Lord Byron said “All tragedies are finished by a death, all comedies by a marriage.”

In popular culture marriage is often portrayed as the end of all fun, the end of childhood, the end of romance, the end of good sex. The thought seems to be that you are a kid and have fun, you are a teen and are in love, and then by some mysterious force you for some reason choose to marry, and in an instant give up playing around, smiling, oral sex, and whatever else makes life enjoyable.

In Sweden the laws are such that any couple of any genders that live together in a ‘marital way’, or to put it frankly – fuck – will legally have the same rights and regulations applied to them as to a married couple. The one exception is inheritance, which is fixed easily by drafting an actual will.
Sambo, they call it, which translates basically into cohabitant.

This means amongst swedes today marriage is a strange and unusual thing. I mean, with all the bad rep marriage has gotten, why get married when you can get the exact same benefits and drawbacks just from living together?

Of course this is bullshit. I’m not saying there are no unhappy marriages, I am saying if your marriage is unhappy – you’re doing it wrong.

In the old days people married because they had to. A couple could survive easier than a single person in the world, simply by dividing labour in the home. The wife did the emotional bits like mothering, because most women are better at this than men. The husband did the physical bits like felling trees, because most men are better at this than women. This put the wife around the kids a lot, meaning she was around the house a lot, and naturally she did household tasks a lot. Not because she had to, but because they had to be done. Her husband meanwhile worked the outer area of the farm, and naturally did whatever extra work occurred out there. Situations like these is what caused the age old traditions of the stay at home wife.

What cemented it though was the church. The church likes traditions, and makes traditions law in order to cement them and the religion itself in the minds of people. As such marriage in the mind of the people moved from being a convenience thing to being a forced thing, something you had to do because the bible said so, and later because the society said so.

Welcome back to the 21st century. The society does not say so any more, and in much of the world religion is considered a weekend thing at most. We do not have to be two to survive any more, we do not have to be two to be respected any more, and in fact to take a step back and be a housewife or house-husband to get actual benefits from a relationship, is severely frowned upon by many irate people. So why marry?

In my case, dedication. Marriage to me is a commitment straight from the ancient times. As I took my vows I dedicated my life and efforts to the family we created. And we laugh. Oh god do we ever laugh… We are the silliest buggers around. We tickle and prank and caress and surprise and play like little children… and in the bed we play like big children. Marriage is not the death of comedy… In fact, if you can not laugh together… you’re doing it wrong.

The death of comedy is the death of the relationship.