Why even bother?

I have been married longer than most of my students have been alive. It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long, and yet, it seems like that day was forever ago.

I often have students ask how I knew my husband was the one. I don’t have a story of an earth-shattering moment of enlightenment. He asked. I said yes. The end.

Okay, so it maybe wasn’t that simple. We had dated for several years, and I certainly loved him and knew I could spend the rest of my life with him. And when we took our vows, I knew I would spend the rest of my life with him.

I read an article a few months ago about cultural icon Oprah Winfrey. In this interview, she discussed her very private relationship with her “BAE” (teen talk for “beyond all else”) Stedman Graham, even talking about their lack of marriage after so many years. The pair met in 1986, and even got engaged in 1993. But immediately, Oprah said, she had doubts.

She went on to share that she was probably more interested in wanting someone to want to marry her, rather than actually getting married. She goes on to describe their relationship.

“I wanted to know he felt I was worthy of being his missus, but I didn't want the sacrifices, the compromises, the day-in-day-out commitment required to make a marriage work.” She even added that both she and Stedman believe that if they had married, their relationship would not have worked out. “He’s never demanding anything from me like, 'Where’s my breakfast? Where’s my dinner?' Never any of that, which I believed would have changed had we married.”

So, instead, Oprah chooses to have the easy part of marriage without the hard part of the commitment.

Marriage is a dying trend in our nation. In fact, probably about half of my students regularly say they don’t want to get married one day. And honestly, it kinda makes sense. Many of these students are from broken homes, so the picture they do have of marriage is not a good one. It typically involves parents that constantly argue and kids feeling the need to pick sides, often ending in broken relationships.

Before you go any further, I know there are very real and very legitimate reasons for divorce. But I also know many people view marriage as a convenience, and when it no longer fits the bill, its time to get rid of it. Kim Kardashian was married for 72 days. Seventy-two DAYS.

More and more often, people are opting to simply live together rather than get married, believing “it’s just a piece of paper.” In fact, the number of cohabitating couples has more than doubled since the mid-1990s. And while many people argue “you wouldn’t buy a car without test driving it first,” the same is actually far from true for “test driving” a marriage.

According to an article in the Journal of Marriage and Family, couples who live together before marriage are 50- to 80-percent more likely to divorce.

And, according to a study by the Urban Institute, on average, cohabitating couples with children have a lower income than married couples with children. Those stats alone seem to dispel the suspected benefits of cohabitation.

I used to think that a good marriage was 50/50. But then I realized that idea is horribly flawed. You see, if it’s only 50/50, then both partners aren’t fully invested in the relationship. They are only giving it half. A good marriage takes 100% from both people. It’s selfless in a selfish world. If I commit to meeting 100% of my husband’s needs and he commits to meeting 100% of my needs, then we are both taken care of. Sure, it can’t always look like that. We are humans and we fail. But we can strive for that. And when the other falls short, we can show grace and forgiveness, realizing that our turn is next.

I actually feel a little sorry for Oprah. I’m sorry that in her view of marriage, the man becomes someone who just demands food from his spouse. It wasn’t just enough to know that my husband loved me enough to make me “the missus.” I wanted to know that I was worth the sacrifice and the hard work that a marriage takes. I wanted to know that on my darkest day, he would be my light and guide. I wanted to know that I was worth the compromising and the selflessness of marriage.

I’m not saying I’ve got it figured out. But we are almost 14 years in and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I wouldn’t trade it for any of Oprah’s Favorite Things.