Marriage Thoughts

Last April, my youngest son announced his plans to marry the love of his life, Candice. All the typical hugs, congratulations, well-wishing and feelings of getting older followed the announcement. After everyone went home, I took the time to reflect on this whole marriage issue.

I wrote my son a message and shared some observations with him. I’ve been married to the same person for almost 31 years. While friends, relatives and neighbors all around us ended their marriages, we continued ours. It almost seemed as if a second marriage was almost as “chic” as the latest fashion. As a wedding photographer for over twenty years, I could predict, on their wedding day, which couples would make it and which ones wouldn’t. I retired from taking wedding pictures because it was too hard to continually read the divorce notices of couples for whom I had taken hundreds of really nice pictures. It’s almost as if I had given up on marriage, except for my own.

I explained to my son that marriage is about team work. It’s about us, not me. It’s about allowing your partner the space to be the unique individual he or she is. It’s about helping, caring, respect and sharing. Relationships where this doesn’t exist, don’t have a prayer, and even a constitutional amendment won’t save them. Relationships where one of the partners is “in charge” or “wears the pants” are those which fail. “Relationship killers” are greed, selfishness, control, abuse, jealousy, pride materialism, stupidity and prejudice. Those who would have you believe gay marriages threaten traditional marriage are throwing up a smoke screen and ignoring the real cause for the epidemic of failed marriages world- wide. At the cost of redundancy, let me repeat, the biggest threat to the traditional marriage and family values include greed, selfishness, control, abuse, jealousy, materialism, stupidity and prejudice. If America needs anything to be added to its constitution, it would be an amendment outlawing greed, selfishness, control, abuse, jealousy, materialism, stupidity and prejudice. Then, and only then, will our families be whole again.