ministers, acquaintances, etc, the list goes on.

They all want to know why I’m not married yet.

My answer to them is that I really don’t care whether I get married or not. If I do, I do, if I don’t, I don’t. I’m not in any particular rush.

“But you’re not getting any younger”

“You’re getting old it’s time for you to settle down and get serious.”

These are some of the protests I hear when I give to people the answers to their questions.

Their answers to my explanation speaks to a bigger issue as to why I’m not married yet beyond what I’ve explained above.

To me, I believe that as a society we’ve been sold a big, fat lie about marriage. In this Western society (as I’m sure in others as well), we’re sold from the time when we were small that when we reach a certain age, we’re to meet someone, date for a bit, get married and then have kids.

This is the script we’re given or rather, sold, and most people follow it to the tee.

And herein lies the problem, people follow a script, or the Illusion set forth by society, but they don’t follow their hearts.

WAIT! Before I go any further, when I say “heart”, I don’t mean by that those feelings of love you feel for someone you’ve been with that makes you want to run to the altar faster than a crackhead runs after his supplier. (By the way, I think the analogy I made to a crackhead is quite adequate, being that sadly, a good number of people who run off to the altar are using reasoning skills that are no better than that of a crackhead.)

When people follow JUST their feelings they tend to make very BIG mistakes that cost them dearly down the line, one of them namely being so blinded by love that they wind up overlooking warning signs or red flags from the other person that spell doom for the marriage down the line.

For instance, a person’s significant other had a drinking problem, but since that person is in “love,” they think that marriage will make that drinking problem magically disappear, so they follow their feelings of love to the altar, only for the marriage to turn into a debacle a few years later over…..yep, that “little drinking problem” he/she had when they first met.

Or a person may follow his feelings of love to the altar, incorrectly assuming that despite the fact he can’t keep a job, that love would conquer all including his bills, only to wake up to the stark reality that finances, or lack thereof is the main reason why he and his wife fight all the time and why their marriage is crumbling.

When I speak about “following your heart,” I’m talking about doing what’s best for you from the core of who you are and taking actions that help nurture who you are at the core of your being.

Sadly, most people don’t know what that is because if they did, they’ll be making a whole different set of decisions than they are now.

Getting married because it’s “the right thing to do” is not a legitimate reason to be getting married. Getting married because your parents, friends and relatives are pressuring is also not the right reason to get married. Neither is getting married because everybody else is, or because you’re “supposed to,” or because you’re not getting any younger.

Please, go sell “crazy” somewhere else.

These are all reasons that have been sold to me by society and frankly, I no longer buy them. My happiness and my integrity as a human being are far too important for me to do that.

Now don’t get me wrong, though it may sound like it, I’m in no way against marriage. If I meet the right person I would be totally open to marrying her, raising a family with her, and sharing a life together. I’m just not hung up over it, or attached to that outcome.

It’s not marriage I’m against, what I’m against the way it’s sold to us. It’s a horrible thing to wake up one day to the realization that you’re utterly miserable because what society sold you about marriage brings you NO fulfillment as an individual but walking away isn’t as simple as going to Best Buy and getting a refund or putting an ad on Craig’s List. Instead, you have commitments like a couple of kids, and a mortgage on a house.

There’s not a mental illness known to man that would make me put myself through this just because I bought into what society says or what other people say.

It seems as if older generations, which include the Baby Boomer Generation and earlier, were more to marry out of reasons I’ve listed above such as it was the normal thing to do or because it was a contractual agreement between two families or some other reason that stemmed from the society at large rather than follow the urging of their soul.

However, younger generations such as Generations X and Y, are waking up to the fact that what many of their parents, grandparents, etc bought into is part of The Illusion because it doesn’t bring them fulfillment or happiness. Many are looking below the surface of what they’ve been told and thus you find people staying single a lot longer. We’re also seeing divorce rates skyrocket through the roof with statistics saying that 50-70% of marriages these days end in divorce….my goodness.

