The Problem With Marriage

No, this isn't about any problem I have with the institution of marriage in real life, of course. Now, to quote the comedian Jerry Seinfeld, I am amazed that it happens so often, but I like the idea of it. And the Best Man speech I gave was pretty amazing, I have to say. There are also a few reasons I dislike marriage, such as the belief that being married makes you some kind of relationship expert (I think we've all known a few people under that delusion). And there's the related matter of kids, since having children makes otherwise interesting, engaging people into the most boring dullards imaginable (they end up thinking their own kids are the most interesting topic of conversation for all time).

But no, I'm referring to the institution of marriage within a larger fictional work. Whenever characters get married in a work of fiction, it will typically kill the story. Sitcoms are the biggest example of this concept, if you can call them actual stories (not good ones, certainly). To most writers, the 'will they, won't they' romantic tension  between any two characters who could conceivably end up together drives most romantic plots or subplots.  Then, when characters get married, that tension goes away. They will. In fact, they did. The relationship is over

But the problem is that relationships don't end with marriage. If anything, the day to day stresses amongst married people are higher. Married people can afford to really fight without holding much back, since there's that contractual obligation to stay with each other. So if you're looking for conflict (and let's face it, what writer isn't?), it doesn't need to stop because they exchanged some vows. 

Worse, other stories, the ones that don't depend on what-if romantic tension, also end whenever someone gets married. Because the marriage allows the characters to live happily ever after or something. In fiction, marriage carries the stink of respectability and responsibility. And often, responsible fictional characters are boring fictional characters.  But real life tells us that a wife (or husband) and kids don't stop people from doing all the stupid and interesting things that make a good story.

Marriage in fiction needs a good marketing campaign to improve its image. Sometimes characters start married and their stories are fine (divorced is also a good compromise for older protagonists, usually women - I don't know why, maybe it's a demographic thing), but characters whenever characters end up getting married it typically indicates that the stories are going downhill (even Vorkosigan, mentioned in an earlier post, suffers from this).

My own work tries to avoid some of this. In my fantasy series, I used the event of one of the characters getting married to show how up he's changed, and also to reveal just how much he didn't. He continues to be selfish and violent, but it is tempered somewhat; to be fair, it could also just be the fact that he's five years older from his last encounter with the viewpoint character as well. But being married hasn't really stopped the character from being interesting; it even motivates him, and not in the stupid "loved ones in danger" trope either. He now has more of a stake in the future of the world, so he ends up being a little more proactive in changing it.

And as a side benefit, his wife ended up as a far more interesting character than I initially thought, enough that I wrote a short story starring her after she sold her soul to the devil (and her attempt to reclaim it). She also isn't one of those people who claims to love someone, but then hates everything about what they do, or separates them from every other person in the world. She knows that she's probably going to outlive her husband, but she'd much rather have him die young than live as a shadow of himself.

Now, one of the other problems I have with fictional marriage is that everyone in fiction seems to marry either their high school sweetheart (or the girl they wished was their high school sweetheart). It's a fact: teenagers are idiots.  I don't know the exact stats, but I can guess that most people move beyond the boy or girl they dated in high school.