Radical Romance
An Argument for Coalescence over Marriage
Love has been the most significant source of inspiration, hope, and motivation throughout my life. While this isn’t to say that I have been a particularly good lover or that I successfully express this side of myself, I would say that I am a romantic at heart. As such, I tend to be extraordinarily serious, chalant, and downright delusional regarding romantic relationships.
However, despite this trait, the idea of marriage and the institution thereof have never resonated with me and have never felt sufficient. My issue goes deeper than the common yet undoubtedly valid critiques leveled against it, such as its patriarchal and heteronormative nature.
Marriage is, in essence, a bond between two or more discrete individuals, a recognition of one's chosen union with another.
Nevertheless, this is not satisfactory, both socially and ontologically.
Instead, I believe that true love, the type worth living for, is the dissolution of separation. It is a force through which we might dispel the illusion of individuality, and, as such, the way we love each other should reflect this.
In this post, I want to discuss an idea that I, and probably many others, have had about a possible alternative to marriage and a dynamic that I wish to pursue with whoever I come to love in life: An ontological commitment and shared identity.
The Foundations for this Idea
As I’ve written in a previous post, I firmly believe in relational metaphysics and the idea of immanence. I think that all things are fundamentally connected and ontologically interdependent.
Or, without using philosophy jargon, that nothing exists in isolation—nothing could exist in isolation.
We are not these lone particles drifting through space that occasionally bounce or rub against each other. We are ever-changing nexuses of relation, marked with the history of all that was, is, and will become.
E pluribus unum.
There is no discrete person, no individual. There are but expressions of the whole.
Thus, when you look into your lover's eyes, you do not look into eyes separate from yours. You look into your own, and they into theirs.
Where Marriage Fails
Keen among you will have already seen where my issue with marriage lies, but let’s explore it anyway.
Because marriage operates on the notion that two or more individuals are coming together, despite already being a part of the same whole, it is inherently possessive rather than illuminating, as it should be.
It is a category error.
Something cannot be owned by a part of itself, just as the brain does not own the body, or humans do not own nature. All depend on each other; there is no hierarchy other than the ones we create. To say otherwise is merely hubris, or a misunderstanding of the nature of what is.
The Alternative
Having deconstructed marriage, it is necessary to conceive of something closer to the truth. Let us think of a clearer vision, less steeped in māyā or illusion.
I believe that one way toward this is a coalescence of identity, a recognition of one's inseparability from another or others. People may naturally go together as fingers go together in a hand or eyes on a face.
Yet, despite being in separate localities, they are still part of the same whole. They are complementary processes; different, but working and being together to be something greater. Unlike the body, however, people do not always come from the same area and must find each other, like sperm and egg or pollen and a bee.
Their difference is essential for their unity.
It is, then, that when you truly love someone, it is within them that you not only see yourself, as I have said, but also that you see the world, yourself included.
Of course, while I use dualistic language, that isn’t to imply that people always come in twos. I do, but many do not. Nor must love reproduce anything beyond itself.
What This Might Look Like
One of my favorite quotes from history—whether or not it is accurate, I cannot say—is attributed to Alexander the Great. When meeting with Queen Mother Sisygambis, the mother of the King of Persia, he did so with his best friend and, some say, his lover, Hephaestion.
Thinking he was Alexander, Sisygambis bowed to Hephaestion and was embarrassed by her mistake. Alexander reassured her, saying, “Never mind, Mother, for he too is Alexander.”
Even if he didn’t say this, it was a source of revelation for me. None of the depictions of love or connection has touched me so profoundly. As such, I believe it is worth emulation.
That is why, when it comes time to perform a ceremony to recognize my oneness with another, I wish to give up my birth name, the name of my father, the name given to a mere part of me, and take on a new name that I will share with my other half—they with whom my identity is shared.
I am incomplete without the person I will come to meet and love. That is not to say that I am not, in this form, valuable or worthy, of course, but merely to say that I do not exist without them, whoever they are.
Thus, when I speak of my lover, I will not call them my husband or wife, nor will they call me such names. Instead, I will look upon them and see them for who they are and who I am: myself. We will live as we exist: as one.
Potential Challenges
Of course, this alternative to marriage is not without its issues.
For one, while recognizing our interdependence is essential, we are yet bound by the hierarchies and social structures that have been imposed upon us. While two people may share the same identity, they may be unjustly discriminated against for the identities that society has affixed.
Thus, we must recognize the strife some of us endure until we can ensure total equality and equity among our people. Struggle cannot be erased; it can only be healed and will take time.
To love without considering struggle and difference is not love at all. It is domination.
Further, becoming one does not justify acting against one's own interest, such as acting against another with whom one shares their identity without consent or with malice, for to do so would be incongruent with love.
One might think of a body that falsely recognizes a part of itself, like the eyes, as a foreign body and attacks it. It does so in vain because it is entirely based on a misunderstanding.
Lastly, I do not write this as a definitive end, that no further progress can be made past this, not in the slightest. One day, I pray that all boundaries fall; that we recognize our connection to each other and the world around us.
We have caged ourselves, this institution our warden, and have suffered the torture of isolation for false comfort and control. But we don’t have to live like this.
A better future is possible, together.