With Such High Divorce Rates, Should We Still Marry For Love?
The divorce rate in America is so high that only about half of the people who get married will actually stay married. There are many theories as to why the divorce rate has been steadily climbing over the last few decades. Sadly, even if you look at the marriages in Black churches, their divorce rates are just as high as the “secular world”. Even those that believe that going to church will “fix” a marriage can not argue with the statistics.
The fairy tale says that you meet someone, fall in love and then you live happily ever after but only half the marriages make it to the “after” part and in that half, there is the question of whether it is “happily ever after”, or just “after”.
We asked this question, on our Facebook page and the responses are as follows: ( Feel free to respond to the question yourself.)
“I would say marry cuz im madly in love..!!! Why marry someone if ur not madly in love?? What if u marry them and you don’t fall in love?? Lol”
“Seems to me you’d want to be madly in love with the person before marrying them. Thankfully, America, unlike some Asian or African countries, doesn’t have a tradition of ‘arranged marriages’ where one is expected to grow to love the person whom the parents arranged for the individual to marry.”
“both. it’s a continuum …. you continue to WORK in the marriage to deepen that “madly in love” into multiple depths and layers as your marriage evolves. Been with my hubby 22 yrs/married 15– my hesitation of committing during the initial 7 yrs of the relationship was due my lack of emotional intelligence to understand the various layers and depth AND required work if the term “madly in love ” before and after marriage.”
“Madly in LOVE…To marry and not be in love-is more work than a lot of individuals have in them. Thank God we live in a society where you are allowed to choose who you marry. Arranged marriage-destroys to many lives.”
“I say marry someone you’re madly in love with! However, love (should) continue to grow over time. Look at some cultures; they have arranged marriages and they tend to stay married. h**l, I’ll take either one!”
“Marry someone you’re madly in love with and after marriage stay at least in love if not madly in love.”
“Both!!!!”
“i surely wouldn’t marry someone i didn’t love…”
“I loved him. Didn’t fall madly in love until married him.”
It seems that the consensus is that the love must come before the marriage, which begs the question, if you marry because you fall in love, what happens when you fall out of love?
As a man, many of us ask why should we get married, when 70% of divorces are initiated by the wife? What’s more, the reason often used is the mysterious “irreconciliable differences”.
Irreconciliable differences could be anything that the wife doesn’t agree with that the husband does, from passing gas/snoring in bed at night to leaving socks on the floor to cheating with another woman.
If the marriage works, fine. Half do, half don’t.
When it goes south…
What does the man get? He loses his children, has to pay child support or go to jail, may/may not see his children-based on the temperament of his ex-wife, loses his house, and loses his mind oftentimes.
This is why many men don’t want to marry. Many single women want s*x more than marriage, and are happier with a booty call than a committed relationship.
The only men who benefit from a marriage when it goes south is a rich man who prenupped her. He then can gum up the courts and get his children if he wants sole custody, simply because the courts will support rich men.
Failed Marriages are just like anything else, things didn’t work out, it is the natural state of things to want to be with someone, sometimes over time we find out it is so difficult to make peace with a relationship that doesn’t work, after 20+ years or more, times are hard for everyone now and why shouldn’t marriages suffer like anything else, if we could predict the future……
http://womenlivinglife.blogspot.com/2012/10/td-jakes-commitment-end-of-sermon.html#!/2012/10/td-jakes-commitment-end-of-sermon.html