I don't know exactly. Because I never wanted to, so I am utterly inexperienced. You should not ask me such difficult questions. But I guess — these are just guesses — I guess because people like to live in institutions, in prisons. People don't want to live an open life, they want to live a closed life. That's why they want to get married.

I guess people don't love, that's why they want to get married. The love is not enough, so the law is needed to help. If love is enough there is no point in getting married. If you trust your love, that's enough; no other thing is needed to keep you together. Marriage is finding ways to keep you together. Because you cannot trust that your love is enough to keep you together. People who don't love, they want to get married. Although people are very cunning — they say, 'We want to get married because we love.' But why should one want to get married if one loves? Love is more than enough — how can marriage help? It can destroy, it cannot enhance.

The very idea of marriage is the beginning of divorce. The moment you think to get married you should beware — you have already started planning for divorce. The fear is coming, the fear of divorce is coming — and before it takes possession of you, you want to get married. So there will be the law and the police and the court and the society to prevent you escaping from this woman or to prevent this woman escaping from you.

Love is enough, more than enough. And if love cannot keep you together then nothing can keep you together. And nothing should keep you together.

People like to get married because they cannot bear happiness. They want some misery. Whenever you see a couple, a man and woman, thoroughly unhappy you can trust they are married — but they have to be thoroughly unhappy. It is very difficult to see a married couple happy, whatsoever their pretensions. They may show happiness but that is not the truth. You should see them when they are not pretending, when they are not wearing their public face. They are always quarrelling, always fighting, always at each other's necks.

People can't bear happiness. Love is such a joy, it is unbearable. It is so unbearable you want to crush it. And marriage is the sure way to crush it. All marriages are destructive to love. The very idea is destructive. Love should be your only trust.

I guess men marry because they think they are too tired, women because they are curious. Both are disappointed. Men want to get married because they are so much afraid of women. When you are married you have to be afraid of only one woman, that is the safety in it. If you are not married all the women make you afraid. Once married, your wife protects you, she becomes a great protection around you. Then you are no more open; then she protects you against yourself.

Women want to get married because down the ages men have made them so helpless economically that they are always hankering for economic security. Once the helplessness of women is gone and the woman is as economically independent as the man, I don't think marriage is going to survive; nobody would like it. And it is good if marriage disappears from the world. It is one of the greatest calamities.

And I am not saying that being together in intimate love and living together for your whole life is wrong. I am not saying that. But it should be only for love, and for nothing else. It should not have any economic motive, it should not have any security motive. It should not have anything else in it, it should be pure love. Yes, love brings many dangers — but that's how love lives, through dangers. Love remains alive through dangers. Dangers are not bad, they keep things flowing and love remains all adventure. It is courageous to love, it is cowardly to get married.

And if the question is a personal question, if the question is your question — because you have asked: 'Why does one want to marry?' — If that 'one' is you, then my suggestion is: Never get married. And live always in love. If you want to live always in love, never get married, otherwise you will start living in hatred. Because nobody can love one's own prisoner And nobody can love one's own jailer either. When you are married you become that — one becomes the jailer, one becomes the prisoner. And both start hating each other. Then life has friction and no grace.