I was struck at the high level politics of the conversation, because a big part of my construct of marriage is very low level and personal. I noted in the conversation that tradition is tradition for a reason – it works. It may not work any more and that’s always something we have to think about, I was not advocating blindly follow tradition for its own sake, but before we do throw it out we should think hard about what we are tossing. Among other things, I think what makes marriage so useful in a selfish sense is that it is a path to personal growth, and its a kind of growth that leads to wisdom and fulfilment.

You can achieve significant personal growth in the ‘cauldron’ of marriage through intimacy, through commitment, through living life and facing its daily challenges, small or large, together (or not) There is something that comes of working together that is hard to get alone, and its not necessarily an easy thing to obtain, in fact I’d argue it takes a lot of hard work as does anything worth achieving. Its when you have differences that the growth opportunity is most available. While you can certainly be married and opt out of that (and not committing would be the biggest opt out, no judgement applied here), its pretty hard to have this kind of growth outside a committed relationship. We are social beings after all, and that’s why I think we obtain the most wisdom and maturity through working with each other.

I’d make the same argument about having kids, it provides a whole new set of growth opportunities that is pretty hard to access outside of parenthood.