If we could ask men and women from all different periods of human history what the point of getting married was, many of us might be surprised at how different their answers would be from the ones we’d give today.
We might hear things like:
* “My family needs the dowry.”
* “How else am I going to get sex?”
* “Marrying a man is the only way to support myself and my children.”
* “Taking care of a household is a full-time job, and I can’t do it alone.”
* “I have to get married to produce legitimate heirs.”
* “It’s wrong to have sex outside of marriage.”
* “If I had a child outside of marriage, they’d be a bastard, and I wouldn’t want the stigma for my child or me.”
* “We need to join our families together.”
* “There’s something wrong with people that don’t get married.”
* “Having children inside of marriage is the only way to continue the family name.”
* “A man and a woman working together and producing children to help the family have a better chance of survival than one person alone.”
In other word…
