affair of the heart :)

Let's see if this can collectively be taken as a definition of marriage --
- u have to be very good friends, first of all
- u have to have a very good understanding of each others' nature and respect for each and every facet of that nature. A person could be short-tempered, but one has to love that aspect as well and not criticize on that, That is rather than expecting the other one to learn to be calm and not be short-tempered, one should be adapting to other one's nature as one has accepted it with respect
- u have to have marriage as a way to achieve something else, that is marriage itself is not your final objective
- u have to have a set of things A which are important for both of u, a set of things B, which u both consider redundant and set of things C which u both can tolerate
- u have to have things in your life which are important for you - outside marriage. u have to have respect for these things in each others' life.
- u should not be dependent on each other financially / socially or whatever. in fact, u should be totally independent, yet after forming a bond, each one will see benefit of relationship
- u need not have kids. i believe that there is lot within us, yet hidden. Rather than giving it a chance and freedom to become visible, why restrict ourselves by age and say that now it's time to raise next generation? - as in why not make ur life / ur career than building ur kids'? if u think, u have reached a limit in ur life, in a sense that u cannot achieve more / all ur capabilities are already utilized - may be, thinking about kid makes sense - otherwise, is this what is expected to be followed just like that? over the years? over the generations? birth-eduction-job-marriage-kids-their education-and so on...?
I completely agree that right from tolerating the pain of child birth, to the point you feed ur kid, raise him/her, see to their progress, make them good people, make them aware of what is important/good and what is not - is entirely a good learning experience, but still I feel that unless you are uself sure that u are wise enough that u can take someone else's responsibility, one should not jump into it
- marriage is a way two people take a pledge that they will help each other to achieve the goals in each others' lives - as long as those don't conflict with the goals in their own life. and this makes it completely optional thing - if u have ur parents supporting u in whatever u do, u may not even need to get married! with this, why do u need anyone to support u for that matter? fine, if u need, why just one enough? why not a group of people? or may be different people at different periods of time? One may argue that in a conventional marriage institution, multiple physical relationships are discouraged and so it is important that one has just single partner. But in this new definition / concept put, that aspect is assumed to be taken out. This is not something called platonic love - as it more refers to a couple who have same (spiritual?) objective in mind and they help each other achieve it. This is totally different.

now, with this point, i feel - why then the marriage only across genders? from whatever has been said so far, if the physical relationship is completely taken out of the relationship, how does it matter whether its within the same gender or across the gender? with the new concept / definition of marriage (which is already stated), i really don't see this difference. but my experience says that - of course i have many male friends and i don't feel any physical attraction for them, still i tend to share more with a male friend than a female friend. so even if sex_aspect is taken out, still there is something more to a relation between male-female than male-male or female-female, at the level of mind / brain (which i don't know exactly what is what)

When confused, ask Google! :P Found something like 'marriage of convenience' - though they refer to something totally different in that wikipedia article, I guess, the concept stated above can be considered as 'marriage of convenience' (probably)