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This article is reprinted with permission from Girls Don't Be Afraid (ID: nvhaibiepa)
Original title | Without love and sex, "friendship marriage" is being sought after by young people
Hello everyone, I'm Tian Jing.
When it comes to marriage, I am afraid that most people's first reaction is not yearning, but resistance.
But what we are resisting is often unfair contractual relationships, not intimacy itself.
Therefore, a group of young people are practicing a new "marriage" model -
Not a lover, but a friend;
No sex, but more loving.
01
Sexless marriage with friends
In Japan, there is a very special marriage agency called COLORS.
What is promoted is not a regular marriage, but a "friendship marriage".
As the name suggests, it is not based on love, as most modern marriages do.
Instead, it is to bond with good friends and start a family.
Keep your family in the company and keep your living space. There is no sex, but similar interests and preferences.
Want to have kids? Just through the test tube method, but both parties must be involved in parenting.
This seems to perfectly solve the problems of traditional marriage: bondage, conflict, and the obligations that come with the division of labor.
For this reason, friendship marriage is becoming more and more popular in Japan.
The customers of COLORS Matchmaking Agency have grown from a few dozen to nearly a thousand.
△ The number of marriages in the eighth year was 420 / the marriage rate was 43.1% | Source: COLORS Marriage Agency homepage
Sato, who successfully married through the COLORS matchmaking agency, is asexual.
She first realized her true sexuality at the age of 18.
She liked her boyfriend at the time, but as time went on, she found that the other person wanted more than a simple hug.
Sato liked him, but was afraid to see him, and wondered for the first time: Why is it not enough to have a like?
But for most people, sex is a necessity for love and marriage.
And that's not what she wants, although she doesn't reject intimacy.
A marriage built on friendship gave her another option.
△Sato's profile | Source: COLORS Marriage Agency homepage
Another woman, in her early 30s and married for five months, had similar troubles.
She has always been in a very passive state in her relationship, and she will only fall in love if she is confessed, but she cannot produce strong feelings on her own.
But even if she is in love, she finds that her emotional concentration is far from the other party, and she is not very good at being treated as a "girlfriend".
When the atmosphere came, the other party involuntarily made physical contact, but she was very repulsive to this matter.
She understands that she cannot fall in love, but looks forward to a marriage that is considered a "friend".
She hopes that instead of carrying life alone, she needs a like-minded ally.
She wrote: "I am happy to be seen as a "friend" and not | "her." Source: COLORS Marriage Agency homepage
Another woman, in her 20s, voiced that most people want to have a "friendship marriage".
In her past relationship, the other party always carried a sense of control and possessiveness.
Even in a relationship, you need to disguise, accumulate some negative emotions, and be very depressed.
But she has always longed for marriage, looking forward to one day getting married and having children, especially with the birth of her nephew, this feeling is even stronger.
The partner she is looking forward to is someone who can open her heart, after all, she is someone to spend the rest of her life with, and the interweaving of souls is especially important to her.
The appearance of COLORS ignited her fighting spirit to the death.
△ She wrote: It is important to express and spread the ideas of two people in words and think together | Source: COLORS Marriage Agency homepage
"Even if you don't have romantic or sexual feelings, you can have affection and friendship so you can start a family."
In order for the men and women who come to COLORS to find their soul mates, the agency also conducts strict screening, and the agency personnel will conduct preliminary interviews and get to know the customer for a long time.
BEFORE MARRIAGE, THE PARTIES COMMUNICATE FOR MONTHS, AND COLORUS EVEN PROVIDES A DISCUSSION MANUAL FOR BLIND DATE MEMBERS.
It lists the details of possible quarrels in the marriage to ensure that the two can smoothly enter the "friend" relationship.
△Friendship marriage steps | Source: COLORS Marriage Agency homepage
In this way, it seems that friendship marriage rewrites the deprivation of "self" and "freedom" in marriage, more like a life partnership based on clear rules.
"Friendship marriage" seems to have come with a sense of redemption, allowing many people to see the new possibilities of marriage beyond the grave.
However, is it really that ideal?
02
Trouble that can't be avoided
Even a friendship marriage means having to walk into each other's lives.
The conflict of living habits in the cohabitation and the equal sharing of utility bills may become the fuse for the dispersal of the gang.
