Marriage

http://news.sciencemag.org/2009/04/chimps-trade-meat-chance-sex
Marriage is not natural to humans, it is a social norm created to produce more effective armies. We should consider the following fundamental motivations for marriage and adapt a more reasonable solution this long established custom. We are at the top of the food chain and should require ourselves to use our reason over the beast like behaviors we still perpetuate.  
 
Originally, humans lived in communities where children were cared by that community similar to those displayed by a troop of apes. These early human troops were based on a male dominance ritual to gain the sexual rights of the troupe.    
 
Within a troop, non-dominant males will also have clandestine relations with the females of the tribe. The dominance of the alpha male is subject to the wishes of the females. Alpha dominance is in constant threat from the competition of younger males that will gain the favor of the females of the troop. Females make all real choices for the troupe and benefit from this need by males to display dominance. In Chimpanzee troops males will gather to hunt monkeys, they are 10 times more effective that lions at hunting. After a kill is made the meat is divided up amongst the males and then shared with the females for favor. The Diamond ring could well be seen is an offshoot of this early tradition. Marriage has no part of the sexual social structure of the troop.
 
The early confrontations of one troop to another were based one this sexual first cause. Over time a troop became a tribe, and a tribe became a nation. The sexual social basis of the troop, tribe and nation has remained the same throughout our human evolution, still based on this male ritual for dominance. Males would continue to do battle and bring booty back to the women and the troop.
 
In the transition form the size density of the troop to the tribe,  at some time it became apparent that it would be best to apportion women exclusively to a single male. The order of the troop could be best kept if there was less infighting and therefore females were required, more and more, to be loyal to a single male at a time. Until only recently the dominant human male (Lord) had sexual rights over all females of his troop (Kingdom).
 
Nomadic societies or tribes would have no choice but to take the entire family into battle. Established agrarian societies needed a well defined concept of marriage in order to defend the established community. Men would go to war and the women would stay to tend the farm and children. In order to ease the horror of war males would return with booty for the nation to be apportioned to its citizens. It is these early agrarian societies that later became the cradle of our civilization, Babylon and Egypt  are the extension of the troop, based on a modified sexual rite of the dominance of the alpha male, subject to the wishes of the females. 
 
We are clearly dominated by the fact that we did evolve from animals. Over time we developed wedding customs to maximize the communities ability to succeed in this male to male sex combat. It is more effective to portion out women through marriage, marriage reduces conflict within the males of a community. This also frees the males to do battle with other communities for plunder and booty, return home and have the women folk remain chase. This was an important fundamental aspect of Chivalry. 
 
This arrangement was what created the customs of our modern society. Females have an strong absolute sense of self, females expect booty, and expect to be in personal possession of it. A good male is a good provider to both family and the community. Although this is changing in our modern culture, a female, either by genetics or social conditioning will expect males to bring home the booty of a days work.  Males have a confused sense of community, for the sexual nature of men is communal, they love these females, and they have a tendency to build a troupe or community. Females on the other hand don't feel the same, they see males more as a one sees an income flow.  Of course it is important that it be a good looking income flow. They see themselves as independent, maybe as part of a gaggle of girls, but still independent, self-ish. Where men will generally think of utopia concepts for society, women will more likely think  less broadly, specifically the "me and the child".      
 
Of course this is a gradient, there are a variety of forms of this behavior. There are males that are as females and females that are as males. 
 
These are generalizations, yet we have formed an archetypical concept of man and woman. Man stands tall, cares for the tribe, and is just, woman on the other hand is meek, enjoys gifts, and cares for her children first. This traditional image of man and woman is changing quickly, men are becoming more like women and woman like men. The future will bring us a new way of dealing with our male female relation, it will be more true to reason and more agreeable to ourselves.  
 
Let us consider God in all this. We are making a transition from this male sexual dominance social type to a more equal relation between man and woman at the same time that we have created a one world order. At the precise point when we will no longer need this long established tradition of marriage, we have established a one dominant order on our world.          
 
This is an interesting and related text from the Gnostic Gospel of Tomas
114) Simon Peter said to them, "Mary should leave us, for females are not worthy of life." Jesus said, "See, I am going to attract her to make her male so that she too might become a living spirit that resembles you males. For every female (element) that makes itself male will enter the kingdom of heaven."