The Marriage of Nature

I have been married twice. It's funny how a failed marriage taints a person. You know those little boxes that you have to tick when you are filling out some form? I have often wondered why the bank wants to know if I am divorced when I want a loan or an account. When I meet a girl for the first time, I feel as though I have to hide the fact that I have been married twice. You see, I just don't want her to get the wrong idea . When you tell someone that you have been previously married there is a kind of life-long stigma attached. You will always be someone's ex-husband. However, I have recently discovered that such a stigma is more unfair when you consider that many people have been or are married and don't even know it.

Both of my marriages lasted less than two years. When the union dissolved the girl simply packed her things and disappeared from my life forever. There were no children, no joint assets, none of the usual chaos associated with divorce. She just left. My marriages were no more than government approved and church sanctioned living together.

I have known couples who have lived together two or three times longer than I was married, and yet should they break-up and return to single life, they can still tick that box next to the word "Single" while I am meant to tick "Divorced". They have an ex-partner who will eventually fade into memory as an ex-girlfriend, while I have an ex-wife for the rest of my days. No wonder more and more couples are choosing to forego the institution of marriage. The whole idea of such a union seems to have become moot. Yet, things are not as simple as they appear.

Over the past several months I have been studying different aspects of human relationships and sexuality. This has brought me to a very interesting conclusion. People choose not to enter into marriage because of a fear of commitment, or they choose to live with their significant other out of current interest but would never want to marry them for what ever reason. However, even though the decision to live with someone as a partner may avoid the human institution of marriage, the couple have in fact become man and wife whether they know it or not.

There is a story in the Bible where Jesus psychically points out to a prostitute that she has many husbands. In the ancient Irish Brehon Law there are seven types of marriage, two of which being "marriage of visitation with parental consent" and "marriage of visitation without parental consent". In Western culture we still speak of "consummating the marriage". The wedding before the religious figure or judge does not create the marriage. Signing the document does not create the marriage. These are just the institutionalised religious or legal aspects. What creates the marriage is the sex.

I was taught in the Pentecostal church of my youth that sex was a union of souls. One admonishment against "sport sex" was this idea that when souls are being united and ripped apart over and over again, it causes deep psychological damage to a person. I have long since come to disagree with this notion, but I have recently come to discover that there is more truth to it than I had suspected.

Our understanding of the human animal continues to grow. Just as our technological advances have progressed in leaps and bounds, so too has our understanding of human psychology and biology. We have found that there is far more to sex than "Insert tab A into slot B - Repeat."

Nature cares nothing about human laws, institutions, rituals, preconceived notions, entertainment, or religious beliefs. Love and Sex comes down to one thing in the eyes of Nature -- children. This is not to say that we are bound to the letter of Nature's laws. Human technology is based on understanding Nature's laws and using them to our purposes. Nature may intend sex for procreation, but humans have made it into an art. I have no problem with that. However, this does not give license to pretend that these laws don't exist or that there won't be dire consequences if we slip-up.

Scientist have discovered that prolonged sexual partnerships, and I'm not talking about one night stands or occasional flings here, lead to the development of deep psychological bonds between couples. There are a host of chemical agents at work within the human body all designed to strengthen the pair bond for the purpose of procreating and raising children. In other words, once you start having regular sex with someone exclusively, your bodies go to work to essentially "marry" you, strengthening that bond and uniting your souls.

I'll skip over discussing some of these chemicals in the brain, such as dopamine and serotonin, and go right to the scary one. It's a group of fatty acids called copulins and they read like something out of science fiction. Men beware.

Basically it works like this. When the penis enters the vagina, the vaginal wall secretes a chemical to hold it in place, then another chemical opens the penile duct so the copulins enter through the penis. They gather in the gonads to eventually enter the blood stream and go straight to the male brain. Once there, the copulins mimic the man's natural polypeptides, the neurotransmitters linking the hypothalamus and the rest of the brain and body, and supplant the host's neurotransmitters.

