Marriage

I’ve chosen the topic of marriage for my theme for June blogs since June is considered the most popular month to marry. 

My working definition for marriage comes from The New Lexicon Webster’s Dictionary of The English Language: “the institution in which a man and a woman become legally united on a permanent basis.” 

The consummation of this legal uniting of a man and woman is the wedding ceremony.

I’ve attended some beautiful and expensive weddings, but from personal experience, I know that the wedding is no guarantee that the marriage will last. 

No matter the vows; traditional or classic, no matter the dress; old or new, and no matter the venue; a mountain top or a church basement, it’s the commitment to the marriage that weathers the storms of a man and wife for life. 

I turned twenty in the late seventies. Back then, twenty was considered the median age for first marriages. Today, the median age is twenty-eight to thirty years of age.

When I was sixteen, I met my husband-to-be in person. He was a friend of one of my sisters. Today, most people meet online.

 Back in the late seventies, it was popular for people to live together and then maybe get married. Today, people keep their distance, their independence, and solitude via social media hoping someday to marry.

Times have changed, but people haven’t. We still long to share our life with someone, to not be alone, and to find the one we can trust to love us.  

What draws us to a mate? For me it was infatuation at first sight. I was sixteen, he was twenty-one. I noticed him. He knew I was too young to be noticed. But, our lives kept intersecting. 

One summer he helped my brother build a garage for my mother and I watched. He and my brother traveled together to Idaho and I followed in my V.W. 

A group of us shared a house and then everybody moved out except for him and me. 

Now I was nineteen and we were a couple. 

Living together did not sit well with me. I knew it was the wrong thing for me to do. He proposed marriage. But instead, I moved out.

He didn’t give up. He pursued. He wasn’t desperate. He just knew who he wanted. Eventually, I knew too, who I wanted. 

Why Bother?

Why bother with marriage? The stories of how our commitments begin are different. But it’s the commitment to the marriage that weathers the storms of a man and wife for life.