I wasn't aware until just now that couples are highly likely to divorce within the first two years of the birth of a child.
Alright, I'm a never married guy, and I don't have kids.
Still, I can observe that the concept of marriage has changed dramatically. Like most things, it's swung like a pendulum. Through a lot of human history, and still in a lot of places around the world, marriage is a simple financial arraignment. The Western world has made leaps and bounds from where we were to where we are.
Still, one thing that has been consistent throughout history, though it's evolved, is the understanding that marriage is a covenant.
I know that I have a few people on my friend list who are opposed to gay marriage. Personally, as a political matter, I don't think that the government should have anything to say about marriage either way.
I'm talking about culture.
People seem to have forgotten what marriage is well more than a decade before gay marriage became a major movement. Straight people screwed up marriage first.
How many movies and TV shows had a wedding scene wherein the couple decided to write their own vows, and they go on to just say how in love they are, "You mean everything to me. You've made me happier than I ever thought I could be."...and so on?
Have you ever realized that those aren't vows?
It's cute to think that marriage is all about love. It's not. It can't be. If it were, I would have been married and divorced at least twice now. Love is a major component -- obviously. But, how each person experiences love evolves over time.
Without a covenant, a marriage isn't a marriage. I've been in love, lived with the woman I loved for several years, we (especially me) lived under the delusion that living as if we were married was the same thing as being married.
The thing is, we were partly right. We loved each other. Most married couples who lasted shorter than we did loved each other. What we don't have in common is the pieces of paper from the government. What we do have in common is a lack of a covenant.
This shouldn't be misconstrued as me saying that the government should step in and get more conservative in regard to marriage. This is a cultural problem.
Children change dynamics in a relationship. A lot of things change dynamics in a relationship. Marriage being strictly about love is just a relationship that can end when one person decides that his or her feelings changed. That's just a long-term relationship.