A personal anecdote on love, relationships & marriage

Whatever I write isn't a philosophical take. And this is a personal note, so it need not be generalisable to everyone either.

This is my culmination of over 10 years of diverse experiences and my vast amount of observations in the evolving social dynamics of the present era. 

TL;DR: As I understand myself and the world at this point in my life, I don't see marriage as worth the cost.

Love

A very beautiful experience. A purpose in itself. Breaks you, moulds you, transforms you. There are moments where, momentarily, you are not you, and it is a deeply liberating experience, even if it is like a fragrance, coming and going out. I can be deeply in love with a thought, a philosophy, or a story. For the time it stays, being in the moment can be a very profound experience, and it is with this experience that a huge body of transcendental spiritual literature exists, where love is the central theme. It is unconditional. It might need an external stimulus to get evoked, but it can for certain happen without it.

Relationship

A transaction. Based on the mutual needs of the two parties. And it is of so many types. Different relationships exist based on different types of needs. It is not necessary to have love in it. A relationship built on mutual physical and emotional needs might involve love to foster a sense of togetherness and deep interdependence, but if two people evolve differently over time, expectations and the idea of convoluted love can screw things up. With emotional attachment and expectation to the process, sometimes a relationship can hurt as well. But there is always a way to end a relationship once it doesn't cater to mutual interests anymore.

Marriage

This is a very tricky system where the government and larger society engage in a personal relationship between two people. I am not attempting to establish that marriage is objectively dysfunctional, nor am I making a sociological claim about what everyone should do. I am asking whether this institution makes sense for the life I want to live. Originally evolved to have an equitable share of property propagating through generations, now it has evolved into a different structure. The emotional expectations surrounding a marriage has become so diversely sophisticated, that the structure makes no sense at all. Both men and women can be financially independent at this point. Especially in India, an unhinged, exploitative and backdated system of education coupled with unreasonable financial expectations on men, where there is no leverage a man has, statistically, the rate of marriage is slowly crashing, from urban areas. In my personal experience, anytime I have tried to think of a marriage, I have been disappointed. And the most common output of a marriage, especially for those who are introspective and tend not to have the same kind of mental hooks, has been a tremendous amount of suffering. Personally for me, I feel learning to be alone, being comfortable with oneself, and being aware of the mortal nature of life and vicious cycle of attachment, are mandates for a fulfilling life. On top of that, life has so much to offer, and there is no incentive I find to get hooked to one person legally and become obligated to be a provider for a lifetime. From what I have learnt, creating a strong purpose in this short game of life, playing it well, not being too serious about anything, and rediscovering that self-fulfilment lies at the crux of experiencing life optimally, rather than becoming unusually attached to another human being and investing a good amount of the limited time and energy on that person with the complete possibility of it getting lost, isn't worth it for me. I know there is a moral superiority in the idea that even if it is risky, fear of commitment isn't good either, that makes one avoidant; I know that, I have tried that way and it didn't work in the same way, so I would like to hold your judgements there.

Life is a really short game with a limited time and energy budget; uncertainty and death are the only certainties. So the only sense I can make out of it, is to create lasting & unstimulated joy and peace.