A man without a woman is not an Adam. For it is written (Genesis 5:2), "Male and female He created them... and He called their name Adam." —Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrkanus (quoted in the Talmud, Yevamot 63a)

What is an "Adam"?

An Adam is the free radical of G‑d's creation. An unpredictable organism. A creature that could do just about anything. An Adam is a creature not fettered by instincts, by nature, by intuition, by intellect. Inherently undefined. Not even limited by the limitation of being that which he is. A being unlimited by the act of being.

Without marriage, a person can never truly be that Adam. Because he has yet to leave his natural bounds. Perhaps he has reached out to friends, to relatives, to students — but he has yet to leave the most essential boundary: he has yet to leave himself. He has yet to discover the greatest discovery a human person can make in this life — one that many people may never make, because it is truly a miraculous, seemingly impossible discovery: that there is another "I" in this world, one that is not "me," that does not confirm my concept of the world, one who is the opposite of me in so many ways and who I can therefore never truly know.

In a marriage, two egos, two opposites, must merge in an intimate, unbreakable bond. Every ounce of each one must become one with the other. And to do that in its truest sense, each must leave its limitation of being that which I am. Each must reach that place inside that does not have that restriction, that does not have to be me — that could be the other.

So in that union, "Adam" emerges. In the image of G‑d.1