Why I'm a Husband

Continuing on the theme of exploring my self descriptives on this post, I'll hit one that should be one and done.  But you never know.  I may re-visit it at times.

A husband is half of a legal coupling of two people.  Marriage is unique in American culture in that it is both a civil and religious institution.  I care nothing about the religious institution.  See my post(s) on Why I'm an Atheist for a better picture on that.  What I'm talking about is the civil institution of husband.

The legal status of husband means I share things with my wife.  Not relationship things.  Legal things.  Home ownership has a special status for married people.  There's greater protection against seizure than than there is for one person or groups of people not married owning real property.  If I get into a pile of debt, my home is protected because my wife's interest in the home can't be severed from mine and the home can't be sold to pay my debts.  I have priority in making legal decisions for my wife.  I'm presupposed to be the father of my children.  I have inheritance priority should my wife die.  I have a strong position to challenge a will she might have that leaves me nothing.  Same goes for her if any of these things are reversed.  It's a co-equal position with no superiorty of one to the other. 

That's why couples, gay or straight, who aren't married are more vulnerable, legally.  Like most people I joke about society letting gays get married because they should enjoy divorce just like straight couples, but divorce isn't why people get married (other than a few particularly mercenary people, I suppose). 

I love my wife and would live with her even were she not my wife.  In fact, there's no reason for me to get married just to live with her and have children.  I can't do that without any state involvement at all.  But involving the state in our relationship by getting married provides far too many benefits to ignore.  The only detriment is the cumbersome nature of divorce that makes it difficult to leave quickly, in the legal sense, from the relationship.  But it's not in the state's interest to make it easy for me to leave quickly.  Stability is promoted.  And the steps needed to get divorced aren't that difficult that a person who really wants out can't get out.  Hell, at this point there's no reason needed for a divorce.  It's just a matter of filing paperwork.

Society certainly doesn't want divorce to be like it is in sharia countries where a man can simply say "I divorce you" three times to be divorced from his wife.  First, it's one sided because a wife can't do the same.  Second, it promotes instability because the divorced woman is left with no recourse or resource.  She's just left hanging unless she has her own means of income or familial support.  Considering the economic status of most women in sharia countries, chances are slim the wife has any kind of resources.

So I'm a husband because I love my wife and want to see her having all the rights to property we've jointly acquired in our lives.  We've been a couple almost 25 years and married almost 20 years, so it's working out pretty well so far.  The relationship parts we've worked on over the years are things we would have had to work on regardless of being married.  But the legal status of being married did help us put time into the relationship, too.  Rash decisions are less likely when there's a legal binding of two people.  Well, two people who stop to think about those kinds of things.  Both of us having gone to law school, we do tend to think of those sorts of things.