Should I get married?

I wrote at length about marriage in my own day, when it was for most women the only career open to them and the end of their independence. Much has changed since. My central point has not.nnPassion does not last. It is not meant to. In a good marriage it gives way, gradually and without regret, to friendship, which is the most sublime of all affections because it is founded on principle and grows with time. A marriage that depends on passion alone is preparing its own disappointment. So the first question is not whether you are in love. It is whether you respect this person, whether they respect you, and whether you would still choose their company if the excitement were gone.nnThe second question is about equality. Look at how decisions are made between you now, about money, work, where you live, whose plans give way. Marriage does not usually correct an imbalance. It tends to fix it in place. If one of you is already disappearing into the other's life, a ceremony will not bring them back.nnYou may know that I opposed marriage as an institution and still married, late, when I was expecting a child and the practical reasons became strong. I do not think that was a contradiction. I did not marry for security or approval. I married a friend. If that is what you would be doing, then marry. If you would be marrying to be completed or rescued, wait.

I never married. Sartre and I made our own agreement instead, renewed and argued over for fifty years, and I do not offer that as a model for you. I offer it as evidence that the question of how to love someone and the question of whether to marry them are separate questions.nnIn my book on women I looked closely at marriage as it had actually been lived, and I found an institution that too often turned two free people into a household, and then turned one of them, usually the woman, into its servant. Her projects shrank to its projects. Her time became its time. The danger I describe is not cruelty. It is something quieter: the slow replacement of a life by a role.nnAuthentic love, as I understand it, is the meeting of two freedoms, two people who recognise each other as free and want each other to remain so. Each goes on having their own work, their own friends, their own future, and chooses the other again from that position. That kind of love can exist inside a marriage. It can also be smothered by one.nnSo do not ask only whether you love this person. Ask what marriage would change. Would it be a celebration of a free choice you are both already making, or a way of settling into a shape that someone else designed? If you are marrying to stop choosing, I would advise against it. If you are choosing freely, with your eyes open, then the form matters less than the freedom.

I married four times, which perhaps qualifies me to speak and perhaps disqualifies me entirely. I also wrote a book on marriage that got me into a good deal of public trouble, so I will try to be plain.nnAs I see it, the strongest reason for marriage as an institution is not love at all. It is children. A child needs stability, two adults who are committed to its upbringing, and a legal and practical framework that protects it if things go wrong. If you are planning to have children, those are serious reasons to marry, and they do not depend on how romantic you feel.nnIf you are not, the question is more open than people like to admit. Two adults can share a life without the state's permission. What marriage adds is mostly a public declaration, some legal convenience, and the expectation of permanence, which is a fine thing when it is freely held and a dreadful one when it is endured. I argued once that couples should be able to live together without children before deciding whether to marry, and was denounced for it. I still think it sensible.nnSo be clear with each other about what you expect: about children, money, fidelity, work, and what happens if it fails. Most unhappy marriages I have observed were not unhappy because of the institution. They were unhappy because two people had quite different ideas of what they had agreed to and never said so.