A Marriage Proposal

Many people like to make big ceremonies out of their weddings. All their creative energy and planning skills go into producing the Event. They place highest priority on coordinating colors, on designing place cards, on rallying musicians and photographers and ushers and bridesmaids into one big extravaganza.

I’m not that sort. If I should ever get married, I’d like the occasion to be as low-key as possible – a drop-in at the Courthouse. When I first read Shakespeare’s MacBeth, I was moved by the description of the way in which the Thane of Cawdor went to his death. Malcolm, King Duncan’s son, famously said of the purportedly traitorous Cawdor: 

Nothing in his life

Became him like the leaving it. He died

As one that had been studied in his death

To throw away the dearest thing he owed

As ’twere a careless trifle.

 

Not that I equate getting married with being executed (unlike what any number of stand-up comics would claim). But I liked the idea of doing momentous things simply, without fanfare. It seemed to me that a person couldn’t be very committed to taking a step if he needed a big production to mark the passage. That inflation of the act into extravaganza seemed as if it might be necessary to impress an otherwise luke-warm individual with the gravity of the proceedings. Indeed, in most cases, that could be the point of the ceremonies that most cultures, from the tribal to the most modern, make out of certain decisions. Something that might have been casual becomes carved in stone by the mammoth investment attached to it. After all the public hoopla, a person can’t easily back out of such a celebrated decision. After all those invitations, all those gifts – an individual feels committed to staying committed for a while at least.

Ah, but I never thought I would need that kind of external prod. I thought that when I loved, I would do so whole-heartedly, with so much intrinsic fervor, that I could make a trifle out of the ceremonial binding itself. Drop into the Courthouse for a second – and be bound forever. Take that one step forward and plunge into the infinite. Entering so merely into something so mammoth was the thrill for me.

I’m reconciled to the fact though that it’s different for most people. They want what at least initially seems like the fun of all that planning, and then they want the enforcement that a big planned event gives to their decision. But, as most talk show hosts preach to their Bridezilla (and sometimes Groomzilla) guests – there’s the danger of making the wedding, rather than the marriage, the point of it all. While they are minutely color-coordinating flowers and placemats, they overlook their partners completely. They know the ingredients they want in their California sushi rolls, but there’s so much they don’t know about the people with whom they’ll presumably be spending the rest of their lives.

If I were in charge, I’d correct that state of affairs with a simple expedient. I would require that everyone contemplating marriage be required to submit a biography of their prospective spouse before tying the knot. No biography – no marriage license. I would enforce this requirement with a special category of courthouse employees, perhaps called “Readers.” They would be given the task of reviewing the biographies submitted in contemplation of marriage, make sure they were earnest attempts, and, as far as possible, try to ensure that they were actually produced by the person signing off on them rather than by some paid proxy.

Although these government employees might be called “Readers,” I don’t mean that all the biographies would have to be written. Many people just aren’t good with words. Many couldn’t sufficiently read or write, and that’s OK. But a person could compose a song, get together a photo collage, or make a movie video illustrating their partner’s history. There’s a baby picture of Mary, segueing into a round-about video of the place where she was born and the first home she was brought to. There’s a picture of Michael standing scrawny and abashed among the beefier members of his high school swim team, segueing into a picture of the home gym his parents installed in their basement and that still exists there, a fine scaffolding for cobwebs.

In the process of creating these biographies, people might answer a lot of crucial questions about each other, questions that they oddly enough had not already thought to ask. Had his parents been poor and forced to lead a scrounging life, thereby making him all the more determined to buy the best of everything as soon as he got a chance? Would he now be inclined to want to make a triumphal, avenging display of wealth? Or alternatively, did that early experience impress him with a similarly penny-pinching habit? Did she grow up in a household of rowdy siblings, thereby leaving her determined to have a nice, quiet, childless household? Or alternatively, will she want to replicate the liveliness of that upbringing with a large brood of her own?

It’s amazing how often people enter into marriage without any sense of where their partners stand on these basic issues. The resulting disagreements can be the source of major rifts in marriages. But in the process of producing a thorough, earnest biography of a prospective partner, many of these fault lines can be detected early – and either reconciled, or result in wise dis-engagement.

Then I would impose the same requirement at the other end of marriage. Before a couple could be granted a divorce, I would require that each partner produce an up-dated biography of the other. This would make the people look at each other one last time. It would call for each partner to step outside of himself or herself for a while, to step outside the immediate anger and disappointment and consider the way the other person had come since the start of the marriage. Once again, “Readers” or “Reviewers” could be employed to try to insure as much as possible that honest attempts had been made to consider the other person’s history and point of view before a divorce would be granted.

There would be other benefits to requiring such biographical attempts before any marital rite of passage. It would give young people a reason to go more diligently about learning how to express themselves, whether in schools or as autodidacts. It would give learners a concrete, additional reason to master reading and writing, art and observation.

Rather than simply focusing on what kind of clothes they might like to wear at their wedding ceremonies, boys and girls could also be focused on how they might adequately prepare themselves to produce a biography of their future mates. Rather than just preparing themselves to get jobs, earn a living, and support a family, young people would realize they had the additional obligation of developing some expressive talent – something that would make them outward-looking, interesting and interested individuals. In the same way that the knowledge that they might be drafted into defending their Country once gave some boys an incentive to master certain skills – this projected requirement attached to getting married might encourage young people to prepare themselves in broader ways. It would give meaning and focus to their studies and provide an answer to the perennial grumpy question, “Why do I have to learn all this stuff about writing (or history, or grammar, or etc., etc.)?” The requirement of producing a biography would give a relevance to acquiring such understandings, and would encourage young people to develop some longer-range facility at expressing themselves, rather than simply day-dreaming a brief expertise in coordinating reception banners and bridesmaids’ dresses.

Again, people need not be aimed at producing Boswellian biographies. Large vocabularies and a way with words just might not be the way the minds of many individuals work. But almost everyone has some unique talent in some medium, some way of crystallizing their observations. So whether the “biography” they come up with is indeed a traditional Boswellian effort, or whether it’s a charm bracelet or a photo album – as long as it’s earnest, individual, and considered, it would qualify to grant them the marriage license, or, alas, the divorce decree.

But in any case, all the attention would no longer be compacted into the diamond presented at the altar. The requirement of a biography would spread an individual’s attention more broadly into the whole run of his or her life with another. It really would help accomplish what all the television talk show hosts try to accomplish with just their closing words of advice. It would encourage people to really look at their partners long-range, and not just preoccupy themselves with the one day of spectacle. It would encourage people to consider their marriages at large, and not just get tied into knots over the minutiae of their weddings.