Disillusionment with Love and Marriage
With so many now the products of so-called “dysfunctional families,” it’s easy to see why disillusionment with love and marriage has become so prevalent. Of course, there are two sides to every coin. Some choose to overtly reject the idea of marriage, secretly hoping that what they’re looking for will come along, secretly envying all those happily married couples. Others choose to “fall in love” quickly and idealistically, rushing into marriage in an attempt to fill that gaping void in their life, only to find out too late that they made a mistake and that the t.v. romance, in reality, does not apply.
Too often I hear people say to me that they “don’t want a relationship” and express their disillusionment with marriage because of the following statistic: “50% of all marriages in the U.S. end in divorce.” I decided to look up divorce rates for 2007:
1) The divorce rates are different for different ages: http://www.divorcerate.org/
The breakdown suggests that people who marry later in life may be making more mature decisions about long-term relationships and commitment.
2) Divorce rates have fallen to lowest level since 1970 http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2007/05/10/us_divorce_rate_falls_to_lowest_level_since_1970_but_why/
There have been speculations that divorce rates are lower not because of better relationship decisions, but because couples are living together without getting married. While this may be true, I think this theory is pessimistic and leads to an increased skepticism in marriage and commitment- a skepticism that the American society does not need.
What people do not realize is that this disillusionment with love and marriage is not new. It has been around since marriage was first established as an institution. Divorce, in fact, can be seen as a blessing because it does not force two people to live together when they no longer love eachother. How many more of Henry the 8th’s wives would have been condemned to death if it were not for divorce?
In Christina Rossetti’s poem, A Triad, she speaks of her own disillusionment with love and marriage. She describes three women, each of whom realized that love was not all it was cracked up to be: “One shamed herself in love…one temperately grew gross in soulless love, a sluggish wife…one famished died for love…” A Triad was written in 1856.
So, for over 150 years, individuals have come to personal realizations that love is not what they thought it was when they were 15 years old. They see their mothers locked into domestic captivity, reading romance novels, searching for what their womanizing and cheating husbands are no longer providing to them. They see their fathers running from obligations, running from their families. And yet, all this time, despite the disillusionment, people have still somehow managed to get married - and sometimes stay together.
In the hospital, I have seen couples happily married at 80 years old, holding each others’ hands through sickness, telling me that they love each other more and more each day.
That leads me to the following question: what makes relationships work and what makes them fail?
While modeling, I met a photographer who worked with her husband out of their East Prairie, MO home, at least 2 hours from anything resembling a city. They had been happily married for over 30 years. “How did you meet?” I asked. Nowadays, the answer to this question is often “Match.com,” but if you ask older couples, you often get the best stories.
She was in Tennessee for a weekend and met him at a party. “We got to talkin’, and found we had a lot in common. Well, I knew if I left, I wasn’t gonna’ never see him again, but I wasn’t ’bout to move in with a man I wasn’t married to, so we got married.” While I do not usually believe in “love at first sight,” I have heard other similar stories.
I think the key is to analyze yourself and figure out what you want and what you cannot tolerate in another person. Then, finding a relationship becomes easy - you just have to have patience and wait to find what you are really looking for. And then, if and when you get married, you won’t need to end with divorce - or condemning the other person to death.