Marriage

Because I am single and wish to be otherwise, I think often about marriage. I think about whether or not I am properly preparing myself. I think about what I need to do to get myself into one. I think about the people I know who have succeeded or failed before me. And none of this thinking leads to any sort of conclusion. I am left only with questions and musings. in this wondering, I came across a quote from the venerable Don Baxter, "This generation has lost its faith in marriage." With a fair measure of certainty, I can attribute those words to Don, but what on earth can he mean by that? Perhaps, with all the degradation of marriage that has happened in recent history, young people of about my age (yes, I still get to consider myself young) no longer believe as a demographic group that they can actually end up happily married. I know that, personally, when I try to imagine myself in that most blissfully difficult of relationships, I can never really and truly believe it is possible. I like think it might be...but I don't know whether I believe myself.

Now, in our modern American society we are very focused on the individual. And these thoughts of mine certainly are personal. But let us consider the whole of society for a moment. How is marriage as an institution thought of today? I believe that, as a country founded by christians, some of those protestant and catholic beliefs are still present and cause happy marriage to be viewed as desirable. But at the same time, I feel that the importance of marriage is being put aside. Yes, its nice, but its not that important. For 2009, the government reported 7.1 marriages for every 1000 people. Immediately following this statistic were a reported 3.5 divorces for every 1000 people. That rate is higher than half. This does not indicate a serious view of marriage. Is this changing marital attitude a factor in my own dilemma? Are my views a skewed blending of LDS ideals and societal attitudes? As I said in the beginning, I am only ever left with questions when thinking about this. But perhaps merely thinking about it will someday bring about a solution.





References: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/divorce.htm