Marriage links for the week
On Saturdays, I usually just collect links from news articles on the web that in some way celebrate marriage. The pickins were slim this week. I found one article that focused on the topic of marriage, called Marriage: Just Say No, by Darren Blacksmith. Hardly a celebration, or even an affirmation, but it caught my attention because the writer's concerns precisely mirror the fears I had about getting married:
- Western culture is pressuring us toward an "equality" that ends up being more like androgyny.
- Adultery and non-marital cohabitation have become socially acceptable lifestyles.
- So many people get divorced.
- Women seem to be more attracted to jerks than to men who would be loving husbands.
- I believe that sex is a sacred and intimate act to be shared only by a husband and wife and have always lived my life accordingly, but fewer and fewer women (i.e., potential wives) feel the same way.
After several years of soul-searching, and before I ever met my wife, I came to the following conclusions:
- Western culture can exert as much pressure as it wants, but I will never stop being a man and I will find a woman who is comfortable being a woman.
- What is acceptable to society does not have to be acceptable to me. I will honor the institution of marriage even while I am single.
- Yes, other people get divorced. But I'm not other people. In matters of human will, statistics are irrelevant.
- If I meet a woman who would rather be with a jerk than a loving and supportive man, I won't marry her.
- I will engage in sex only in the way I believe God intended it: between a man and a woman who have committed their lives to each other. I will hope to find a woman who feels the same way.
Marriage is a noble and beautiful enterprise if the two people involved are fully devoted to each other. It's worth doing, it's worth preserving, and it's worth celebrating.
How long can a marriage last? As long as you both shall live. How about 75 years? Wow.
I don't know if any of my readers actually pay attention to the link bar at the left, but I made a few changes to it this week:
- I added a section called Happy Friends' Sites, which offers links to web sites driven by personal friends of mine.
- I deleted the link for The Lone Dissenter. She is an intelligent, articulate, clear-thinking teenager from California who has been writing about her frustrations in dealing with left-leaning, arrogant high school teachers. She blogged throughout her junior year, and was always fascinating. She's a senior now, and since her classes don't lend themselves to any political bias and she has more important ways to spend her time, she has cancelled the Lone Dissenter blog. However, her archives are still available and make for good reading.
- I added a link to cre8d design journal, a blog by Rachel Cunliffe, a "25 year old kiwi, living in the beautiful city of sails: Auckland." I got hooked when I found an article on her site through Blogs4God in which she tells the story of how she met her husband (in two parts, here and here).
