Being Married Is Not a Plan, Let Alone Casual Encounters

In a world that confuses freedom and dispersion, marriage is no longer perceived as a framework for growth, but as an impediment or a calculation. Yet, it only makes sense between two already formed individuals: intellectually, economically, and spiritually. Being married is not a “plan”: it is a place of construction.

To each their own life, to each their own vision of the world. But there are illusions that must be shattered. Marriage, today, is often presented as a “plan A” or “plan B” in the race for personal success, a milestone to check off before turning thirty, a social validation to display. People commit to it not out of conviction, but out of cultural reflex, or worse: to satisfy the expectations of others. Yet, marriage is not a plan; it is an architecture of meaning. It cannot be improvised. It requires foundations: consciousness, stability, a worldview. It is neither a refuge nor an escape. It is a place for self-development through the other.

For several decades, a discourse has taken hold: one that makes marriage a symbol of submission, a patriarchal relic. Some portray it as the last prison women must flee to be free. But this interpretation is lazy. It confuses institutional marriage, sometimes perverted by male domination, with existential marriage, which unites two conscious and equal freedoms. True feminism does not consist of fleeing marriage, but of redefining it. To prove that union does not cancel independence, that loving does not mean giving up oneself. Emancipation does not lie in refusing the bond, but in mastering its conditions. The free woman is not one who rejects marriage; she is one who enters it by choice, not by constraint, one who brings substance, a profession, a thought, a strength. Marriage then ceases to be a cage and becomes a space for co-creation.

Our era preaches freedom like a religion. But too often, this freedom is merely disguised solitude. See Amandine. The one Emeline Michel sings about: « Amandine is at the end of the bar. A cigarette in her mouth. She waits for an angel or a guy to light her match. Oh, Amandine comes here every night, for the dance and the atmosphere; for good prices, the trance and then hope. She has her job, she has her car, she has everything she needs but she is all alone ». The “independent” woman is celebrated as a modern heroine, while being condemned to bear the weight of the world alone: her work, her security, her emotions, her future. This total autonomy, glorified by social media, ultimately resembles an existential fatigue. For life is not built by rejecting the other, but through relationship. True freedom is not to withdraw from the bond, but to choose it with lucidity. Marriage, when it is founded on maturity, does not oppose freedom and commitment: it reconciles them. Two accomplished beings do not imprison each other; they mutually strengthen each other. Love is not a chain; it is an alliance. And every alliance implies two autonomous forces, not two clinging dependencies.