Sex Economics 101 | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction.
In watching marriage in our American culture postposed to later and later times in life – for various and sundry reasons – I have concluded people don’t get married because they don’t have to anymore. Imagine how different things would be if sex was impossible to secure outside of marriage. You’d see a lot more 20-year-olds getting married.
And there are arguments about how beneficial that would be, considering the divorce rate. But I don’t believe the divorce rate is due to people marrying “too early” or the “wrong person.” The person you married becomes the right person, simply because you married them. And the rest is simply the process of growing, developing and expanding your ability to love in challenging circumstances. Marriage is a crucible. Family is one of the most effective contexts for God to stretch us and shape us and file off the rough edges.
But our culture has created an alternate reality regarding marriage. It claims marriage is about my happiness, and my fulfillment, and my joy.
And thats where the lie starts. If we really buy into that lie, we will get divorced a multitude of times, or finally quit getting married at all. Which is what we’ve done.
Speaking as a divorcee, I will admit there can be unusual and inordinate circumstances that seem insurmountable. But they aren’t usually the result of marrying too early. They are more connected to a fracture in our support systems – and our willingness to fully and effectively disclose truth within those systems, and acknowledge others may have a clearer picture of reality than we do.
I am reading “All Over But the Shoutin’,” right now – a memoir of growing up in poor, rural Alabama in the 1960′s. And Rick Bragg’s mother married into a very difficult situation. Her choice of husband didn’t have to exclusively be her own. She had family who wanted to weigh in on her choice. But we frequently think we can’t trust our family to help us make such decisions. So we either distance them, relieving them of the opportunity to weigh in, or we paint rosier pictures to gain their approval and support. When others do delicately express concern, we discount it, rather than leaning into it to search out any possibility of truth.
I did this. I distrusted my parents’ ability to wisely guide me due to their own dysfunctions. And I subconsciously withheld information from other interested adults and friends whom I feared might discourage me from moving forward. And I didn’t acknowledge, even to myself, that I was mentally building a case for marriage on faulty rationale.
Sociologically speaking, I wonder what it would take for men in our culture to return to being motivated to marry, and for women to respond? And what could we do to strengthen those essential support structures and our relationship to them?
