Why Is Marriage a Failing Institution
Long ago I was on a church "outreach committee." Our job was to contact potential church members. One young woman told me she would not join our church because she had attended our preacher's sermon. It was a passionate case against divorce and for remaining married. I learned she soon after was divorced. She saw the limits to staying married, the preacher did not.
Marriage rates are falling. That this hallowed institution is failing so baffles the Pope he is talking about married couples preferring pets to children. He is missing single preferred to marriage.
We all know the statistics about marriage. Being married lowers the chance of poverty. Children of married couples do better on average than children of single parents. Being married is given the label of "being happy" while being single is given the label of "being lonely." In spite of this evidence, a different reality is hiding under the surface.
It takes fortitude to write about topics that are taboo. While I've not seen articles by men on this topic, a woman had the wherewithal to address it straight on. Perhaps, she writes, the level of happiness in a society can be raised with less marriage. She says popular culture tells us the benefits of marriage outweigh its costs. Reality is, she continues, when people weigh it objectively for themselves the costs will often be higher than the benefits. She doesn't say it specifically, but the implication is there may be an increase in societal happiness by more walking out.
I think there is a something counterintuitive going on in society. Commonly used statistics show our society is becoming more "isolated." A very popular book, Bowling Alone, used dozens of data points to show a more isolated, and by implication, lonely society. Perhaps the opposite is true. Perhaps sitting alone looking at the internet has broadened our circle of friends/acquaintances/support instead of reducing then. Could it be a married person looks at the internet and finds a happier single life than the one in his/her marriage? Something has made single life, or life in a non-married relationship, look better than it did in the past. Atheists, gay people and trans people have found happiness outside of conventional wisdom. Why not married people?
While we all know both women and men cause relationships not to work, I think our culture plants the view that men are more important in a relationship than women. Conservative Christianity preaches specifically different roles for each. Men are to speak for the family and interpret scripture. Men the only are clergy. I think this contributes to the attractiveness of not being married. Some men find their wives do conform to the "rules," and want to be single, wives want out from under the same "rules."
To be clear, I've been married for almost 60 years. Marriage has been great for me. But I have no business advising other people about what might be best for them.
Like you Jon, we have been married for 60 years, with 6 plus years as a couple before marriage. We met in the 8th grade when the country schools consolidated into "town school". We "went steady" all the way through high school, and got married a year later. Romance was simple. Back then, you could shoot three jack rabbits, sell them for 65 cents which was enough for movie tickets, (45cents each, two bottles of coke @ 10cents, and a nickel bag of popcorn. with enough left over to buy more .22 shells for next week. The mink farmers bought the rabbits. Skinned them for the fur, and used the meat to feed the mink. And the hugging and kissing was free. A year after HS graduation, I sold two hogs and bought a ring, and in the fall we got married. I went to a rural LCMS church, and she went to the LCMS church in town. No complications there also. She lived five miles south of town, and I lived 13 miles north.
ReplyDeleteWhen we got married, divorce was not an option, so we both, and many others went into marriage as a permanent proposition. We and others went into marriage with both eyes open, and avoided or worked around possible contradictions as we matured into the union. I often say "I married up". No culture shock. We had a son and a daughter. Both married after college. Still married, with children, and both in attendance at their local LCMS church. I like to think we provided a good example of a loving and successful marriage. My one failure was our son does not like accordion music.
I /we always consider our marriage to be of "US", not me and / or her, as do our children, and our soon to be grand daughter's marriage. It will be "a mixed marriage". Our grand daughter is LCMS, and her husband an ELCA, with the marriage officiated by an LCMS minister on our daughter's rural residence, So. of Fargo. Where they go is up to them.
We have lived long enough to make some fair observations on the state of marriage. After the lust, the love of self, pride and arrogance is the number one cause for the start, (small at first), which grows beyond repair. Finances are only a symptom, not cause. "I want, I need, and a knee jerk "You are wrong", thus not as important as the "Me".
This is such a large topic, a whole library would not satisfy.
We, and our whole family have been fortunate, but I must say we have not gone out looking for a problem that does not exist until it is created out of the lack of true love and mutual respect.
We are thankful when during holidays, everyone comes together, and enjoy each other. No drama. With that, I am confident and hopeful that successive generations will follow with the same consideration for each other.
If you check the teeth of a horse you are planning to buy, why wouldn't you carefully consider the one you plan to marry.
When our son told an old friend of mine, he was getting married, My friend told him: :Don't let your pecker choose your bride. That suggestion served him well.
PS "Don't question your spouses judgement, because after all, look who he / she married"
ReplyDeleteThat has served me well.
helper--"...because after all, look who he/she married."
DeleteGood one about marriage. My dad used to tell one, "Why does the mother of the bride cry at her daughter's wedding?" She is thinking of the guy she married.