What If I Were Someone Who Never Wanted to Marry?

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. – Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

A few days ago I had dinner with two female friends, and marriage came up at the table. I said I'd definitely get married in the future. They were surprised. They said they'd never thought about getting married at all.

Two years ago, I was still defining my future life as one without marriage. But now my thinking has changed to "I'll definitely marry, but most likely late." The reason for the change isn't that I've come to know or admit the value of marriage. It's more that I got caught in a moral tug of war, and the morality here is filial piety.

The main reason my thinking began to shift is that as my parents and my grandparents grow older, I feel that among their wishes is seeing me marry and have children. But the contradiction is that, given the current social environment and my own plans, even if I decide to marry, it won't be in the next year or two. And even if I do marry, whether to have children is a separate matter.

On one hand, my sense of morality is being pulled hard. On the other hand, because of my circumstances, I can't make it happen anyway.

But whether I marry or not, whether I'm for marriage or against it, I don't actually understand what any of it means right now.

Take marriage. What does marriage mean for a life? A person's life is only a few decades long. Around thirty you start a family and have a child, watch the child grow up, and your life is basically over. But that's just talk. A whole life can be summed up in a few words, but for a real person, it has to be lived second by second.

I say now that I'll definitely marry in the future, but what does marriage mean? I don't know.

Just like when I used to say I'd definitely never marry, what does not marrying mean? I don't know.

So I wonder, if I were someone who never wanted to marry, what would my life be like?

First, how my thinking would change. How can I be sure I could be a firm non-marrier for life? I'm only 24. How can I be sure I'd still be one at 44?

There's no way to predict that. But one thing is certain: if I don't marry, by my thirties I'll have built up some savings. At that point, what would my life's pursuit be?

If I started a family and had a child, most of my energy would go into the family, and I wouldn't chase anything faraway anymore. But if I don't marry, I'll have plenty of energy and time. How would I use and spend it?

This may be something many people who choose not to marry face. If you're not marrying, what should you pursue with the rest of your life? I don't agree with spending it on play, or at least the pointless kind, putting all your time and energy into consuming and having fun. I think that's worse than getting married and having children. At least with marriage, you're running a family.

I think if I didn't marry, I'd spend most of my time writing. In fact that's pretty much how I am now. I'm 24, and I don't have many other hobbies. I like cycling and working out, and in my free time I read, write, and have meals with friends and family. But I don't think this can last a lifetime, unless my writing goes further and I create something with real influence.

All of this is the pursuit of a sense of meaning. I do like pursuing meaning. When I say that aimless consuming and playing is just a way of wasting time and energy, it's because deep down I believe that if time and energy can't be used to create, there's not much point.

But then again, is running a family a kind of creating? Raising a child and watching them go from knowing nothing to slowly forming their own personality and ideas: isn't that creating something? I can't say.

I just feel that when I say "might as well get married and have kids," I seem to be treating family as a fallback, a way out. But for people who truly put their hearts into running a family, that's also a way of giving everything they have.

So maybe the key isn't whether you marry, but whether you're living your chosen path seriously.

That's why I think this is worth thinking about, if you were someone who never wanted to marry.

• Do you think you'd still be one twenty years from now?
• If you still were twenty years from now, what would you be doing then?

These two questions are about how firm the choice is, and how certain the life without marriage would be.

And beyond this, if I were someone who never wanted to marry, what other possibilities would my life hold?

1. How do you deal with your social relationships? If one day my parents grow old, my friends have all married and have their own lives, and I can't bother them often, how would I cope and find my own social connections?

2. People who don't marry are, after all, a small minority. When I see my peers entering the rhythm of marriage one after another, not marrying is free, but there are gradually fewer people like me around. Even at gatherings, it gets harder to find common ground. I wouldn't call this loneliness. Maybe it's more like being out of sync? Being out of sync is a subtler state than loneliness.

Loneliness is what you feel when you're by yourself. Being out of sync is when you're sitting with a group of people and realize you're no longer on the same channel.

They're discussing which kindergarten the kids will go to, and you're thinking about where to ride this weekend. Nobody is giving you the cold shoulder, but you just can't get a word in. That feeling leaves you more at a loss than being alone, because you can choose loneliness, but you can't choose being out of sync.

3. How do you deal with your relationship with your parents? I think everyone who doesn't want to marry can't get around this question. What makes it complicated is that it's not as simple as being pressured to marry. Choosing not to marry is itself a defiance of the traditional idea of family.

I often describe the traditional life path as a script: study, graduate, work, save, buy a car and a house, marry, have kids. Not marrying is at heart a defiance of that traditional script, and it makes parents feel you're rejecting the script of life.

Marriage is a big life event, but I think most young people like me don't know what marriage really means for a life.

And thinking about your future life while stepping outside the question of marriage is harder still.

After dinner, the three of us went our separate ways home, and on the way I was still thinking about this.

They said they'd never thought about marrying, and I said I definitely would. It sounds like we stand far apart. But if you think about it, we're all the same. We're all standing at a crossroads at 24, unable to see what the road ahead looks like.

When I say I'll marry, it's only because I feel this road probably can't be avoided. As for what happens once I'm on it, honestly, like them, I don't have an answer.