What makes up a marriage has been the subject of state, community and tribal control since human society took some form.  Who is to marry whom; the process of selecting the appropriate breeding partners; the limits and penalties imposed on those partners in cases of transgression.  Love did not necessarily have anything to do with it.  

Traditionally, the content of such marriages has generally been anthropomorphic, with the perennial issues about whether one should be suitably partnered with one, or with multiple beings.  Then, the more unusual instances: human beings attempting to wed non-human entities.  With a certain notoriety, a Swedish woman by the name of Eija-Riitta Eklöf eventually decided, after nursing a childhood obsession, to marry the now defunct Berlin Wall.  She was convinced that the wall was proudly masculine as she amassed a collection of photographs as part of her teen crush.  She had paid visits to the wall using her savings.  On her sixth trip in June 1979, with the assistance of an animist claiming to know the otherwise inscrutable thoughts of the Wall, consent was obtained for the marriage.  Eklöf-Berliner-Mauer came into being.

More recently, broadcaster Alice Levine, in a Louis Theroux production for Britain’s Channel 4, shows us the protean nature of sexual appetite and seeking of partnerships.  She interviews couples rutting in digital bestial bliss, coitus achieved through animal avatars, intrudes into the world of an American gas attendant who has found love with a synthetic being he thinks can consent, and finds a Berlin cybersex brothel where anyone wishing to live out fantasies........

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