Does anyone value marriage anymore?

[Darsa]

Marraige isn't an endless party. There are good times, and incredibly dark, difficult times. My DH and I are celebrating our 10 yr wedding anniversary with a vow renewal. We have two wonderful, incredibly challenging kids with multiple disabilities, my mom has lived with us since we got married (heart attack, then cancer, then Chrons disease, she's needed help but we really love having her), I have a degenerative auto immune disease as well, and my DH suffered from severe depression. We've been through the mill, and sometimes I cried every night, and felt lonlier than I ever felt on my own. But we have a covenant marraige. I promised for better or worse, and I meant it. And because we stuck together in the hard times, we were able to appreciate when things got better. I have complete faith in him, and him me because we've earned that trust. We've seen worse, and lived to tell about it. And our faith does make a difference. God is in the center of our marraige, and we base our decisions on our faith. I love and respect my husband more now than the day I married him, and he feels the same. It is deeper, richer and more meaningful because it's been tested and refined.

My goodness, what a strong woman you are.

 

[PrincessSuzanne]

I definitely value my marriage. We are in it for life. we have been through some really rough and testing times and survived, so we can survive almost anything, well, except infidelity and I wouldn't stay married to a man that would go outside his marriage.

Our pastor told us that his wife always said "Divorce is not an option, but Murder is always on the table" and we always think of that.

My husband is my best friend and partner in life

Suzanne

 

[Disney Doll]

I think a lot of people don't value marriage.
I do.

 

[DeluxePrincess]

Lately I have seen a lot of couples wanting to have a wedding, but not really ready to be married. Many women get so hung up on that perfect wedding that they commit before they are ready. I have seen young men wanting to throw that awesome party, but not realizing what comes after that. Staying together forever is a lot work.

 

[bhaluvindisney]

Our pastor told us that his wife always said "Divorce is not an option, but Murder is always on the table"

That phrase made me snort! I was in need of a laugh so thanks!

 

[Evil Genius]

Making a marriage work takes commitment and work. Something alot of people these days don't want to do for anything. I value the sanctity of marriage.

 

[beattyfamily]

It does seem that people value marriage much less than they used to. Many get divorced, more than once even and many many are secretly cheating.

I sincerely believe that you never truely know anyone even if you think you do.

But having said that, I do value my marriage and so does my husband. We've been together 20 years and married for 17 of them. We took our vows very seriously. Divorce is just not an option for us. We've had our ups and downs and hardships but we weathered through them together.

We will do whatever we have to to stay together till the day we die.

 

[helloirishkitty]

I am not married, but I have been engaged. I value marriage enough to have not gone through with it, because I know that it would not have been forever. It wasn't about the pretty white dress or the flowers, but about what was going to be the day after and beyond. When I do get married, that's it. I plan to honor my vows, for better or for worse, for the rest of my life. Marriage isn't a "well we can always get a divorce..." type thing for me. It's forever and it's not supposed to be easy.

Lots of my friends don't value marriage, and that's fine for them. I'm young (still in graduate school) and more than one of my friends has been married AND divorced.

 

[Colleen27]

Cheating is devastating, but I don't think it is any more prevalent than in the past. I think it is human nature to some degree, much the way greed and laziness and other negative traits are parts of human nature that should be kept in check. What I think has changed is that infidelity is more apt to be viewed as the end of a marriage now, since women are less dependant upon men and since extramarital sex is perceived as a higher risk behaviour in the post-HIV era.

DH and I have been together 10 years, married 6, and we have 3 young children. I very much value our marriage as the foundation of our family and homelife. But if he ever cheated, I'd be out the door so fast his head would spin.

 

[hiwaygal]

There are millions of people who value marriage so much they are fighting tooth and nail to make theirs legal.

I married my DH four years ago...it took me a long time to find someone I couldn't live without (and I didn't need the church to find him). And we've had some challenges...but I still can't imagine my life without him. Divorce isn't an option for me.

 

[Tink_Or_Belle]

my grandparents are 88 and 91 years old and have been married 71 years. judging by my grandmas stories her opinion is that people get divorced more now than they used to because women work more than they did back in her day, it is not that they valued marriage more it was that when you had 4 kids and the husband made the money and mom was home baking cookies mom had no way to leave. She seems to have quite a few friends and relatives whose husbands did not value marriage at all but what was the wife to do leave and raise all the kids with no income? So from listening to her stories and looking at people I know I think people still value marriage but they also value themselves and women are less likely to just take cheating or abuse because they can work and can leave. therefore the divorce rate is higher thyan it used to be.

 

[Liberty Belle]

I heard Will Smith say it best on a Barbara Walters special. Essentially, it was 'if divorce is an option, you'll get one'. I know so many couples who go into with the 'if it doesn't work, we get a divorce' mindset, and it irks me. I've only been married for 4 years, so I can't pretend to know everything, but I really feel like it's not an option. DH and I take our vows seriously, and have already been through stuff that I know could have broken up other couples. No infidelity or anything, just really, really stressful times. But we have an underlying layer of friendship that helps get us through.

