Marriage

In the sermon of my friend's wedding, the Father stated his view about marriage. He thought that a marriage is a combination of a man and a woman. It is also a process of learning itself and each other of the couple. He insisted couples should have a single eye on his/her counterpart. This implies that divorce should be avoided. His words were humorous, thought provoking, but I regret to say doubtful. I would like to discuss the definition of successful marriage in this article.

First, the successful marriage should not be limited to single spouse in a life. It sounds perfect to have a happy family after a man and a woman are married till the forever. Yet this does not mean successful either when the formed family is not happy. For example, a man does not respect the marriage with his wife and has affair with another lover. He lives with his mistress, does not talk to his wife and does not care any of his family. This marriage has become only a deadly cold certificate, even though the wife insists to keep this. In this case, her marriage is even worse than her life of being single.

Secondly, the Christianity urges people to accept any failure in a marriage and learn to overcome it. Instead the failure should be limited to objective failure rather than subjective failure. If a family faces some financial problems, disasters or illness of any family member, the couple should undoubtedly hand together to overcome the problem. If the problem is like the above example, no one can overcome unless divorce. There is no meaning to keep this marriage for both the husband and the wife.

Thirdly, someone argues that a divorce makes negative impact on the next marriage, the next generation and the society, and the next marriage will not be successful because of the previous failure. Divorce really did in the past but the impact has been reduced in the current well educated society. People nowadays understand why people divorce to be released from reluctant marriage. People understand their situation in the mature society. Although the impact still exists in the next marriage, the new couple will learn to overcome and should overcome it.

This article aims at exploring the definition of successful marriage. Unlike typical opinion, I suggest that the successful marriage should be built on respect, understanding and freedom of choice. I do not encourage divorce but disagree with the objection of divorce. Blindly chasing a piece of forever marriage may cause forever pain. Reluctantly accepting any disadvantage of a marriage may cause tragedy. Isn't love also built on respect, understanding and freedom of choice? Actually this definition recovers the originally traditional meaning of successful marriage.