This comes up sparingly in my life but I do occasionally get asked. Let’s say it happens somewhere between every three to six months. It happened again recently and when I give my answer people like to come down on the side that my trauma influences my answer.
Personally, I think that is the default answer people like to understand as it’s the way the world works today. Everyone is looking for trauma and trivialises trauma. I think my answer is both more pragmatic and complex.
The Simple Answer?
No. You can stop reading now. Yeah, never say never and I accept that, but the odds are slim so the answer is no. The rest of this blog is why.
It’s worth pointing out what I mean by marriage.
I mean both the act, the institution and the fact it generally means you’re living together and intimately sharing your life day-to-day. I really don’t believe I’ll share my life with someone on that level again. So while the question often gets phrased as marriage what I really mean is cohabitation but we will come back to this.
It’s important to accept the reason outlined now are in order with the first two sitting well above the rest by a significant margin.
1. Been There, Done That
This is the reason people give me a quizzical look about but anyone who knows me well, and these people are sparingly few I suspect, know this is a very consistent answer.
Do I read books again? No
Do I play video games again? No
Do I travel to the same destinations again? No
Do I watch TV shows again? Okay, I used to, but for a while now the answer is no.
Basically, do I repeat life experiences again? No. This has got more true as life has gone on. There was a time I went to Disney World a lot and that stopped (possibly my partner liked repetition). Now, significantly more than any other time I rarely repeat experiences.
I concluded that this is likely to be the case with marriage.
Look I gave it the full, honest and glorious run. Two people meeting in their mid-twenties, making a life together and it was great for 20 years until suddenly it apparently wasn’t. I really don’t feel the need to try it again because it wasn’t a failure for me as for 99.99999% of its run it was what everyone wants out of these things.
Been there, done that.
2. I Don’t Need To
This is what I’ve found and maybe it was always been true: I don’t need it. I don’t have a lintany of sexual partners. I didn’t marry until I was 25. I didn’t need partners as a driving force in my life before 20 years of marriage and it turns out neither do I afterwards.
It’s weird. Just like I am happy existing in my own head I’m also happy living a single life without pursuing partners being a significant part of it. Look, when these things come along they are a wonderous and glorious thing involving intimacy and shared experiences and a whole host of other things, and I still describe my marriage as that, for example, but I don’t need them to make my life whole.
This in itself is a major reason why it won’t happen because in this day and age you very much have to make it happen if you want it to. I’m not taking steps to put myself in social situations to serendipitously find someone. I’m not on dating apps. Even on the basics of statistics, this is why it’s not going to happen.
I just don’t need it as a significant part of my life until it is, and then it’s (or was?) great.
3. I’m Too Selfish
I say this occasionally in life, but I have to be careful as I’m not some self-centred jerk who lacks emotional intelligence. I’m not young. I’m not trying to find myself. I’ve found myself and I’m happy and while I’m not arrogant or nasty about it or even not willing to compromise in life the days where I am willing to sacrifice whole elements of my life for another person are done.
This isn’t grown from trauma, it’s from enlightened, positive understanding. This is a good thing.
It’s undoubtedly the case that I lost parts of myself when I was married, what people don’t understand is when I say this I don’t see it as a negative. You’re two people making a life together from a young age. It is inevitable that life will become one that is a product of both of you rather than each of you individually. I thought I always wanted kids, but then I discovered I didn’t my partner was enough, we were both too selfish of what we had to have kids the list goes on.
That’s fine. That is great. It doesn’t mean you want to repeat it. I also think untangling that shared unit later in life is what causes marriages to fail when in truth they could continue in a different form.
It’s also important to recognise repeating it would not be the same. When you marry in your younger years it is something you set off on together and so how your goals and dreams merge doesn’t feel painful or any sort of sacrifice (for us anyway) it’s glorious and a wonderous sense of discovery. It wouldn’t be the same in later years. In later years it’s less wonderous, shared discovery and feels a bite more like a list of comprimises.
4. It’s Too Complicated
I literally cannot be arsed to consider or work through all the complications that arise when instead of being two people with almost nothing starting a life you are two people with a complex set of relationships and assets trying to clash them together.
Okay, I’ve not done it, so I fully realise I am commenting on things I’ve not experienced but even looking this craziness in the eye and having seen other people try and wrestle their way through it I’m just no thanks.
Who contributes what financially if you both have pots of wealth? Who sells what house? Yeah, you can try and keep it all separate but remember we are speaking about marriage and / or serious cohabitation here which necessitates some of these questions.
There is literally no way I am merging the economics of my life to the degree I did when I was married. This isn’t a bitter or trauma-based decision it’s just common sense. In my marriage, we merged everything. No clever account structures, everything was shared down to simple joint bank accounts. Why? Because I earned x2 to x8 more than my partner at any point in time and no amount of cleverness accounts for that. I was happy to do that and still believe so because we were both starting a life together.
I’d not do it now at this stage in my life simply because I don’t want to as it’s really not the same decision.
5. It’s Not Fair
One thing you realise when writing about these sorts of ideas is how easy it is for people to interpret your comments as that of some bitter, maladjusted incel rather than it coming from a good place. Take for example I think divorce can sometimes not be fair. Suddenly it conjures up images of me being some sort of red-pilled lunatic who takes advice from YouTube videos where men smoke cigars or look like Rasputin the mad-monk and speak in sinister voices.
So, what do I mean by divorce isn’t fair? What was my experience? I realise this is a point in time and laws change (such as no-fault divorces).
It can be your fault
First, my partner initiated the divorce secretly with no warning and purely because she wanted something different in life (full mid-life crises). This means the divorce is my fault and there are specific things outlined that are my fault for the relationship breakdown. The whole procedure from that point is approached from the standpoint of it being my fault. You could contest but it costs a lot of money and was largely pointless or you could counter-divorce also sort of pointless. So you just accept and take the hit every time it comes up. Can we do this? No, it’s sort of your fault so on balance we should accept and fight here, etc.
Both parties get half
Second, she gets half the wealth no matter what. Now this is a sensitive issue. I fully support and have no problem at a macro level with both parties getting half rule – it exists to cover sacrifices partners, often women, make in relationships like primarily looking after kids.
For individual cases and divorces, it can be brutal. If there are no kids and your partner made constant choices to limit her career because she was happy earning less money and then your partner just walks away do they really deserve half of everything? If they made so few sacrifices in life, etc.
They didn’t sacrifice their career to look after kids, for example. Their only economic sacrifice was their free life choices. So they get to live a life they can’t afford on their own (which is fine – you’re married and doing it together) but when they leave they also get to take half of every asset? I don’t dispute the law, but sometimes it’s not fair. I was lucky I could afford to keep the house and she didn’t want to live in it, and she was too lazy to pursue pensions, otherwise it could have been even more brutal.
It gets very complicated. My partners ‘lesser economic status’ was her own choice, but at the same time we lived off my partners wages for a year during a period I was unemployed. These things are wracked with complex issues so I fully understand the ‘just half’ law – but it can also at times feel strained, unbalanced and upsetting.
Why would I even remotely contemplate risking resetting the economics of my life again at a much later stage in my life? The answer is I wouldn’t.
And, Finally…
That is why I just can’t see myself marrying or doing the cohabitation thing again. It’s not based on some deep trauma. A lot of it is based on who I am now and who I have always been and has little to do with past relationships or my divorce. You then get to some practical things I’d rather not entertain again but the first two reasons vastly outpace the other three.
It’s quite possible my marriage was this unique, wonderous and odd aberration born out of a time and place and it’s not now that’s odd at all.
The other answer is maybe I’m just like a penguin.