My step sister filed for divorce 3 weeks after getting back from her honeymoon. And this was 2 years after buying a home with another guy and leaving him before construction was complete. She's a serial monogamist, and I honestly doubt she'll ever be in anything that lasts longer than 3 years.

Oh, and I'm the only one of my friends who got married, then bought a home, then got pregnant. What a concept!

I can't imagine marrying someone if you thought there was a possibility that you might divorce. I knew I'd be with my husband forever or I wouldn't have married him. We're going on 17 years married.

 

[Liberty Belle]

my grandparents are 88 and 91 years old and have been married 71 years. judging by my grandmas stories her opinion is that people get divorced more now than they used to because women work more than they did back in her day, it is not that they valued marriage more it was that when you had 4 kids and the husband made the money and mom was home baking cookies mom had no way to leave. She seems to have quite a few friends and relatives whose husbands did not value marriage at all but what was the wife to do leave and raise all the kids with no income? So from listening to her stories and looking at people I know I think people still value marriage but they also value themselves and women are less likely to just take cheating or abuse because they can work and can leave. therefore the divorce rate is higher thyan it used to be.

You know, that makes a lot of sense.

 

[Colleen27]

In these marriage threads there are usually a fair amount of people that say marriage is hard or marriages are hard work. Shouldn't marriages be easy and fun?

Fun, yes, but nothing worth doing is easy all of the time.

 

[smartestnumber5]

I think we tend to have a false historical view about what marriage used to be like "in the good old days."

For one thing, just looking back a few generations, I don't think that many people had the same kind of opportunity to divorce as they do today. My grandparents marriage was horrible and she tried to leave him, but she had no where to go. Her mother would not let her come home. So she had to go back. One of her sisters had a husband who beat her--again the mother would not let the sister leave him and move back home. So the sister stayed with him. I don't believe people of those generations necessarily valued marriage *more*--I think divorce just carried such high costs (e.g. extreme stigma for the parents and children and financial ruin given that women often could not support themselves and their children on their own).

I found Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage by Stephanie Coontz (she is a history scholar and directs an institute for research on the family at her university) a fascinating read.

According to Coontz, the importance of marital fidelity is in some ways a rather recent invention. In many cultures and eras it was quite expected that married people would have sex with non-spouses. (Of course, often men got more of this privilege than women, but not always.) And the idea of actually *loving* one's spouse in a the romantic way we associate with marriage apparently would have been a rather strange idea to most of the people of cultures/eras past.

The Ancient Greeks are pretty famous for thinking that marriage was basically just an arrangement to produce babies and provide for them. Real romantic love (and hot sex) was reserved for male-male relationships (after all, since women were seen a lower life forms and generally incapable of rational thought, one couldn't have that kind of love for them.) But apparently related attitudes about the disconnect between romantic love on the one hand and marriage on the other were pretty widespread until about than 200 years ago in the Western world.

She actually notes that during the Victorian era the rise in divorce which we've seen in the last half century was foreseen by conservatives who wanted to preserve "traditional marriage" at the time. "Traditional marriage" then was marriage that involved/was prompted by romantic love and sexual passion, but was prompted by/based on other kinds of social and financial concerns. The radicals insisted that romantic love and sexual passion should be the main impetus for marriage (as long as the sex waited til after the "I Do"s of course.)

The conservatives of the day argued that marrying for love and expecting to have passionate sex with one's spouse, would be the downfall of marriage. After all, they worried that romantic love was fleeting (whereas the utilitarian benefits of marriage could last forever even if you despised your spouse with all of your heart). And Coontz thinks the conservatives were right (about their empirical prediction at least; not about their value judgment that it's better not to love your spouse)--the reason that divorce has become rampant is that marriage is a completely different institution than it used to be. Now we expect it to provide us with a deep kind of romantic love, the only sex we're allowed to have, and fulfillment of most of our emotional needs for our entire lives. For most of history it was more like a business arrangement and therefore falling in love with someone else, having sex outside of the relationship, and looking elsewhere for emotional support wasn't a reason to divorce.


In any case, no the number of divorces doesn't bother me at all (I mean, I'm sad for the people involved inasmuch as they often end up hurting.) I agree with Coontz that we have created a very different institution than the one our ancestors knew. I think our institution is better in certain ways and theirs was better in other ways. I figure the 50% divorce rate and all the hurt that comes with it is the price we pay to have the institution of marriage (and partnerships/romantic relationships more generally) as we know it.

I sure as heck would not want to be in the position of anyone in previous generations! I wouldn't want to be like my grandmother--stuck in a horrible marriage because I had no where to go and wouldn't have been able to feed my children if I left. And I wouldn't want to be married to someone (and have sex with them and produce children) as part of what is essentially a business deal either. So I'll happily take the almost 50% chance GF and I have of breaking up/divorcing.

