A woman once proclaimed, “If you like it, then you should have put a ring on it. Oh, oh, oh.” She said this because marriage is obviously the human equivalent of the “Unbreakable Vow” in Harry Potter. Oh wait, except it is not.

The divorce rate in the United States indicates that more and more people view marriage as something you do when you have been together for a certain amount of time and not some sort of sacred bond of love.

The concept of getting married because you love someone does not make sense to me. There is not an equals sign between love and marriage. Signing a piece of paper does not mean someone loves me more than the second right before the paper was signed. I view marriage as more of an outdated tradition than a symbol of love.

If marriages and weddings had never existed before, would you look at your significant other and say, “I love you so much that I want us to sign a contract saying we will never break up, and then let’s have a huge party to celebrate?”

Having a wedding and a reception makes sense. A wedding is just a really expensive party to celebrate a couple, and hopefully for the guests, enjoy an open bar.

I will watch a couple profess their eternal love for each other if they provide me with enough free alcohol to belligerently congratulate them on their impending divorce.

I think all of the legal benefits of being married are great: visitation rights if your spouse is in the hospital, health insurance, perhaps a green card, and so forth.

Those reasons for getting married are logical.

I would marry someone if I was friends with them and they needed a green card or if I had awesome health insurance and my friend was really sick.

Our marriage would be “open,” and I would, of course, divorce them as soon as their situation was taken care of.

I could very easily do all of these things for my male friends, but I could not marry my best female friend strictly to hook her up with some awesome health insurance.

The fact is that marriage, as a social institution, is no longer completely necessary. Having children without being married no longer carries the stigma that it once did.

A family is no longer defined as a mother, father, and children. Blended families are becoming more common. Some families have two dads or two moms and some have adopted children or step-children.

Explaining to a child why his or her parents are not married has become a common conversation that parents have with children. As long as the children feel loved, then the fact that their parents are not married probably will not damage them emotionally.

A ring is not going to change someone or keep him or her from breaking up with you. It will, however, make the break up far more difficult and time consuming.

Plus, I plan to have an entire room full of gold like Scrooge McDuck that I come home and dive into every evening. If I accidentally get married in Vegas, I would not want my room of gold to suddenly become a closet of gold.