There are couples who set up a home, have children, and are husband and wife in every way, except one. They haven’t taken the final step of making their commitment a legal one. As they will explain to anyone who wants to know, they see no necessity for this. Their commitment to each other is genuine enough without the piece of paper.

But one might argue, if that piece of paper is so unimportant, why do they avoid it so much?

In 1846, Herman Melville wrote a novel about a tribe called the Typees, that suggests a parallel. A man is shipwrecked and finds himself among a savage tribe of natives who turn out to be cannibals in fact. It takes him a while to get used to them. But the more he stays with them, the more he is attracted by their essential honesty, innocence and integrity. No Typee needs ever fear of starving to death while another Typee has a crumb he can share. So unlike the civilized, and in particular, industrialized, world from where the hero comes.

He is genuinely impressed with this society. So much so, that he feels he would be quite happy to be part of it.

However, to be one of them, there is one custom of theirs that he must embrace. For the Typees, it is customary to have themselves tattooed. In many cases the tattoos are so extensive that they practically obliterate every available piece of skin. There is no way to mistake a Typee once you see him.

Tommo, our hero, while admiring the honesty, the genuiness, the generosity of these people, finds himself balking at the idea that they might place a tattoo on him and thus brand him for ever a Typee.

It is at this moment that the reader realizes that though Tommo is articulating the idea of how wonderful it is to live among these essentially good people, he doesn’t really want to take that irrevocable step that will make him one of them.

It is one thing to admire the Typee people, toy with the idea of living in the innocence of their society, to even articulate the higher level of morality which this society has, but what if he ever has the opportunity to return? The tattoo will never let him be what he once was.

One wonders whether that Marriage Certificate, really nothing in itself, has a sense of irrevocability that frightens many couples from taking that last step. A legal marriage.