Someone asked me yesterday in an interview what I’m passionate about. One of the things I mentioned was I’m passionate about marriage and sharing what I have learned over my many years of marriage.
Then last night, I was reading an article and it cited research showing married people live longer, suffer lower rates of depression, and victimization. Not only that but marriage contributes to greater wealth. I immediately thought about the old adage ‘two can live as cheaply as one.’ There appears to be some truth in it.
Monash University in a study recently found family break ups rather than unemployment is the main factor contributing ‘to rising poverty levels in Australia.’ So, the best thing we can do for our own health, lifestyle, long life, for our family and even for our country is to stay married.
Not only that but we need to make marriage an attractive option. That means helping young married couples along the path. It means showing a positive picture of what marriage can be. It means educating young people about marriage and preparing them for it and for what it entails. It means correcting the mistaken view of what love is. Marriage preparation classes are a great idea, once a couple has made that commitment to each other and become engaged.
But even before they get to that point we need to be modeling what a happy lasting marriage looks like and teaching our children. It also means cutting out the negative attitudes, jokes and comments marriage gets.
I don’t mean giving an unrealistic picture of marriage by saying everything is wonderful and it all just rolls along once you’ve found the right person without any effort. That’s not helpful either.
Instead we need to help married couples find ways of coping with the tough times without chucking it all in and turning to someone else to meet their needs. It means helping people see the need to work on their marriages rather than take the divorce option. It means helping people understand what they need to do to maintain a relationship and modeling selflessness instead of selfishness.
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