Marriage Today
By: Daniela Reyes
Everyone wants to live happily ever after, am I right? That well-crafted dream from fairy tales and in recent decades from children’s movies has been installed in the vast majority of the population by now. There is a reason, after all, why the white-picket-fence-apple-pie life dream is so amazingly famous… When asked about their thoughts about the future, mostly everyone will think of having a good job, happily married, perhaps a couple of rug-rats and a cuddly pooch. I highly doubt that a life like that is for everyone that thinks of it. That’s why recently so many dreams like this are not lived through to the end. In America, there is a percentage of 36.6 percent of the women who marry between the age of 20 to 24 will get a divorce. The divorce rate for the same age group in men is that of 38.8 percent (divorcerate). These are people who promised their love to each other, that said ‘till death do us part’ and all that jazz. Not a lot of people stop to think about the validity of this promise, I think. People today don’t think of marriage as a sacred thing anymore. Maybe they do it to get some sort of warped sense of marking their territory, or what-have-you, but one should stop and think about what they’re actually doing when they get married to someone.
Recently, the idea of open-ended marriages has become increasingly popular. CNN reporter A. Pawlowski explains in the article: ‘Mate Debate: Is Monogamy Realistic’ that some people believe that “[monogamy is] within the realm of human potential, but it’s not easy” (Pawlowski, 2009). Well, I bet it isn’t, but then why is it that you went and got hitched to one individual person then? This is simply beyond me…I suppose if the other party is okay with it…no, still…marriage has always been a sacred thing, I thought. This is pretty far from that perfect little hallmark dream that is sold to us from early on. About a ten percent of the married population has reported having sexual relations outside of their marriage. Only about half percent of all marriages survive; the other half end up in divorce (Carey, Parker-Pope, 2009). . Maybe I’m at fault here, me and my bias. I have just never understood ‘cheating’. I think that if you don’t enjoy your partner enough to be with just them, then you should make it clear that you don’t want that type of relationship. If they go along with it, fine, if not then just make your way to the person you would have cheated on them with…That sounds a bit crude even to me, a bit cold…but even so I still feel that it is simpler than to be sneaking around with another person. It seems a bit heartless to me to do that to the person you swear to be so fond of.
People want to get married and start that dreamed-of life? Great. By all means, do it. But, for Christ’s sake, give it some thought before actually jumping into it. Have some regard for what would await for you in the future if you go down that road. I know that they say that love blinds you and you see everything through a pinkish haze and you like cookies and puppies and…anyway. Please, love cannot possibly make someone that blind and, well, stupid.
