Should Long-Term Couples NOT Get Married? - Divorce Lawyer James Sexton

Do you think that we should normalize long-term relationships where marriage is not the end goal? — I think we should be honest about what marriage is. Marriage is a thing we put on top of a certain kind of romantic love cuz we think it's going to keep it safe. But really, what marriage is a government creation. That's all it is. I definitely don't think that marriage and love have a causal relationship. And I don't even think they have a correlation that's particularly strong. But I think we feel this connection to a person. It's real. There's no denying it. And we want to hold on to it. I think the Buddhists aren't wrong that the great pain of our life is we feel joy and we go, I want this to last forever. And in reality, like you will never be able to hold on to joy forever. Like impermanence is everything. Pain is temporary. Joy is temporary. Pain is something you have to learn to live with. If you don't find joy in the snow, you will have less joy in your life and precisely the same amount of snow. So if you don't find peace and joy in the midst of pain, like you'll have less peace and joy in your life and precisely the same amount of pain. So I really believe that marriage is about trying to use a technology to protect something that can't really be protected. I love that we try to do it because it's like a prayer like please let this last forever. But like everything, it's like starts out as a good idea and then it metastasizes into this giant steaming pile of horseshit.