Why The Saying "Marriage Is Just A Piece Of Paper" Actually Devalues Everything Meaningful In Your Life

Attorneys in general are known for their cynical outlook on life, but what’s truly disconcerting is that this woman isn’t alone. The general consensus around marriage today is that it’s an outdated institution, and, as the saying goes, who wants to be in an institution?

And yet, people still continue to say their vows in front of family and friends, and marriages continue to happen, even when the divorce rate claims 50% of those unions. Our careless and casual attitude toward a societal pillar like marriage may be part of the mainstream, but what does that kind of attitude say about our perspective on other important achievements? The very claim “marriage is just a piece of paper” actually devalues everything that’s meaningful in your life, which is why our pessimistic viewpoint might need a revision.

A Callous Mindset Indicates a Cynical Life

It’s extremely easy to be critical about life in general. Oftentimes, it’s even easier to be callous and uncaring about the hardships we face and the toll reality takes on us than to look at things with optimism and positivity.

Are you a glass half full or glass half empty type of person? We’ve all gotten this question at least once, and it says a lot about us as people. We’re either upbeat and cheerful and always looking at things, even the bad, with a tinge of hopefulness, or everything is constantly bleak and terrible.

There are pros and cons to both attitudes, which means that we shouldn’t immediately lean to extremes in either regard. Constant optimism, even when it’s inappropriate and not what the situation calls for, is known as “Pollyanna syndrome.” Pollyanna is a story over a century old about a young orphaned girl, who, despite her circumstances, is overly upbeat and cheerful. Optimism is preferable in many cases, but not when it influences our perceptions of the past. When our tendency is to look at things with perpetually rose-tinted glasses, we misrepresent the reality of things, which can lead us into denial and delusion.

On the other hand, constant negativity and cynicism have a similar effect. Looking at the past and the present with glasses that are overly tinted in a darker shade obscures the silver linings that are always present in any bad situation. If we become conditioned to always view our glass as half empty, we’ll never be able to celebrate the joys that inevitably come to us. We’ll be too focused on the sorrows and misfortunes and disappointments, so much so that we’ll come to expect them rather than expect something better.

Everything Meaningful Is a "Piece of Paper"

One of the most common critiques of marriage by skeptics is that it’s nothing more than a piece of paper. But for a majority of people, our lives are governed by “pieces of paper.”

Maybe you have a mortgage or a graduate degree. Maybe you have a bank loan for a business you opened, went to medical school, or have a JD or other advanced, prestigious degree. In the majority of cases, you might have taken out a loan to purchase your house or pay for your education. Your diploma and the deed to your house might be arbitrary things that you keep in the bottom drawer of a messy desk, but that doesn’t mean you can stop paying your monthly bills because those pieces of paper hold no true meaning anymore.

For a majority of people, our lives are governed by “pieces of paper.”

If you have a car note or a $100 dollar bill, those pieces of paper don’t automatically lose value because you’ve decided that they no longer hold any symbolic meaning to you. Your car that you drive every day or a piece of currency that you use to purchase things is not suddenly meaningless because of what it’s printed on. Even if they’re not symbolic to you personally, they still retain value because they’re indicative of something much bigger and more abstract than the paper they’re printed on. 

“Marriage is just a piece of paper.” So is anything worth having and holding close to you. So is anything worth dedicating time and effort to and being proud of. If you’re cynical about marriage, that’s one thing. But it’s another to make grandiose claims that marriage has no significance anymore or is an outdated concept because you fail to recognize that it carries weight beyond a concrete concept that we can see, touch, and feel. 

Symbol and Substance

Lengthy laws outlined in books may be things we think of as having no real consequence, but most rational people go through their lives obeying them nonetheless. Many of us work hard for years at a time to attain expertise in a certain field of study, and when we graduate, we can say we have a certain level of competence and command of that subject. Though the proof we have of these concepts is on a piece of paper, that doesn’t subtract from their worth or from their value to us.

You don’t have to be a person of any particular religious faith or have a conservative mindset to see the virtue of marriage. Marriage isn’t something that’s just for people of a certain belief, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, or other criteria. It doesn’t require spending thousands of dollars on a wedding or having the right dress or the perfect venue. Marriage is a much deeper and more profound commitment than many of us will ever fully know. 

Anyone can live with their significant other, share bank accounts and expenses, have pets or kids together, and not be married. They can denigrate marriage as an outdated institution that doesn’t have any place in the modern era, even when they’ve already done the hard part. But how much value can that kind of union really have, if there’s never any kind of detriment to getting up and walking away? How comfortable can two people be when they have all of the ornaments of a marriage but none of the security?

Marriage is worth fighting for and worth defending because it’s the ultimate dedication and the ultimate sacrifice. Yes, there are financial and even legal consequences for ending a marriage, along with the emotional toll that a divorce can take. But if we’re going by the same logic, these supposedly arbitrary documents don’t have the capability to alter our entire lives either. 

Closing Thoughts

When it comes down to it, the license we sign and the paperwork we fill out to change our names may not matter all that much. What does matter are the vows we’ve taken, the commitments we’ve promised to uphold, and the lifetime offering of our love and our life we’ve given freely to this other person. 

Marriage is when two people join to form one union. There is no deeper dedication or other more significant choice, in every possible way, that we’ll ever make during our lifetimes. Marriage is not just a piece of paper – it’s so much more than we’ll ever realize.

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