Is marriage unnecessary and restricting?
Hannah Seligson, author of A Little Bit Married: How to Know When It’s Time to Walk Down the Aisle or Out the Door
“There is now a huge gray area between dating and marriage—it’s a place where men and women are forming long-term relationships that have many similarities to marriage, yet aren’t quite. It’s the place beyond the point of being just boyfriend and girlfriend, but not married. These are relationships that 50 or 60 years ago would have most likely culminated in marriage, but today are just part of the relationship experimentation that’s endemic to many people’s twenties and thirties.”
Ultimately, Seligson concludes that unrealistic expectations, fear of divorce, long career paths, deferred adulthood, and ready access to birth control add up to plummeting marriage rates. The longer couples wait to get married the less likely they are to ever tie the knot.
I once heard actor Will Smith interviewed about the success of his 13-year marriage to Jada Pinkett. In his response, he emphasized the fact that divorce is not an option. He shared that when he sees other couples go into marriage thinking that divorce is a possibility, he always thinks: “You’re getting divorced!”
I think he’s right. In my experience, it’s very common for couples, no matter how happily matched, to go through tough times in which they would seriously think about divorce—if they considered it an option.
If couples live together instead of getting married, when the inevitable tough times arrive, of course they will break up instead of sticking it out.
As a consequence, what used to be a natural progression from dating to marriage has now become a pattern of serial relationships. These relationships mimic marriage in some fundamental ways—living together, sharing finances, even having children together. But all of them lack the fundamental foundation of a committed relationship and of course the relationship-saving graces that come with the sacrament of marriage.
If you expect a human relationship to be flawless and make you eternally happy, you are setting yourself up for disillusionment.
Only God never disappoints. Only grace can save relationships when human weakness mucks them them up.
We can pretend and we can play house, but in the end, there’s no such thing as “a little bit married.”
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Danielle, love this piece. Great conversation starter and, although I don’t THINK my engaged youngest daughter and her fiance (non-catholic) have any illusions around divorce and marriage expectations, I am going to point her at this entry. May you and your family be blessed by the lOrd always! Mark
Great article. Closely related is our society’s unbalanced conception of “love.” Greeks have several words for “love.” We have one. I “love” my new cell phone. I “love” my cat. I “love” my friend. I “love” my kids. I “love” my spouse. Yet, all of these kinds of “love” are quite different. In regard to spouses (significant others? Ugh) too many of us have succumbed to what might be called the “Hollywood” concept of “love.” Eros - romantic love – is elevated above all other aspects of love. The problem is that romantic feelings ebb and flow over the course of even a good and healthy relationship. But so often, when people don’t “feel in love”, they believe it must be “over.” Wrong! Love, in its most enduring and important sense is a choice!
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I choose to honor, respect and care for my wife. When we honor our spouses – regardless of our “feelings” on a given day – those warm, romantic feelings will most certainly return. When we refuse to honor our spouses unless we “feel” it, we cause relational injuries that eventually block the return of those wonderful feelings. First and foremost, love is a choice, not a feeling.
Now, you should do one called “Very Married” about Catholics who got married right out of college to their first love and now have a ton of kids, have been pretty poor and reasonably well off, and have switched back and forth between the two categories, and have had times when they were startled by their rage at their spouse, and have had many more times when they thought “there is no possible better life than this” ... or maybe you’d want to call it “EXTREME Marriage.”
I like Tom’s posting. Maybe the take home is that true Christian marriage is always “extreme marriage” in so many ways.
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