The union of marriage is a sanctimonious institution that has effectively been the glue that has bound our species for millennia. Without that legal commitment, which has basically stood as a contract between two people to agree to love each other til death do them part, we’d be an eight-billion-person planet full of nothing but singles ready to mingle. 

That’s a scary thought.

And we all know that uninterrupted love to the very end is fairly unrealistic, but that’s why you’ve gotta lock that “right one” down before someone else swoops in and changes their mind. And it shows the old man in the golden throne chillin’ on cloud nineteen with a Mai Tai in one hand and a heavenly joint in the other that you’re a team player who abides by the scriptures.

You want to make it past the pearly gates to cloud sixty-nine, right?

Because matrimony is a religious indoctrination, not entirely based upon love, but in many ways necessary for the order that allows for species to proliferate. People respond well to being given direction and told where to conform. And even though every animal in the kingdom requires a mate of opposite gender to make a baby, we are the only ones who feel the vital necessity to ink it onto paper.

And even if you’re an asshole like me who believes that this contract is a formality initiated by the church to keep us donating our tithes while raising future tithers, there is no escaping the fact that each and every one of us is beholden to convenience. 

It’s why we sign with blood when committing to our internet provider. 

Because this is our conduit to most of the world’s information. Including websites that contain salacious acts of naughtiness.

Which could keep you married. Or not.