On Marriage

Not so long ago, marriage was considered to be something sacred that you can never get out of unless it is really catastrophic. People were married for a lifetime. Now, the divorce rate is fifty percent which means that one in every two marriages fail and he other one is considering it or not living happily. Now, marriages do not last a year and some do not even last few months and I am not talking about celebrities. No, I am talking about normal day-to-day people. Let us be honest, how many married people do we know are living a sad miserable life? How many married people do you know are considering a divorced? How many are divorced? I can guarantee that, you the reader are not living a happy married life. You are probably sad, or lonely, or miserable or thinking about cheating on your husband or wife.

If we look at the numbers, which I found on Chicagoland Marriage Resource Center, we will find that:

1- Over the last several decades, marriage in our nation has declined, while cohabitation, divorce and unmarried childbearing have increased.

2- From 1970 to 1996, the marriage rate in the United States fell by a third, from 77 to 50 marriages per 1,000 unmarried women.

3- From 1960 to 1998, the number of unmarried, cohabiting couples increased nearly tenfold, from 439,000 to 4.2 million.

Is marriage a bad idea? Is it worth it? Is marriage slowly getting extinct?

I would not necessarily agree that marriage is a bad idea and I don't think that is getting extinct but sometimes I really do not think that it is a good idea. We are living in confusing times where we do not know what we want because our thinking process has become so distorted. We have messages coming from everywhere telling us what we should buy, eat, drink, wear and do. We have tons of books and magazines telling us how to handle our lives when the writers of such articles can not differentiate between an orange and an apple. We all became so engulfed in our public image that we are missing the real point of life which is to actually live not to buy! Let us face it, our life became just about buying things and working to buy things. We work so we can buy things to go to work with. We buy a car we can not afford to go to and from work. We live in a house we can not afford. We eat, drink and wear things we can not afford either. Thus, the real problems became secondary and the small stuff became actual problems. Therefore, we became confused and distorted. We have teenagers getting pregnant at the age of fourteen and fifteen. We have marriages failing after few months. We have rich people getting away from serious problems just because they have more money and we actually admire these people. When people are now getting married they do not focus on the important stuff anymore. They focus on where they are buying the ring from and where they are doing the ceremony and where they are spending their honeymoon. What is the common denominator between these three things? Spending money. So why do people expect marriages to last? Why do they get married to begin with?

If we look at the history of marriage we will find many theories as how marriage started. Some people believe that marriage was started to preserve one's own race. Some people say that the Church created marriage because with every marriage the church gets to have money and if the marriage was not in a church with two witnesses then the marriage is considered void. Joseph Campbell, in the Power of Myth, mentions that the Twelfth century Troubadours were the first ones who thought of "love" in the same way we do now. Thus, the notion of romance didn't exist until medieval times. Lastly, here is another theory by the famous author Paulo Coelho in his book Al Zahir:

"Thousands of years ago, tribes were constantly on the move; men could make love with as many women as they wanted and, of course, have children by them. However, the larger the tribe, the greater chance there was of it disappearing. Tribes fought among themselves for food, killing first the children and then the women because, they were the weakest. Only the strongest survived, but they were all men. And without women, men cannot continue to perpetuate the species.

Then someone, seeing what was happening in a neighboring tribe, decided to avoid the same thing happening in his. He invented a story according to which the gods forbade men to make love indiscriminately with any of the women in a tribe. They could only make love with one or, at most, two. Some men were impotent, some women were sterile, some members of the tribe thus had no children at all but no one was allowed to change partners.

They all believed the story because the person who told it to them was speaking in the name of the gods. In a few years, the tribe grew stronger, with just the right number of men needed to feed everyone, with enough women capable of reproducing and enough children to replace the hunters and producers."

Thus, the idea of marriage started for financial reasons, or religious reasons, or political reasons or any other reasons. This means that the idea of marriage did not include love in it. This also means that marriage is not something sacred or holy or was descended by us by God or that the church has to be a witness of it. Marriage is just simply a tradition that we all seem to agree on the concept of it.

This does not mean that we should get a divorce with every problem that arises or that we should just give up. This means that we should not just get married just because it is the next step. Marriage should be the most difficult decision one should take in his life, not the style of the wedding dress or the stupid ring because these things can be returned but a miserable life can not be returned. When two people get married they are signing their life away. They stop being "I" and they become a "we". So, they have to be very familiar with the other person and this process could take years. So, for a successful marriage I recommend the following:

1- Do not get married the age of 27 or 28 for a male or a female. Marrying at an early age can be disastrous.

2- Do not get married unless you have a secure job and a stable income and you have been in that secured job for at least a year or two.

3- Do not get married before spending at least three years minimum dating this person you are about to marry. Getting married in the first year or two can be disastrous.

4- Do not get married until you are very familiar with the family you are marrying into and the mother and the father of your spouse because soon your spouse will be just like their mom or dad.

5- Do not get married for money or beauty because both will fade away.

6- Do not get married for love only.

7- Do not get married with someone you can live without, marry someone you can live with.

8- Do not get married with someone who has a trait that you can not stand because they will not change and most likely they will become worse.

9- Do not get married to a jealous person. Your life will be sad and miserable and most likely you will get either a divorce or a disease and you will die early.

10- Do not get married to a person who is insecure because they will never be happy and therefore you won't be happy.

So, if you manage to avoid all these things and you do get married, remember that marriage takes constant work and a lot of arguments. So make sure you :

1- Stay committed.

2- Be clear and communicative as much as you can.

3- Respect your spouse.

4- Trust.

5- Listen.

6- Not take your anger on your spouse.

7- Forgive and forget.

8- Be grateful

9- Be honest.

10- LOVE!

If however you were not so lucky and ended up in a miserable marriage then you need to get out of it even if you have children. Your children want to be happy and they want you happy. If you stay in a sad, angry, tense marriage then they will be deeply affected by it and I am sure this is not what you want for your children. So before you get married please think very very carefully!

"Research has shown a child who sees his mother mistreated is more damaged than if the child himself is abused."
Steven Stosny

"The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother."
Theodore Hesburgh

"We took our time [preparing for marriage], we looked forward to it; didn't
want to run into something and have nothing to count on but love..."

Aunt May

Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring and
integrity, they think of you.
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how
compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility.
Leo Tolstoy

"Remember, you married her, you didn't hire her!" - said to critical, controlling husband.
Dr Phil

Love is no assignment for cowards.
Ovid

If mamma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.
Unknown

A happy wife equals a happy life.
Unknown

People change and forget to tell each other.
Lillian Hellman

When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you
believe that you will be able to converse well with
this person into your old age? Everything else in
marriage is transitory.
Friedrich Nietzsche