A view on the changing ideas of marriage

For Better, For Worse

What this article doesn't include is those people who decided to get married for the old reasons (i.e. not love, but for job promotion) in the modern times. They follow the old ideas of what is acceptable for a marriage, not the supposed ideals of the 1950s, but the real version that existed in the 1700s.

Both cheat incessantly. They have no real consideration of each other - basically they can tolerate each other, at best. But, they use each other for social standing. Without the husband, the wife would be broke, possibly childless (from her own following of the 1700s mores), and feel completely scandalized. Without the wife, the husband feels he would not have been able to proceed in his career. They do not have a partnership. They have separate lives that are much akin to modern roommates, only the man provides money for his wife. Both feel that everything is perfectly normal in such a situation: they are married.

There are other cases where they marry for love, partnership, etc, and the wife decides to stay home. They follow modern ideas about what a marriage is. This is not what I am talking about. I am talking about those who married a person solely because of their monetary prospects. The Anna-Nicole Smith with the 83 year old billionaire.

I see marriage as a formal life long partnership. My DF is someone I love, and beyond that, is someone I love spending time with. There are so many things we like to do together. I can see us doing many of these things for a very long time. I see no reason why any two people should not be able to form a marriage. It is a commitment to another person, and a commitment to love, trust, help, and be a friend to them for the rest of their life.

I see divorce as an acknowledgement that the person you married is not someone you can love, trust, help and be a friend to. There are a large number of reasons why that could be, although I think that the most common is that the person who you married is now not what you thought the person was when you married them. Either your perception was off, or the person changed and didn't change *with* you. The second is, in my opinion, a complete failure of the marriage. People change over time, but two married people should be working together as they change. The first is a failure of the people getting married to be honest to each other and to themselves.