Should we treat marriage as a temporary contract with a date-to-renew and the opportunity to upgrade to a new partner?
A report in the Daily Mail says ‘a quarter of 18 to 24 year-olds think marriage should be a temporary contract’, and I’m definitely one of them.
Personally, I think this is a good idea because I believe that we don’t have only one soulmate in life. How ridiculous to think that out of eight billion people we are only allowed one each!
In the Daily Mail, Inderdeep Bains also reports that ‘a third’ of young people ‘backed polygamy’, i.e. being married to more than one person at the same time. Of course it’s controversial, not least because polygamy has traditionally entailed a dominant male lording it over a houseful of subordinate women. But if you take out the patriarchal trappings, I believe that it’s ok to be into polygamy. I mean, how many people know their significant other is cheating and choose to ignore it? Why not just label the relationship as polygamous, and cut out the lying?
Come to think of it, why don’t we cut out the term ‘marriage’ and agree to be more open-minded about relationships? And our open-mindedness should start by seeing relationships as open-ended rather than a life-term.
You don’t sign a contract to keep the same phone for the rest of your life, so why should a sexual partner be seen as your one-and-only?
Don’t we all want to live an interesting life?
