The most important thing about both these stories is that the principles realized in time that they were not likely to want to spend the rest of their lives together. Even experimentation has limits when it comes to assessing the chances of a happy future as long as a life.
Nowadays there are too many people who are willing to jump into a partnership with the (often unacknowledged) conviction that if it doesn’t work out, then it can easily be ended, and one can try again. Too many of those people find (unless they happen to be especially callous and/or millionaires) it just isn't that easy. Then there are the people who really don’t need or want to be connected exclusively, and perhaps the contest title should have been something more along the lines of "Define Marriage," or "Defend Marriage as an Institution," or even, "What Are Advantages of Marriage as We Know It?"
It seems likely that using marriage as a topic for an essay contest is a little like using life. In my experience, attempting to explicate or categorize or give instructions on something so variable and so comprehensive is at least a little bit ridiculous. So is describing it. Marriages must be so utterly individual that to make general statements about them is problematic or maybe impossible. One may discuss marriages, but how does one discuss marriage?
No question that there are as many standards to which such a relationship is expected to adhere as there are traditions, religions, superstitions, histories. The real problem would appear to be the impossibility of making evaluations from outside the couple themselves.
If he beats her, if she humiliates him, if she drinks and he chases skirts, the world might know. What it can't know is how these behaviors actually affect the two people involved. People lie, people dissemble; people are stupid and brilliant, they're wise and naïve, inexperienced and jaded, humble and haughty, dreamy and cynical; no two are replicas of any others. When a couple decide they want to be joined, there are so many influences brought to bear on the success of such a venture that I defy generalizations to be of use to any of us, except for those that apply in general to getting along with one another as human beings.
If this means I believe in luck or Providence, that's doubtless the case. Forget about essays about marriage because they haven't much likelihood of being of any use except perhaps to those unfortunates who run across them after experiencing an unhappy one. I confess to the conviction that some people may benefit from an objective view of past mistakes, but I also think that in the case of intimate relationships, such a view is an ideal seldom realized.
Another problem in writing about marriage could be that even in western society it has altered so significantly over the centuries, has had infinite versions dependent on social and economic status, has seen several differing relationships with religions, with feminism, in wars and disasters and prosperity, even if we ignore the individual marriages in their millions. Maybe the only way to look at Marriage is to attempt to depict the one the writer wishes for. At once, the judge’s individual feelings assure no honest objectivity is possible.
My submission might be something like this:
A marriage would be a partnership in the profoundest sense. It would be the most welded commitment possible. It would presume without doubts ultimate mutual trust. It would be physically passionate, emotionally profound, mutually dependent, fully understanding of differing opinions but pliable and accepting and curious, respectful and humorous, and above all, appreciative. Maybe that is simply an annotated statement about love.
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