Asexuality and Marriage

[The A Life Team]

Hey everyone!

Sorry this week's poll is showing up so late. In this episode, the team pops the question- is marriage relevant to asexuals? Why would anyone get married if not for sex? We also digress all over the place, and plan our own 'A Life' wedding... maybe.

~The A Life Team

[jrackula]

There is of course more than just sex to get married for. Some people love each other so much that they want to make sure that when they separate, they acquire half of their former love's possessions. Some people get paid more if they are married. Some people do it for unselfish reasons though too...I suppose

If I am to get married, it's because for me it would be a spiritual experience being joined with my love in a metaphysical way. Of course that's not the situation for everyone, but at least from my perspective in that way it would hold the same meaning as it would to any sexual person who married for the same reason. If someone just married for sex (which would baffle me since hardly anyone is celibate and looking for a good lay all at once) then of course it wouldn't matter to us, but there are too many reasons outside of it for every person to say it's completely irrelevant to us.

[Blerdivor]

Marriage in an institution of tax incentives and sentimentality and tradition. So it depends on the individual.

[kakkobean]

I believe that marriage, whether you approach it from the religious "two people, one mind" perspective or the "let's share tax rights!" perspective, marriage as a concept and a potential commitment are relevant to those who seek it, and not really a problem for those who couldn't give a crap--just like some sexual people aren't meant to be married, there are asexuals who are probably happier off not committing themselves to that kind of relationship, and vice versa.

There are a few things I feel I should bring up regarding the "why marry if you're not going to have sex" point. Point one: the subject of sex before marriage has always been a subject that has bothered me, since I feel like I won't really be having much sex even after I theoretically tie the knot and have trouble seeing the point of the act outside of reproduction (and I plan on adopting to avoid that scenario). Yet, I understand that while some people feel that sex=marriage, there are other people who feel that you should "practice" before you get there, or something like that. My dad once told me that you HAVE to have sex before marriage, otherwise you might get stuck married to someone who sucks in bed, as if sex is somehow supposed to be the glue that keeps a marriage together. Granted, he's a diagnosed sex addict, and there is a very good reason why my parents are divorced now, so. My mom told me that you have to experiment before you get married to...well, she didn't really give me a reason so much as tell me that I should. My older brother, who's probably the nicest religious person I know, told me that I should wait, yet I'm pretty sure he didn't if his confessions regarding the approximate mathematical equation regarding the relationship to masturbation versus having a girlfriend are any indication.

There was one time where I had to participate in a debate at my catholic high school regarding whether or not sex before marriage was acceptable or not, with the girls on the "no" side and the boys on the "yes" side (why, school, must you reinforce the stereotype?!). I wasn't on the original debating team, but I was allowed up to switch out with someone from the main team. I had wanted to provide a counterargument to the opposing team's point of "what does god have to do with marriage?" with the point that what other kind of marriage did they know about outside of the Christian tradition, but instead I ended up blurting out that sex and marriage are not the same thing, and that gosh darnit sex isn't everything. I felt really embarrassed after I got up there and did nothing but say sex about fifteen times within the span of a minute, but even worse because everyone on both sides of the argument (and the classroom) laughed at me. It seems ridiculous that people so close to the age of being capable of marriage should be so blind to the fact that relationships take work, and that sex isn't the magical glue that can fix every potential problem a marriage may be faced with.

As for how this question has been asked in the media, I'll cite this one show I used to watch before I lost contact with basic cable. WB 20 used to have this sitcom called "Reba" based pretty much all around the fact that the main character was played by a famous country singer Reba, yet it actually managed to present pretty valid points on the problems of marriage vs sex. So, for one, Reba is divorced with kids, yet she's still in contact with her cheating ex-husband who's now married to a woman that she doesn't really see eye to eye with. For two, she has a daughter that's pregnant and engaged to the father of the kid aka her boyfriend (against Reba's wishes). The show already sets itself up as one of those "we're going to ask the sex and marriage question a lot, just a warning" kind of show, but one episode i particular stuck out to me. There's one time where a high school couple consults Reba about getting married because they want to have sex, and Reba tells them "hell no", and then goes into a rant about how marriage is a special ceremony and is about commitment to your partner and being in love and stuff along those lines. Later, she finds that the teens ended up getting caught by their parents about to have sex some time after she had her little rant. She ends up nearly losing her job over it, and the principal of the school tells her that she shouldn't have told them to have sex before being married, to which Reba basically gives her the finger and says that no one should get married just to have sex because marriage is so much more than that. I don't remember how the episode ends, but I was surprised at the insight, I guess, since no other sitcom I'd ever seen up to that point has ever made that point so clearly.

So, yes, I believe that marriage can be relevant to asexual people as well as not being relevant, because though some people might disagree, marriage isn't about sex.

[Gethenian]

Marriage is certainly relevant. It's about more than sex. The word "marriage" literally means the joining of separate things into a whole -- two individuals into a family unit. Marriage is not about sex. Marriage is about defining social bonds. It is nobody's business what goes on, sexually, between married partners, and indeed, there have been many periods in cultural history where it was not PROPER for a married couple to share one bed.

The point of marriage is to create a legally and socially recognized bond that is permanent regardless of any circumstances they are in -- regardless of wealth, living conditions, sexuality, or anything else -- until both partners agree to dissolve it. A marriage between any persons of any gender, sexuality, race, social status, or anything else gives those partners validity to be recognized as something more than just sexual or romantic or domestic partners. Although religion has adopted the term, religion does not OWN the term, and a marriage is not primarily a religious institution, as much as various religious groups would like for people to believe it is. The meaningfulness of marriage is in the basic definition. To get married is to create a whole from what was once separate parts. A whole life, a whole future, a unity of understanding, of desire, of cooperation, of love, of friendship, of income, of identity... a marriage is the acceptance of another person as a part of your life, and to be accepted as a part of theirs, and signals others to then work off the assumption that that mutual acceptance may be recognized as a family unit, as something stable, permanent, and safe. That is absolutely relevant to asexuals, as equally as it can ever be for sexual persons.