By Charlene M Brown
These days, if you ask a woman my age what she thinks about marriage, you would get a very mixed bag of answers. Some women still have the fairy tale dreams seemingly of generations past, with knights on white horses; yet others feel like it’s not worth the trouble and that they’d rather not do it. Certainly both sides have their merits and I want to explore that for a minute.
My sister just got married last year and though the third of four children, she is the first of my siblings to do so. She is just starting out on the marriage journey.
In contrast, my mom has been married to my (crazy! 
) father for 30 years. And as far as I can tell, they are still happily married. This is a very different side of marriage.
I think that in times past, there was more pressure for women to marry and begin raising families. Nowadays, though, women have voiced their opinions more loudly about the pros and cons of marriage. And in record numbers, are deciding on alternatives that suit them better than the traditional “family” model.
Gone are the days of so-called nuclear families with 2.5 children and a dog.
More and more now, women are choosing to cohabitate with a partner without marrying. Women are choosing to live in collectives and co-ops and even choosing to live with a same sex partner. In fact, there are all kinds of alternate living circumstances to be found!
For whatever the reasons, and for better or for worse, the notion of “Marriage,” with a capital M, has definitively changed!
My mom, 30 years into her marriage, and like so many women in her age group, has come to know the intimate side of marriage. I’m not talking about sex here; I’m talking about the ins and outs of a marriage that older couples can pass onto younger, newly married couples. The type of wisdom that gets passed down from generation to generation.
And my sister, on the other hand, has just started to navigate the waters of being someone’s “spouse”, of what it means to live in true partnership with another.
And some women our age just got fed up with the whole stigma! There are many women who claim they will never get married because it gives up their independence!
But is that really true?
I think that marriage is a synergistic situation—where the whole, the combination, is greater than the sum of the parts. That is to say that a healthy couple is a stronger base than each person standing alone separately.
I talk about synergy a lot in my writing, but that’s because I’ve seen it in action and it’s powerful!
My mom thinks I will never get married, but I’m not so sure that’s completely true. Perhaps one day, but perhaps that day is not today (or tomorrow! 
). But I don’t scoff at the idea of being married. I recognize the staying power of being together for 30 years!
Yet I also recognize how much work it is to stay with someone for that long, and that perhaps I don’t want to commit to something for that amount of time. I think that marriage is still worth the effort. But 30 years!? I can’t even think that long, let alone plan for a future with one person!
I know a woman who looks at marriage with her spouse in five-year increments: Every five years, they take a good long, honest look at how things have been working out for the past five years, and decide what to do about the next five. I think this is a great way to break marriage down into small enough into pieces that I can chew, and I love the concept! My newly married sister, however, totally disagreed!
For women in my generation (as opposed to my mother’s and grandmother’s generations), we feel like we have a different, but equally as good set of options for living our lives!
And compared to the past, this might just be a radical change!
Only time will truly tell what this means for the future of the world, but for right now, I am content with my options!
Do You Love Your Life Now!? I DO! (Because I like my marriage options right now!)
Related posts:
- Becoming The You You Want to Be: Be Your Own Renaissance Woman!
- The Big Switcheroo!
- Transformation!
- HerStory: Gaining Woman’s Wisdom!
- Slow and Steady Wins the Race!
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© 2009 You Can Love Your Life Now!
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