The Social Focus Of Marriage

Logically and Biblically speaking, marriage is about individual people committing to each other out of genuine willingness after rational reflection.  Anything less is shallow, insincere, or dangerous for the health of the relationship.  While this is far from the most controversial logical or Biblical fact about marriage, what follows from it may not be acknowledged even by those who discover the former.  An authentic marriage is about the parties involved mutually choosing each other for the other partner's sake, not for the sake of appeasing those outside of the relationship.

There can be social benefits that marriage brings, of course, but, given that two people are both rational and morally equal, marriage is at its core an individualistic relationship.  A marriage can exist without those outside of it and can even exist apart from a community context, as a marriage relationship is not about legal standing or public recognition, but it cannot exist without the partners who have come together.  It is by definition about the union of partners before it is about anyone outside of the marriage at all.  Despite this, there is no shortage of outsiders who act as if their arbitrary perceptions and expectations should guide how couples carry themselves or whether they remain together in the first place.

The basic concept of marriage is not about pleasing or benefitting the families of either partner.  In fact, the satisfaction of either partner's family is not only far from the center of marriage, but it is also totally irrelevant to the concept of marriage in itself.  Some people will certainly hope they have not offended their family in choosing a specific marriage partner, and there is nothing inherently asinine about this.  Treating family affairs as if they are anything more than an optional and sometimes pleasant afterthought only honored out of subjective preference or sheer pragmatism (in the case of partners trying to escape severely dysfunctional families) is where the error begins.

There is nothing in the Bible holding that marriage is first and foremost about one's biological family.  More importantly, there is nothing about marriage from which it logically follows that a marriage is about family members outside of the relationship whatsoever.  Their wishes can be safely disregarded in many cases, as the only things a rational marriage is built on other than mutual affection or willingness is reason and shared moral priorities.  A parent's or sibling's approval is a red herring to whether a marriage is based on rationality.