I'd rather not

The transformation of marriage from a business deal to a badge of emotional affection has weakened the institution considerably over time—because marriages based on love are, as it turns out, just as fragile as love itself. Just consider my relationship with Felipe and the gossamer thread that holds us together. To put it simply, I do not need this man in almost any of the ways that women have needed men over the centuries. I do not need him to protect me physically, because I live in one of the safest societies on earth. I do not need him to provide for me financially, because I have always been the winner of my own bread. I do not need him to extend my circle of kinship, because I have a rich community of friends and neighbors and family all on my own. I do not need him to give me the critical social status of “married woman,” because my culture offers respect to unmarried women. I do not need him to father my children, because I have chosen not to become a mother—and even if I did want children, technology and the permissiveness of a liberal society would permit me to secure babies through other means, and to raise them alone.

So where does that leave us? Why do I need this man at all? I need him only because I happen to adore him, because his company brings me gladness and comfort, and because, as a friend’s grandfather once put it, “Sometimes life is too hard to be alone, and sometimes life is too good to be alone.” The same goes for Felipe: He needs me only for my companionship as well. Seems like a lot, but it isn’t much at all; it is only love. And a love-based marriage does not guarantee the lifelong binding contract of a clan-based marriage or an asset-based marriage; it cannot. By unnerving definition, anything that the heart has chosen for its own mysterious reasons it can always unchoose later—again, for its own mysterious reasons. And a shared private heaven can quickly descend into a failed private hell.


All lovers, even the most faithful lovers, are vulnerable to abandonment against their will. I know this simple fact to be true, for I myself have abandoned people who did not want me to go, and I myself have been abandoned by those whom I begged to stay. Knowing all this, I will enter into my second marriage with far more humility than I entered into my first. As will Felipe. Not that humility alone will protect us, but at least this time we’ll have some.

An old Polish adage warns: “Before going to war, say one prayer. Before going to sea, say two prayers. Before getting married, say three.”
I myself intend to pray all year.

I'm currently reading Elizabeth Gilbert's Committed, which is the continuation of her best-selling memoir, Eat, Pray, Love.  And above are excerpts which have spoken to me and have touched me on a certain level.

As I dive deeper and deeper into this book, I learn that well, women don't really benefit from marriage as much as men do. I learn that there are still clans and ethnic groups in different parts of the world - Laos, especially - who encourage marriage not because two people love each other but because it is only through marriage that a community/clan would benefit. And what is that benefit, you ask? The never-ending production of more and more babies! But apart from what I learned (and I learned a lot), I've grown to admire the relationship Liz and Felipe have.

Reading how she describes her relationship with this amazing man reminds me of a quote from the movie Rumor Has It (2005), where Sarah (Jennifer Aniston) confronts the man whom all the women in her family have slept with by saying...

"I didn’t come here to tell you that I can’t live without you. I can live without you. I just don’t want to."

I find beauty in that quote alone because to love a person wholeheartedly and admit to being able to live without him/her takes courage, a whole bucketful of courage. I admire that. So much that if I ever fall in love, with the right person, I'd want to be able to know that I can live without him although I'd rather not. I want it to be up to me, instead of steering into the direction the wind blows me.