Marriage is Different Now

The word marriage holds different thoughts than it did years ago. Many individuals think of marriage as an unnecessary old process that is dying out. I can understand why.

Back in the day, individuals who got married, got married to spend the rest of their lives with the person they were marrying. Getting divorced was a last resort for issues that could not be resolved within the marriage. Today, if someone gets upset about the laundry not being done… they just go down to the courthouse, get divorced and try again.

I feel that marriage isn’t given the respect it deserves in today’s society. We should all be trying a bit harder to either wait longer to choose our forever partner, learn to fix what is broken rather than throwing it away or remember the damage that divorce can bring. We are not the only one going through a divorce, our children are too.

Now, I am not holier than now… I have been married and divorced. My marriage lasted exactly 2 years, although we separated after 11 months of marriage. Our situation was a bit similar to issues that would call for divorce I suppose.

When we got married, it wasn’t because fireworks went off every time we kissed or because either of us thought we found “the one.” It was because we had found ourselves with a little one on the way… and that was what you did when you got pregnant before you were married… you got married.

I am aware this isn’t the way it has to be, but my grandfather was very active in his church, I was very young and it seemed that there was a lot of pressure to do the ‘right thing’ for our new child.

However, just because it seemed like the right thing to do… doesn’t mean it was. After a short time, I found that our relationship was nowhere near a collaboration of life. To me, it was like a Picasso painting. From far away it looked okay but when you came up upon it… it was, as Cher put it in the movie Clueless, “A big ol mess.”

I wanted to work, move out of government housing and stop our need for food stamps. However, my ‘husband’ felt that we were living the good life and thought I was insane for having to work for what we needed.

When I finally did find work, a cashier at a local restaurant, my spouse took it upon himself to entertain communication with other women. Apparently, my choice to earn a living for our family meant that I wasn’t giving him the attention he needed.

So, our relationship ended due to infidelity and severely different views of how to make a living for our child.

Let’s FastForward to today. I have remarried, as of 2016. It is a significant difference from my first marriage. Of course, we are different people and we have different views on certain aspects of life. However, we are able to collaborate, compromise, and communicate those differences in order to find resolutions that work for both of us.

Marriage can be as long-lasting as it was back when our grandparents ventured onto the journey. All we need to do is remember that divorce isn’t a daily choice for insignificant differences, it is a last resort due to severe conflicts between the married couple.

We need to all learn to communicate with our partners. Talk to them, listen to them, and learn to come together. Relationships are a give and take… in order to take things, you must also give things. If we take in and understand this fact, there will be a large decrease of divorce proceedings in the future.

🧡Shine Bright, Kayla