Marriage

In a recent effort to simplify my life, I've being going through many boxes stored in the basement and attic to see what I can throw away. I'm sort of a pack rat when it comes to holding on to reading material. I keep holding on to books, magazines, etc. with the foolish expectation that I will somehow find the time to read them. It never happens and it just creates a bigger pile of STUFF that I'm holding on to needlessly.

As I was going through this sifting process, I found a bunch of Reader's Digest Magazines from the late 40's and early 50's. The first one I picked up was from October 1947 and was in fairly good shape. Having a few minutes to waste, I decided to scan it to see what were some of the topics of interest 58 years ago. The very first article, "Let's Help Them Marry Young" tickled my curiosity bone and I decided to see what this was all about.

Before I could finish the first paragraph, I stopped and muttered to myself how things haven't changed much. The problem presented was how difficult it was, financially, for a couple to get married. Based on what they were earning back then, couples could not afford to get married young and were labeled as the blocked generation.

Back then, the norm was for people to get married in their late teens and early twenties mainly because they couldn't wait any longer for sex. The dilemma of having to wait to get married had psychiatrist's offices teeming with men and women suffering from guilt complexes because they indulged in premarital sex relations, and with equal numbers who were frigid or impotent because they were too long repressed. The rules of society back then were puritanical and it was taboo to engage in premarital sex.

Early marriage was more or less a check against evils. An interview with a young couple that had been married for four years (she was 18, he was 21) provided the following: "It's given us a chance to grow and develop together", she said. "We feel we understand each other much better than we would if we had married four or five years later." He said, "Together we've got more courage to face the future than we'd ever have separately. Being a married man - with one child already and another on the way - I'm sure I'm a much better citizen than if I were single. I work harder. I have a bank account for the first time in my life. I plan for the future. I know if I were single today, I'd be running around, staying up until all hours, and getting nowhere fast."

Professionals often advised the young to get married, saying that the idea of waiting for a better job or money in the bank was strictly materialistic. They claimed that the hardships of starting out in life did not destroy marriage but made it stronger. They also said that the thing which really weakens our social structure is that family life starts too late.

Today, unless children are born into wealth, it's just as dificult if not more for so for two people to get married. To give you an idea, the median age of new spouses rose from 20 for females and 23 for males in 1960 to about 26 and 27, respectively, in 2004. Other factors include the growth of cohabitation and a small decrease in the tendency of divorced people to remarry.

The divorce rate today is nearly twice that of 1960, but has declined slightly since hitting its peak in the early 1980s. For the average couple that married in recent years, the lifetime probability of divorce or separation remains between 40% and 50%.


The stable family of the 1950's largely became a relic of the past as American women entered the job market and found that they could be economically independent and responsible for themselves and not have to depend on a man to take care of those things.

No matter if it's the 1950's or the present thoughts of marriage always brings some form of indecision, in some cases a cold feet syndrome. The hardest question to answer after meeting someone that you like is, "How do I know if this is the right one?" You go and ask your parents and the the answer you'll get is, "When you meet the right one - you'll know! Three weeks before the wedding someone will ask you, "Are you sure?" By this time it's too late, the wedding invitations have been sent out. The only thing you can hope for is what happened to George Costanza on one of the Seinfeld episodes.

You reach the altar on your wedding day and you ask, "God, What am I doing here?" At that moment God will speak to you. You hear a voice saying, "Too late, sucker!"

Dr. Tony Campolo in his book, "Let Me Tell You a Story", says that, Marriage is what you create after the wedding is over. It's something you have to decide to create. You wake up one morning and look across the bed. She won't be awake yet. Her mouth will be open and her hair will hanging down over her face. Worse than that, she will wake up first and look across the bed, and in your case, there may be no hair hanging down over your face. And romance takes a nose dive! That is when people can too easily split up.

When I asked a friend of mine whether he and his wife had ever thought of divorce as the romance wound down, he answered, "Of course not. My wife and I never considered divorce. Murder sometimes - but never divorce!"

I also collect sayings and quotations and will leave you with these two gems about marriage:

The woman cries before the wedding; the man afterwards. -Polish proverb

A deaf husband and a blind wife are always a happy couple. -Danish Proverb