 

[The Mystery Machine]

my grandparents are 88 and 91 years old and have been married 71 years. judging by my grandmas stories her opinion is that people get divorced more now than they used to because women work more than they did back in her day, it is not that they valued marriage more it was that when you had 4 kids and the husband made the money and mom was home baking cookies mom had no way to leave. She seems to have quite a few friends and relatives whose husbands did not value marriage at all but what was the wife to do leave and raise all the kids with no income? So from listening to her stories and looking at people I know I think people still value marriage but they also value themselves and women are less likely to just take cheating or abuse because they can work and can leave. therefore the divorce rate is higher thyan it used to be.

Yep. My grandpa (mom's dad) was an alcoholic abuser. They rejoiced when he died (heartattack) when I was 6mons old.

Back then it was OK to beat your wife and children. People looked the other way and there was no help for abused women and children like there is now.

He was such a scumbucket that he made sure she did not receive his pension payouts after death, he was a union employee in Detroit. Now you cannot legally do that anymore.

I think people wear to many rose colored glasses when they talk about the past.

 

[smartestnumber5]

In these marriage threads there are usually a fair amount of people that say marriage is hard or marriages are hard work. Shouldn't marriages be easy and fun?

I remember having a conversation with my grandmother about this once (I can't remember the context unfortunately). But I said something like, "Well why bother getting married if it's going to suck so bad. If it's not going to be fun, why would you do it?"

The look on her face was priceless. She was almost yelling: "FUN! You think marriage is fun?! FUN?!" It was as if I'd just said the most ridiculous thing anyone had ever said or will ever say. (Of course, this is the grandmother I mentioned above who tried to leave her bad marriage a few years in and couldn't. She and my grandfather clearly did love each other a lot. But no, their marriage definitely wasn't fun in any sense. It was better in the second half of their life when he calmed down a lot--he had to retire from a really stressful job in his late 50s because of heart problems that were probably caused by the job itself. But they still had significant problems.)

I guess now having been in a long-term committed relationship I wouldn't describe it as fun. "Fun" just seems too flight, too hot fudge sundae. GF and I have a lot of fun with each other, and I think if we didn't have that, I would seriously reconsider whether we ought to be together. But there are other more valuable things that are going on too and in order to get those kinds of value out of a relationship I think it can't always be fun.

That said, if I ever reacted like my grandmother did to the mere suggestion that a relationship should be fun (in some sense)--to think that was an absolutely absurd idea--I'd divorce in two seconds.

 

[joviroxx]

Personally, I think marriage is going the way most things are lately. We've become a society of immediate gratification and want. People want the wedding, people want the kids, the house. People making decisions without really thinking into the future and what it means. When things get tough, people bolt. Too many people wanting to play "house" and not understanding what this commitment really means.

I don't think its marriage so much that is not being valued but the decision to GET married isn't being valued. Does that mean that every well thought out decision will result well? No. And since divorce has of its stigma, its an easy out for some, no, not for all.

I've been married 13 years and it hasn't always been easy. Its hard work, and like most things, those you work hardest at are usually the most fullfilling. When I decided to get married and have kids, I made a promise and I needed to make damn sure what I was getting into and with who, fully realizing that it wasn't all about me.

A great majority of people I have spoken to that are divorced tell me that there were signs before they got married that it wasn't the right decision, they just chose not to listen to their intuition.

 

[DVC~OKW~96]

My wife, and our marriage is the focus of my life. Every decision I make, every decision I ponder, every action, every thought includes her and the results that my actions will have on our lives together.

We've been together for years, and will be together for our remaining years.

There is no church involved, however we were both raised in very devout households.

There is no g-d involved, however see above.

There is us. She and I. We work on it every day. It's complex, and all consuming, this being married.

Perhaps one day the federal government and the state government in which we live will not dismiss our dedication to one another, but we'll lose not one jot of our devotion waiting for that to come to pass.

Marriage is what you both make of it.

 

[SundancePass]

My husband is the light of my life, my best friend, my lover, my cofessor, and my bank (because he wants to be and it's OK with me that he is). We will be married 40 years on 3/15. We are not religious (as in we don't go to church) but are very spirtual. Marriage is my biggest frustration (kids) and my greatest joy. I cannot imagine my life without him. We do have so much fun together. Yes, there have been some days that I would plunk him in the front yard and put a "take him, he's free" sign on him as he would me. But before we got married, we negoitated the terms of our divorce. how many children we would have, and that fact that I wanted and would have my own life (career), and that he was better an managing money than I was but that we would have joint everything financial. However, my Mom always told me to "have your own money", so I have always had a small savings account that he doesn't know of. I will use it for our 40th anniversary trip somewhere this summer as neither of us is leaving this marriage except by death.

If he had an affair, I would not divorce him. I would try to forgive him and see where we would go from there. I have waaaayyy too much time and too much of myself invested. Plus, I don't have time to train another husband!

I think in our throw-away society, people are thrown away as easily as shoes. I don't believe in divorce and have worked very hard to keep our marriage alive...as has he. And it IS alive!!!