Time to marry
SINGLES by Karenina Yaptinchay
Manila Standard, P. B24, 17 May 2001

The unromantic truth is that not everyone marries only and entirely for love, although it is supposed to be on top of the many considerations a couple has to keep in mind before deciding to take the plunge.

It is not uncommon for people to ask me why, at this age of mine, I am still single. In fact, it is so common that it has already become a regular topic among my friends. It doesn't bother me one bit anymore but I must admit that there was a time that it did bother me big time.

The source of my distress then was not entirely because I was suddenly single. I was distressed because it was not exactly easy to tell people that I would not be single if my wedding pushed through. And once I tell them, it is almost automatic that they ask what in heaven's name happened.

Furthermore, I was distressed because aside from the fact that I was in the process of mending a broken heart, I was also struggling to accept that I was duped into thinking I had found and lost my lifetime partner.

But when I think about it now, I can only sigh in relief and congratulate myself for being able to get away from what would have been a lifetime nightmare.

After two years of practice and perfecting the art of telling people how I ended up as a singleton without bursting into tears, I decided to turn the tables around and started asking people why in heaven's name did they get married.

Initially, most of them were caught off guard and had to scrounge for answers. It's not that they didn't know why they got married. But unlike singles, married people are not accustomed to being asked about their civil status because everyone in this society is undoubtedly expected to get married sooner than later.

Not counting those who got married due to unexpected pregnancy, most of the married people I know told me that they got married because it was the right time to do so.

The right time? When I was a kid, I thought I would get married at 25, the age when my mother married my father. I used to think that getting married before you turn 25 is too early. I still do.

No one I talked to gave me an ultra-romantic statement like "I could not last one more day without making her my wife" or "I want to wake up beside her each day of the rest of my life" or something to that effect. It seems that getting married should be rational, logical and practical decision.

Being rational, logical, and practical, however, does not mean that the marriage decision was without passion and romance. Maybe my sources were just too embarrassed to reveal to me stuff most people would consider mushy and hopelessly romantic.

Perhaps it was a given. It is automatically assumed that one gets married for love, unless otherwise stated. When you swear to God that you will love and hold someone from that day forward, in sickness and in health, and till death do you part, you would want to do it with someone you love. No one in his or her right mind would marry someone merely for purely practical reasons. But then again, we see a lot of people who are not exactly in their right minds lately.

But granting that you find the right person, one that you could not live without, how do you decide when it is time to get married?

"I knew it was time when my boyfriend was assigned abroad," said a friend. After going out for more than six years already, they felt that the most practical thing to do at that time was to get married. But she admitted that they would have waited a couple more years if the assignment abroad did not present itself.

A male friend who got married at 35 told me that he and his girlfriend decided to tie the knot even only after a year together because they were "not getting any younger." His wife had already turned 30 and because they intend to raise a family of their own, they surely didn’t want to waste any time.

My best friend got married to her boyfriend of nine years as soon as they finished graduate school, just the way they planned.

"It came to appoint in my life when I could do anything I please. That's when I realized that it was time to get married," said one of my interviewees. To elaborate, my interviewee stressed that when he was still single, he could travel all over the world, stay in the office for as long as he wanted, go out whenever he pleased, or buy anything he ever wanted. But something was still missing, he said.

Analyzing all the responses I collected, I couldn't reach a half-decent conclusion as to when the right time to get married is. But I could definitely theorize that the time to get married is largely dependent on a couple's priorities and preference as well as on the situation they are in. The unromantic truth is that not everyone marries only and entirely for love, although it is supposed to be on top of many considerations one has to keep in mind before deciding to take the plunge. While it may be unromantic, it definitely is practical.

Excluding those who get married by force circumstance, a good number of the married people I talked to chose a particular time to get married, a time when it was practical to do so. "Besides, we were already sure we would get married sooner or later. So why not do it during the most practical time for us?" muses one of them. I know someone who scheduled her wedding according to the expiration of the lease for her apartment to save her a couple of month's worth of rent.

I find nothing wrong with choosing the most practical time to get married. What worries me is the absence of someone to marry. When you have no one but have already planned on when to get married (i.e. after purchase of real estate, receiving inheritance, winning elections), chances are the pressure to do so will be much greater.

A single friend said he could only think of marriage when he had already achieved the goals he had set out for himself. Until then, he would try darn hard to not get distracted by affairs of the heart. I have always seen this particular single friend of mine as too practical for his own good. Based on his schedule, he intends to get married five to six years from now. I wondered how he could be so sure that the right one would be available then. I hope he does not miss the chance to marry when he meets the right person.

Someone told me that no one could really be ready for marriage, despite the claims of happy couples. While it is true that there can be preparations in terms of real estate, career, or even educational plans, no one can really be too sure if one is ready emotionally. There is just no way of telling what marriage truly brings to a person or how it changes a person over time. But then again, what the hell do I know?

We can't deny that there are many reasons why people get married just as there are many reasons why people remain single. It's just that getting married is an expectation while remaining single, according to this society, is an aberration.

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