Love and Marriage

In class on Tuesday we talked about marriage and the order in which things should happen in life. But as most of you know life doesn’t always go as you had planned and the plan doesn’t always occur in the order you had laid out. So you need to adapt to the change and roll with the flow of life. Just because things happen out of order or you skip a step doesn't mean that you are any better or any less than the other person. We make our plan through life as we see fit for ourselves. Just as we do with our views and feeling toward love and marriage.

Times change and people adapt that is why our views, feelings and the way we go about love and marriage are always changing and they change according to who we are, our ethnic back round and the times. For example when my grandparents were young in the 1940's and 1950's you did not have a child out of wedlock and you did not get divorced both were looked down upon greatly by those around you and not to mention the Catholic Church. You did not run around town all night with boys and you did not sleep around. But as the years went by times changed in the 1960's and the 1970's divorce started to be socially accepted along with bearing a child out of wed lock you were not sent away anymore or kept as a dirty little secret. Young people began to be more experimental and have multiple sex partners. They did not graduate high school and marry their high school sweetheart as their parents did, they went off to college and did what they wanted to do and put child bearing and marriage on the back burner.

But some traditions still hold true. For example in India they still have arranged marriages and the families still pay dowries. When those teens and young people are asked if they mind that their parents are the ones picking their future husband or wife they respond with that it makes them free to focus on school and careers because the do not have to worry about dating and looking a certain way because they are trying to impress those of the opposite sex. But if that was not in India and it was here in the United States young people would not be as for it and the young Indians are. Which you can easily figure out has to do with how we are brought up which in turn goes back to your ethnic back round playing a role.

Love doesn't always go hand in hand with marriage. Those who are betrothed sometimes have never met the one they are to marry so obviously there is no love involved there they learn to love each other over time. Young people here in the United States I believe fall in and out of love numerous times throughout their lives. I do believe that most people marry today for what they personally believe is love whether it lasts days, weeks, months or years I believe that they believe they are in love. I also feel that some marry for money not many will admit it and I don't think it happens as often as it use too, but I believe that it still happens. I would like to fully believe that marriage is when two people love each other and can't live without each other.

Then to just talk a little about the order of things it doesn't matter what order they occur in as long as you are happy in what you are doing in your life. Sometime the baby comes before marriage, or the career comes before the family, or you buy a house before you settle down and have a family. Whatever order they come in that whether that was the way you planned or your plans changed there is no great plan that is bullet proof and it doesn't matter the order because life doesn't come with an instruction manual you just go with the flow and take it as it comes.