On Marriage...

I was watching The View this morning - because that is what happens to women when they have babies...boring things become interesting :-) Barbara Walters made the comment "everyone knows that if you marry young you will get divorced". Ouch... I hope that is not the reality. Not for the sake of my marriage because divorce isn't optional there. I know it is a common thought though. If you marry young you will get divorced. It seems to me though that today it doesnt really matter to much when you get married... people are going to get divorced. In my opinion it works BETTER to be younger. At least it has for us. We always lived with someone else we had to consider. Our plans always effected someone. We always had to share our things. We always had to help out. We never had a chance to learn our own way of doing things. We never had a chance to be self centered with time or money. We do not resent each other for having to give up ourselves because we don't have any idea who we are without the other one.
I'm not saying the way I did things is the only way or the best way - but it certainly isn't a wrong way.
I am staggered by the divorce rate. More than 50%! Probably more than that. I heard one of my friends saying "for my first wedding I want to have....". Divorce is SO common that people are starting to expect it? Is that what is going on? Maybe the problem is people think if they aren't happy right at a particular moment then they can just change and do something else. We do not have a "right" to be happy 100% of the time. If that were true we would not have to work, go run errands, wait in lines, get stuck in traffic, lose things...that list could go on for a LONG time. Happiness can not be surface deep. Happiness has to be what you feel after you go through something crappy and say "wow - I'm still ok! This is great!" Anyone can be happy when things are great. Anyone can be happy with their spouse when they pick up after themselves or do a chore you didn't want to do. Anytime I get into a "woe is me - I have to do the dishes again" attitude I try to remind myself that Jon loves me and would feel bad if he knew I was feeling like that. I ask for some help - maybe we fight about it, maybe we don't but at the end of the night we have worked together and are happy about our decision to work something out instead of give up and be miserable.
It's amazing and liberating to know Jon isn't leaving. I would live in constant fear if divorce were possible. How could I have mean days, or be awful when I am sick, get chubby, or go through "gross" things like pregnancy and all the "wonderful" things it has done to my body if I thought Jon might decide "enough!" and leave? Can you imagine that kind of pressure? It is incredible to be able to say "yeah I was horrible - and Im really sorry" as many times as I need to and it is still ok.
I think that's why they say that the closet relationship you can compare to us and God is husband and wife. Unconditional.