Posted on 02/22/2022 7:38:04 AM PST by Kaslin
“I thank God that I have 42 years of empirical evidence that I married a saint. After all, my fantastic wife has put up with me for more than four decades.”
Same.
“Jesus said, “I have come that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” That includes our relationships.
God’s design for marriage is for our good, and it helps spare people a lot of unnecessary unhappiness.”
A marriage apart from God’s truth and grace would seem impossible.
Yes.
As I see it it puts the option on the table that either or both could always walk away form the relationship, this then lingers into the marriage.
Love is something we can learn and actually should learn, It grows in adversity and without such true love is often not be attained.
IMHO the marriage contract gives a couple the glue needed to hold together when things get rough and after struggling realize what true commitment and dedication to a fellow soul is really worth. To have one you can and will depend on in all things is a gift only surpassed but our Lords sacrifice and offering of salvation.
That is what marriage can offer.
Interesting article but very unscientific. People that wed without cohabiting are likely to have strong religious backgrounds and a mindset that would make divorce much less likely. The difference in divorce rate is due to differences in groups not the effect of cohabitation.
Many of the 20-45 year marriages still going strong, from my acquaintances, cohabited.
Plus when you are married and your spouse is getting testy over something, you can always retort “I just can’t get over the fact that you would actually marry someone like me who would do some heinous thing like x.”, “X” being all the usual suspects.
True, my wife and i lived together for 20+ years and considered ourselves married but never had a “ceremony” until we had children.
Marriage is in bad shape because of gay marriage and being able to marry your cat. They made it a secular ceremony, rather than what God intended. The state has made a complete mockery of marriage.
Personally, I’ve always been against that “living together” custom that emerged with the boomers around Woodstock time. I didn’t do it and have been married 45 years. All four of my kids lived together and all got married. Some are pushing the twenty year mark.
Don’t try to use facts with religious people.
But think of the world our grandparents lived in. The ability to amuse yourself was not nearly what it is now. Pretty much to entertain yourself, you read books, or maybe went to the movies once a week. Basically to entertain meant interacting with others, and that meant there was much more pressure to conform to social norms, which meant, getting married. The thought of being called a “spinster” or an “old maid” was abhorrent to women, just as a “confirmed bachelor” was to men (because we all knew what it was the code word for).
Now with all of this technology and social media, you can scratch that itch without even thinking about marriage.
Well said
Even if you take all the moral aspects out of cohabitating and look at it strictly from a secular point of view, it makes no sense. The statistics are clear: living together before marriage increases your chances of divorce later on.
“Marriage is a gift from God.”
Marriage is a contract created by man for the best interest of the two and others, like businesses and if kids start to arrive. It is business, not religious to be legal and wasn’t recognized until around 1549 and was based upon the Sarum manual. But the “vows” of that time placed the man in charge of the family on a non equal status. While the Bible includes verses on love, marriage, and weddings, there aren’t any specific marriage vows mentioned. In both the Old and New Testaments, the hierarchy in a marriage is to place God first, the husband second as head of the household, and the wife subservient to the husband. Very different from today’s vows.
wy69
I don’t apply jewish rules to non-jews and I don’t apply Christian rules to non-Christians.
The real things that keep people together are compatibility and shared goals and values.
In earlier times many people had multiple marriages because of the shorter life expectancy. My grandfather’s mother died when he was a child and his father remarried—that wasn’t so good for my grandfather (apparently his stepmother fit the stereotype of stepmothers) but I have a lot of second cousins whom I like very much, who would never have been born if not for that second marriage. My Revolutionary War ancestor had three wives. Many more examples in my family tree.
So--cohabiting is just a symptom. The fix the divorce rate, people need to become more religious and have mindsets that make divorce less likely.
One can infer from the article’s headline that it’s best to avoid cohabitating before marriage:
....................................................
Big hoorah to the author for using the word “infer”, correctly.
>>>IMHO the marriage contract gives a couple the glue needed to hold together when things get rough and after struggling realize what true commitment and dedication to a fellow soul is really worth. <<<
The state shredded that contract did it not back in the 70s? Between no fault divorce and the family court ordering the man to pay huge sums of money to the woman, did the govt not incentivize women to leave their man when the going gets rough? Instead of glue it seems to be that that marriage is now nothing more than a temporary agreement to stay together for life. Both spouses can choose to remain married, but either can opt out at a moment’s notice. Because it’s often financially ruinous for a man to leave, he may be in the “cheaper to keep her mindset” if things are not to his liking. That is the only “glue” holding a marriage together I can see.
My grandpa’s father died when grandpa was 2 years old. Grandpa’s mother remarried, then she died when grandpa was 5 years old, then his step father remarried. He then had 2 parents that were not blood related to him and according to grandpa they loved him as their own.
Folks took their responsibilities seriously in those days.
What fact, many of the 20+ marriages I know still going all all in the religious community.
That is all anecdotal.
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