On Twitter, a netizen called "ゆうき@friendship marriage failure" frantically spat on his wife:
He was not allowed to dry things on the balcony, but his wife did it anyway, and he was very embarrassed to receive a warning letter from the administrator;
△ Source: Twitter
I had the habit of entertaining friends at the end of the year, but because my wife did not agree, I could not continue;
△ Source: Twitter
If you don't pay your utility bills and turn on the air conditioner, you don't understand your hard work to earn money.
△ Source: Twitter
Similar trivial things are not more tolerated because of the element of "friendship".
After all, no matter how much homework is done, it is difficult to predict a series of contradictions that will arise after marriage.
Even with similar negative cases, friendship marriage is still favored by many people.
The reason is that it reshapes the value of marriage: not the result of love + sacrifice, but a combination of feelings + partners.
Friendship marriage does its best to let both parties be themselves, and the grind in friendship marriage will not aggrieved themselves.
Compared with traditional families, women do not have to sacrifice their careers and can continue to chase the life they want.
If once the relationship breaks the previous promise and balance, the divorce is more like the peaceful dissolution of the partner after the failure of the investment, and the "nothing entangled" is clean.
But it is precisely because they are very rational about marriage and have no imagination of romantic relationships, and this group of people is also ridiculed as "frustrated marginal people".
Similar to what most parents in China think, Japanese society has a flaw in not getting married, and can even affect social image and career.
"Wanting to get married" is not purely influenced by personal will, but is also shaped by social concepts.
According to SoraNews24, in 2016, 60% of women and 76% of men in their 20s had no partner, but 80% of unmarried people still saw marriage as their main life goal.
Whether for young people in Japan or for us, there is an invisible clock in life -
Social clock.
Society's consistency in the appropriate age for major life events, such as marriage, childbirth, retirement, creates social pressure on individuals to accept a particular role after a certain age.
△ Source: Baidu entry
"Friendship marriage" may be another comfort zone opened up under the inherent social clock.
It is not a rebellion, but a compromise and exploration.
03
A revisit
In the past, marriage was seen as an integration of resources; In modern times, the concept of "marriage for love" has been created.
Our expectations for marriage are constantly stacking.
Not only financial matching, but also emotional interaction, and long-term understanding and companionship.
On the other hand, its fragility and deprivation of women make reality far from ideal.
Therefore, in recent years, the exploration and experimentation of new types of intimacy has become more and more common.
People are beginning to re-examine and structure the value and meaning of traditional marriage.
Outside of Japan, I have also seen many attempts at "life partnership" based on friendship.
Last year, two 24-year-old girls from Singapore, April and Renee, decided to spend the rest of their lives together.
At a very young age, they became best friends.
In the years of separation, the importance of the other party became more and more intense, so after 5 years of separation, they decided to become each other's "partners".
Although they put each other in the position of partners, they will not have a relationship and will date and fall in love with other people.
They even considered financial, career and other issues, and spent a year experimenting with the feasibility of such a relationship.
In the end, the two happily moved to Los Angeles and began a sweet life.
April and Renee end their long-distance meeting | Source: Network
In China, many women have also begun to choose their life partners.
Buying a house is seen by many people as either a relative at home or a marriage partner, but more and more girls are beginning to choose to buy a house with their girlfriends.
△ Girlfriends buy a house together | Source: Little Red Book
And the most common comment is often questioning: "Can this be reliable, when the time comes, tear the face, it will be ugly." ”
However, all intimacy is essentially an attempt at risk.
If you want to achieve true freedom, the way to break social norms is not only "life partnership".
Perhaps what we should break more is the fear of a person getting old.
Too many people play up the horror of loneliness in old age that we look into the future and feel only darkness.
What we need is not only the possibility of "life partnership", but also enough samples and demonstrations to explore and understand how to be self-consistent for the rest of your life.
Chizuko Ueno mentions in her book "The Old Queen of a Man": "It is married, it is not married, no matter who it is, it is a person in the end." ”
She does not talk about women's idealism, but provides appropriate advice on life issues such as financial management, housing, interpersonal relationships, care, inheritance and posthumous arrangements for single women, helping all women to establish a mature and open-minded attitude.
Mentally prepared, materially cannot be ignored.
She told all women that whether they marry or not, they are free to choose, but the inevitable return of life is to face it alone.
More scenery along the way is beautiful, but a person is not lonely, and the twilight years are never desolate.
△ Japanese drama "The New Life of Aki"
When every woman breaks free from the shackles of the social clock and truly examines her inner needs.
In order to have richer possibilities and more definite freedom.
*This article is reprinted with permission from the public account "Girls Don't Be Afraid"