What I’m really grateful about is that I have good friends that I associate with who also have come to similar conclusions. We encourage one another to pursue our dreams, we share our realizations, our breakthroughs, and our triumphs, and we advise one another. We also make an earnest attempt, above what we’ve been told (or sold), to listen to our hearts and do what’s right for us, because we’ve realized that our happiness and fulfillment is tantamount above everything else.

We’ve decided that what really matters is leaving some type of legacy that will benefit mankind at large, and along the way, marriage may come along and fit into that labour of love…or it may not.

Wherever the chips may fall, fulfillment is guaranteed.

What’s funny is that we’ve had EQUAL experiences when we shared with people who aren’t on the same page our ambivalence and view about marriage I just explained above. They’re all in shock as to why we’re not freaking out about not being married yet and so nonchalant about it. Yet, they offer NO explanation as to why we need to get married beyond that it’s something that you’re supposed to do.

In fact many of these people who are pushing marriage on us aren’t even selling happiness to us when it comes to marriage. Dare I say is that because they believe that happiness only exists in fairy tales but in the real, “normal” world, happiness is “unrealistic”?

To many of these people, our explanations about our views marriage, with all this words such as “happiness” and “fulfillment” being thrown in, we’re speaking some sort of Australian aboriginal language. They think that there’s something wrong with us and some look like they want to ask us whether we’re gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with being gay, but in a mainly Judeo-Christian society, in many people’s eyes, there is something wrong with being gay, so if you’re not possessed about getting married, that’s the only other option.

I have two very good friends of mine who, several years back were HELL BENT on getting married. There was such urgency in their minds to do it and they even tried to spread this urgency to me, but I refused to partake and just simply didn’t care.

Interestingly enough, these two gentlemen wound up getting their wish to find wives but are separated now, with one telling me to never ever get married and the other telling me to take my time, there’s no rush.

Again, I’m not saying that you can’t find happiness in marriage and I know that though marriage isn’t easy, there are a great many married couples. What I’m saying is that these cats’ reasons for getting married probably blinded them not only to the women they wound up with, but also to what really was on their hearts.

As a matter of fact, despite their experiences, I actually believe that one day I will meet that special someone to raise a family with, but like I said, I’m in no rush.

I can listen to what society says about why and get married and possibly have a mediocre or a good marriage and also a mediocre or good life, but I’m not interested in simply mediocre or good, I want extraordinary on all levels. That is The Viable Alternative.

Before I go, I’m reminded of a time, a few years back when I was at work and there was an Asian guy who I worked with. When he first came to work at the company I was at, I remember him saying how he didn’t believe in interracial marriages, and that he was going to marry someone from his own culture. Fair enough.

But, he would constantly talk about this “hot” Spanish girl he had hooked up with in college.

Well, he was dating a woman of his own culture of the time who he eventually got engaged to and wound up marrying.

The day before his wedding, when he was walking around the office talking about his “big day,” someone asked him if he was marrying a Spanish girl, and without even a moment’s hesitation, his eyes lit up and he replied, “Don’t you think if I were marrying a Spanish girl there’d be this BIG smile on my face?”

To that I responded, “Bro, if it takes a Spanish girl to put a smile on your face, then why aren’t you marrying that? Why are you settling?”

To this he had no response.

I now began to wonder, if his whole spiel about marrying inside your culture was something just instilled in him by the “mini-society” he lived within, i.e. his family, whose views he just blindly parroted without listening to his own heart.

I’m sure this guy is “happy”, but how happy can one really be when the structure of your life, including who you marry is based on rules that, when seen through a magnifying glass, are completely full of holes.

When people stop following The Illusion, and start living by The Viable Alternative, where you allow your life to emanate from the core of who you are, you will see a lot more happy, fulfilled people who will be subsequently qualified to get into more lasting, SOLID, real relationships.

You’ll see whole people who are capable of getting into WHOLE relationships rather than people, who because they’ve denied the yearnings of their soul, walk around as broken, empty shells, which come together to form a broken structure that can’t stand the test of time and serves only to damage its individual components even more.

Hope this helps.