Copulins make the male highly open to her suggestions to the point of "hypnosis" or "brainwashing". It is believed that the purpose of this is to encourage bonding and even the odds between the stronger male and the female making him more docile, giving, and nurturing towards her. It seems to explain why macho men become "pussy whipped" in a prolonged relationship. Also, copulins appear to be addictive. For more detailed information on copulins, here is the link…www.copulins.freeservers.com

Let's take a moment to look at a few cultural stereotypes. In the film, Top Hat, Fred Astaire sings of being "footloose and fancy free" is praise of his devout bachelorhood. In My Fair Lady, Professor Higgins extols these same joys when he declares, "I will never let a woman in my life." There is this image of Man and his Freedom liked to being a bachelor. Likewise, there is the stereotype of the woman out to ensnare the man into marriage through her sexuality and turning him into the henpecked, brow-beaten, soul-destroyed husband.

Biology seems to support this. The Man is happy and solitary until his desires get the better of him and he exposes himself to the Venus Flytrap that is the walking chemical lab of Woman. The next thing he knows the jaws close in and his freedom is replaced by responsibility to wife and eventually kids.

I do not believe that we are stuck with these stereotypes. Yes, the bachelor is free to live his life as he chooses and by his own terms, but I enjoy the female touch and companionship in my life. I would prefer to have that partner without loosing my soul in the process. So perhaps it is rather like driving under the influence of alcohol. You know that your brain in full of chemicals, so compensate and pay special attention to what you are doing. You keep the course without getting in an accident in the process.

There are those psychologists who would argue that humans are hardwired for infidelity, however it seems that we are also hardwired for forming pair bonds. So it seems that Nature wants you procreate and raise offspring by any means necessary.

Once upon a time it was only socially acceptable to have sex within the institution of marriage, but then came free love and it has become increasingly freer and freer with each generation since. Now we live in a time of broken relationships. According to hypnotherapist Paul McKenna, the average relationship today lasts seven years and there is very little incentive for people to work through issues that arise within the relationship. The result is the pair bond being ripped asunder. This is more than just a heartbreak. It is suddenly going cold turkey from a chemical and behavioral addiction while at the same time adjusting to the loss of a loved one. Its like quitting heroine and smoking cigarettes on the same day that both your parents and your best friend die.

Perhaps in the light of this new understanding and current social forces, we should not take the social institution of marriage so seriously and we should begin taking the natural biology of marriage more seriously.

When you establish an on-going, exclusive, live-in sexual relationship with someone, your body takes it as its cue to begin forming the pair bond whether you consciously choose to "marry" this person or not, whether you are compatible or not, whether you share values or not, whether this person is right or good for you or not, and whether you want children with this person or not. Your head will get pumped full of all the required chemical necessary to create the state of marriage.

However, these other factors do play a part and they will begin to assert themselves when the chemistry lab calms down and the fog clears. At this point you may choose to continue the relationship or not. You may remain married or divorce.

I have been married twice, but that is not exactly true. There was another relationship that lasted roughly the same amount of time as the two marriages. We never married and I would say that I connected and bonded with her more closely than I had with my ex-wives and the separation was far more painful and damaging for me. If we see marriage as the social manifestation of human biology and not as a religious or legal institution, then you might say that I have been married three times.

I carry the stigma of divorce, and yet I have known people who have moved from marriage to marriage to marriage without ever being expected to tick the "Divorced" box. People who have lived joint lives as man and wife for one, two, four, or seven years, but have never been "married" in the eyes of Church and State. I think its high time these people were held accountable for their marriages of Nature.

And yet referring to one's ex-partner or ex-live-in lover hardly carries the same punch as saying ex-wife or ex-husband, and it probably never will. By the same token, I wonder how many people would look at their current partner and could proudly declare them to the world to be their husband or wife. Perhaps if society credited the sexual pair bond with the care, caution, status, and respect that it warrants, the union would not be taken so flippantly.

I have been married three times. So how many times have you been married?