Weddings vs Funerals

Since my first funeral, I've hated funerals.

I can't recall the first wedding I attended, but for many years, I could almost enjoy weddings because I got to see a lot of my friends.

But now, in the 21st century, I have to admit, I can hardly abide weddings.

I can suffer through funerals, which is, after all, what most funerals are about: suffering, loss, the end of life, the end of dreams, the sadness of parting.

But weddings are just so essentially phony, to their core.

Funerals, at least, make sense. They are the opposite of phony. They are the real deal. No denying what a funeral means.  There is no doubt about the event they mark, and there is honesty about what happened and no dispute: Someone died. 

But as Mark Twain once asked: Why is it we rejoice at weddings and cry at funerals? Is it because we are not the one involved?

For some, of course, death is a release, a welcomed end to suffering. Hopefully, a re launch.

But weddings are such a sham.
Once upon a time, there was a real divide between the virginal, prenuptial life and the breaking of the virginal seal on the wedding night and the connecting of genetic material and blood lines. 

Now, not so much. 

Women, if they are lucky and well brought up, start having sex in their teens and will look forward to relationships with a succession of men over their lives, having children with different men if they can afford to, and often even if they cannot afford to.

A wedding now simply marks a public statement about a temporary relationship entered into during  your second or third decade with high hopes (often held by both parties, but often not) and well understood to be likely temporary. 

As Betty Freedan noted in the Feminine Mystique, all this began to be examined around 1964, when women who had been educated, allowed to enter the greater world beyond the home found themselves trapped in suburban houses, with kids, and told they would and should be happy if they got enough stuff in their kitchen, a nice car, a white picket fence and a PTA meeting to go to.

But women discovered this was a pretty boring and depressing life in a gilded cage, not at all rewarding and the term "desperate housewife" gained real currency.

The whole marriage trap unraveled during the sixties and it has never been the same since.

There are, of course, good marriages, but they are actually the exception.

If organized religion were not dominant in most weddings, the ceremony would likely say, "Here is a couple who like each other, will have children and each will pursue a life and hopefully, they'll be happy, at least long enough to raise the kids and get them out of the house. After that, well, if they are happy, bless them, if not, new adventures." 

But what do we hear from the pastors and priests?  God has a plan. God has chosen your mate for you. What God has placed together let no man set asunder. God wants these people to be together. 

Where is the free will of the man and the woman involved? It was all written for them. Fated. 

Ugh.

If the Phantom were elected benign dictator, among the first day's acts would be an executive order to de-institutionalize marriage. If you want your party, your day as the primadona in the spot light, throw yourself a party. Call it a wedding. But please don't expect the rest of us to do more than drink your champagne and dance to your band that night. 

After that, you are, as new couples have always actually been, on your own.