“결혼해 주세요.”
“네.”
“cool.”
well, the topic of marriage seems to be rearing its head everywhere these days… jenny and will are getting married; now that jeff is getting deployed to afghanistan, he and his girlfriend in taiwan are rushing to get married before he leaves; v says he’s ready to settle down with his girl…
and then there is james. marriage… is a big and scary subject, for many reasons. the biggest reason is that if i make a promise, i make that promise forever. for me, forever means forever — not ’til i find someone younger and prettier than you, not ’til i get sick and tired of your annoying quirks and you start to drive me crazy, but forever.
it’s unfortunate that the divorce rate is over fifty percent these days, and in the military, with the strain of multiple deployments, it’s around sixty. it’s also unfortunate that some people at least partially blame this on homosexual partnerships, which “destroy the sanctity of marriage.” the problem with marriage these days isn’t that homosexuals are corrupting its sanctity; the problem is that heterosexual men and women rush into things and make promises they either don’t truly understand or they don’t truly mean. ie, they get married with the mindset that they truly love the other person, when they really don’t and only think they do, or they get married with the mindset that if it doesn’t work out, they can always get a divorce anyways. people set themselves up for failure.
anyone who has ever been around a successful marriage knows that for the union to remain strong and intact, it takes work! it requires total commitment to the other person, the intestinal fortitude to swallow one’s pride and make the difficult sacrifice, and the integrity to truly live up to one’s word when things get tough and there is nothing you would like to do more than run away and leave the mess behind. but instead, people lack the balls to own up to their promises and bail on the relationship, because that’s the easier thing to do. it’s easier to blame the other person, or to cut and run. it’s difficult to forgive.
now granted, there are situations where one partner does irreparable harm to the marriage, and there is no point in continuing on together — such as cases of abuse and repeated infidelities. it takes two to tango after all, and you can’t make a person keep on dancing unless he or she chooses to. but by and large, the majority of failed marriages are the result of people making poor/hasty decisions for the wrong reasons, with unrealistic expectations for the relationship going forward or counting on changes in the other person they have no right to expect will come, and without truly willing to commit to their own promises of “in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, ’til death do us apart.”
and the other thing: you need to keep the romance, man! you need to keep fanning the flames! you need to stay young at heart, even while maturing together and gaining a deeper understanding of each other. you have to keep falling in love again. kisses, flowers, long walks on the beach, dinner dates on the town, crazy passionate sex, and the confidence that you are the best and no one else can rock his or her world like you can — the swagger if you will. and free time apart from each other to do your own things. all of it easier said than done, of course. no one truly knows how another person will change and grow over time, but if you don’t have a pretty damn good idea, then you have no business asking the question.
finally, if nothing else, don’t be tiger woods.
