The person we choose as a life partner is not merely a being to meet the various needs of a natural human, and, with caution, one might even say that those needs and matters may not belong at all in the structure of the existential philosophy of marriage in today’s world. Why?
Because food can be ordered and eaten at a restaurant, probably with more attractive themes; sleeping can be done in a hotel, probably with more facilities; and other needs and contacts can, with the dose of religious belief turned down, be had at random with people, girls and boys on the street, by agreement, in the many categories that existed and exist in the West and, unfortunately, have recently come to Iran (from one-night stands to friends with benefits and so on). A little more emotional is the girlfriend/boyfriend model, and for deep psychological and mental matters too the West has left us the prescription of therapy and psychologists and so on (I have no problem with psychology or therapy as a science and a branch of medicine and I even recommend it; I only point to this science’s lack of function in deeply solving anything beyond recording experience and measuring the past).
In the past, when there was not this much variety in meeting needs, people married so that many of those needs (food, money and capital, having children and continuing the line, adding an heir to name and family and wealth, labour, physical attraction and so on) would be met. But now, what is the pain of the matter, that some independent and semi-independent people submit to this indignity(!) of putting up with one person seven days a week for many years? Even if you buy a car, it breaks down, gets a flat, needs repair, needs fuel and a hundred other things. Likewise, and without counting a speck of feeling, if we look at marriage purely as two living beings, married life is not at all the fantasy period of engagement and the acquaintance before marriage and the times when everyone laughs together. Surely in married life a girl and a boy will quarrel, surely they will disagree, surely their tastes in food may not match, their body temperaments may differ and warm and cold may not suit each other, and so on…
A considerable part of the feeling of falling in love relates to the secretion of the hormone oxytocin, whose start is not in a person’s control, but afterwards a process of conditioning intensifies or controls the secretion. If you have undergone type 6 conditioning, then probably being in love itself becomes the point, not the person you show affection to!
What keeps the philosophy of marriage important in our era, I think, and keeps this a very important matter, especially for independent and semi-independent people, and has made it so that, instead of the side attractions of the past (labour, having children, showing off meals, sexual relations and so on), a girl and a boy now need the basic essence and concept of marriage rather than those attractions I mentioned above, is what the Quran, in verse 187 of Surah Al-Baqarah, expresses as
“…They are a garment for you and you are a garment for them…” – Al-Baqarah 187
Each other’s garment: a cause of pride, covering, concealment, personality, and of the attachment of that covering to the body; or, if you choose wrongly, a cause of disgrace and so on.
and what Imam Ali, our commander of the faithful (peace be upon him), used for our Fatima (peace be upon her) on the night of farewell in Sermon 202 of Nahj al-Balagha:
“…my fortitude has grown thin from her”
(Used to describe the calamity; commentators and translators took “tajallud” to mean patience, but originally it means the skin, mould and container of a thing, and “raqqa ‘anha tajalludi” (God forgive me) means the mould has emptied.)
The concept of family turns your layer of thought from “I should reach my wishes, and there are hardships on this road” into “we reach our wishes, and in this path hardships and challenges are stones on the riverbed that make the path more enjoyable and fun”; and basically the one-dimensional nature of your existential philosophy, in which you might find no reason to go on living, becomes a mould and skin and existential philosophy for having days and nights beside someone you love and who loves you. In that situation the bread and cheese you eat together is the best meal of life, and when you cannot sleep and she is asleep, looking at her sleepy, rumpled face is the best picture of life, and every moment you are away from her, even if she is sitting next to you, you miss her, as Moein says:
You are beside me, yet every moment I miss you
I think that people in our era who still marry with the old needs, after at most two years, when the appeal of those needs and the excitement has cooled and they meet the real things and basic hardships of life, find no reason at all to go on, and if they do not separate, they merely endure until it passes.
marriagethe_institution_of_familyphilosophy
Related: MCDM does not understand love (the same subject, this time with an analytical, decision-making view).
P.S. 1: In the most complex and most beautiful decision of my life, which is choosing one person to spread out our loneliness and to make day and night of days and nights that do not turn into night and morning, these were among my main criteria:
- Independent and free, having reached a thought, belief and choice on her own
- Able to understand different situations and the sensitivities of a matter
- Trustworthy
- A view close enough to mine that together we can hurl really bad curses at this world and its different conditions
- Modest
- The institution of the family as an important element in her mind
After the points above, I decided and checked the rest with my heart, and my heart said that if we ever have a daughter, I would really like her to be like her mother both in looks and in behaviour; about her goals and wishes and the new things she hears or experiences or says, even her eyes turn heart-shaped and laugh; every moment I am with her I wish time would pass more slowly, and I curse all the days and moments I am not with her, and so on…