the road less traveled

it seems that marriage is a road that becoming less successfully traveled on. i've been thinking about marriage and committment, as i've heard more about those i know personally that are struggling or ending their own marriage. it breaks my heart to hear such news.

divorce, it's such an ugly thing. though it makes me sad, it makes me angry as well. i find it too frequently used and oftentimes used as an "easy way out" rather than working it out. i've seen and heard the word threatened in marriages, just being tossed around so easily. i just don't understand. even when divorce is not an issue, i've seen and heard so many stories of the lack of committment in marriage. sure, there are the big things like adultery, but there are small things like verbally pondering to your spouse what it might have been like to have married an old lover. people even commit more passionately and fervently to their career, hobbies, children, and other things more than their marriage. i wonder, if we were to commit as strongly to marriage, would we have such a high divorce rate?

for me, i see lifelong committment and marriage as one and the same. you can't have one without the other. and i think in many marriages, people don't think of it in this way. and in my mind, it might the root of why there are so many "unhappily ever afters". i wish i could drill the idea of committment and marriage into couples heads. perhaps it would help them prepare for marriage and hopefully prevent divorces. i guess that's why i'm a big proponent of pre-marital counseling. in our counseling, we got a big reality check of what marriage is: it's the union of two imperfect people that have different backgrounds, experiences, understandings, thought processes, personalities, expectations, etc. so of course, there are going to be problems and issues big and small. we got small doses of what the hard times in our own marriage might look like, and what it has looked like in our pastor's marriage. in the end, we were reminded of that marriage is for life, and it's not always pretty. the underlying tone of our counseling was, "now you know all these things, the good and bad. do you still want to do it?" and i just hope couples think about these things before they say "i do".