At a certain point in our lives, we shift our perception of the opposite sex from just being a friend to potentially being something more. This shift launches our search for the right person. When a couple falls in love and decides they want to spend the rest of their lives together, they will most likely enter into the covenant of marriage and make life long promises to each other. They will then live happily ever after and not face any problems for the rest of their marriage. If it were only that easy. A fairy-tale wedding and a perfect relationship is rarely how everything works out.
In the United States, 40-50% of marriages end in divorce. There are many reasons for failed marriages, but some of the top reasons include a lack of communication, financial disagreements, infidelity, and unrealistic expectations. Sometimes the person someone marries ends up behaving completely differently and the two find it impossible to live together anymore.
We often place too much importance on exterior beauty and superficial traits and not enough time on how beautiful a person is on the inside. When two people are dating, they are on their best behavior as they are each trying to impress the other, but after a while their true personality emerges. Hopefully, it comes out before marriage, but sometimes it doesn’t. That’s why it’s important to make sure we really know the person before entering into a lifelong commitment with them.
No matter how beautiful, handsome, or great your spouse is, there’ll always be many more attractive and great people that you’ll come across. If you chase after every good-looking person you find, you’ll never be satisfied and will always keep looking for the next best person. Infidelity happens way too often and can kill a relationship. Another thing that hurts relationships is pornography. Over time, it rewires the viewer’s brain, leading them to view people as objects to be used instead of people deserving of love. One may think it’s victimless, but it hurts the viewer and can hurt relationships and marriages as well.
Every relationship needs to be built on a strong foundation and this foundation should ideally be our Catholic faith. While it’s possible for a couple with different faiths to make a marriage work, it’s a lot harder. Ideally, the couple will build many support systems such as trust, love, good communication, respect, patience, and forgiveness upon the foundation. This support system will help prevent everything from collapsing.
The world often gives us a false reality of what marriage is. Many people go into it with false expectations and for the wrong reasons. The media depicts too many examples of bad marriages and not enough examples of good ones. Marriage isn’t a selfish relationship, but it’s about self sacrifice. Marriage is about participating with God in creation and welcoming new life into the world. The couple should be open to having children. Marriage also represents the love between Jesus and the Church. Jesus is the groom and we are the bride and just as a married couple has children, the covenant between us and Jesus brings new life into world.
Marriage is more than just a legal agreement, it’s a spiritual bond as well. Jesus tells us that the two become one flesh and they shall not be separated. Even on a physical level, I’ve often seen the husband and wife having similar mannerisms. If you are going to spend the rest of your life with someone, make sure you spend enough time with them to determine if you actually want to be with them for the long haul. Life happens, people make mistakes, and marriages struggle, but when two people truly love each other, they work together through the hard times towards a mutual goal and ideally that goal will be getting the other to Heaven.
