Many people today have lost faith in the institution of marriage. Too many children have to live between two homes; breaking their holidays into a tug of war – who gets who on Christmas Eve and Christmas day? We end up with children with parents who won’t speak to one another, and parents with children who are rounding up their first divorce up.
It may be a matter of the institution of marriage becoming too casual, too unplanned, or perhaps even fashionable to the point that couples are diving into a commitment because they feel it is time to make the step, regardless of what it really means. Too many couples don’t even consider that this is something that are applying themselves to – for life.
Women are easily seduced by the concept of love. To fall in love and find someone who loves you in return – what bliss, what perfection! Now you have the foundation. With that in place, everything else will just fall right in. Right? Unfortunately, love is not quite all you need, as much as we want to say and as surely as we would like to believe it, it takes a hell of a lot more than two words (“I do”) to keep two people together forever.
When you are committing to someone for the rest of your life, you are committing with every little piece of you, and inevitably, not everyone is perfect. So, there are going to be pieces of you that your partner does not like, and visa-versa.
The secret does not lie in just tolerating these things. Many say that love lies in the acceptance of imperfections, but why does it have to be that way? Why not try shape and mold one another in such a way that the things that we do that are not right, that are not what they should be, can be bettered, or even perfected?
We are never alone in a relationship – it’s one of the beauties that we hold so dear when entering into one. But in the same sense, you are not alone in your annoyances; you are not alone in your imperfections; you are not alone in wanting things to be even better.
And so, with a certain sense of disconsolation we enter into something where we are more committed to the idea of the marriage than the marriage itself. And we have not taken the time and love, (yes love,) to discover whether it is the correct thing to do.
As time can work to better the imperfections, it can eat away at us, and reveal itself as something that we truly do not want. And that is okay, as long as we are in a situation where we have already tied ourselves to all things surrounding this person – all the friends, a home, families crossing over, maybe even a child.
Don’t let the institution of marriage create the problem only solvable through divorce. Enter into it knowingly, and lovingly and with all of the person that you are and who your partners wants you to be, because if he is good for you and you are good for him then it is only possible to influence one another in a positive and affirmative manner… and then you never know, you may have then created something that can truly last forever.
