Sanctification of Marriage

What is happening to marriages today? It's like it no longer exists. Working with the public on a day to day basis I see it all. People moving in together. They're not married and she's ready to pop. Or they're coming in to change accounts because of divorce. Marriage is no longer sacred.
Here's just a few statistics for you:
36.8% of Alabamian children were born to unmarried women in 2006. In the year 2004, 42,537 marriages were documented in Alabama. In the same year over half that number of divorces were documented. 22,405 to be exact. 1,107 of those couples had been married less than a year, and 155 of those had been married 40+ years.
How do you decide after 10, 15, or even 20 years of marriage that you're through? That's it. I'm no longer doing this. I couldn't begin to imagine that. Starting completely over. It just doesn't seem logical. I can't imagine stopping now after only 4 years, much less after 40+ years!!!!

Society no longer takes marriage seriously. Common law marriage is taking over. "Just live together like you're married. All you others have is a piece of paper." I hate to tell people, I entered in a covenant under God with this man. I took vows that I would remain with him and loyal to him until "death do us part". Boy would people be in trouble if we made them take their vows seriously!!!!

Marriage is so easy to "get out of". It's treated like jury duty...lol. What can I do to get out of it? Surely I can think of something....

When Papa Rooster and I were planning our wedding many people told me that each person needed to give 50%. I'm assuming they meant each gives 50, and 2 times 50 is 100. That's not going to get it. If 50% from each partner makes a "pretty good" marriage, just think of how AWESOME it can be if both give 100%!!!!! This is what it actually takes.
Mrs. Norman Peale described it best in her book "The Adventure of Being a Wife".
When asked the question "Why can't a man-woman relationship be just a meaningful outside of marriage as in it", she states the following:
It doesn't have the key ingredients. It doesn't have the commitment. It doesn't have the permanence. It can never achieve the depth that comes from total sharing, from working together toward the common goals year after year, from knowing that you're playing the game for keeps. Do you think my husband and I have achieved the relationship we have just by thinking happy thoughts or waving a wand? Don't be absurd! We fought for this relationship! We hammered it out on the anvil of joy and sorrow, of pain and problems--yes, at times, of course discouragement and disagreement. But we never thought of marriage as a trap. We thought of it as a privilege. And there's quiet a difference!"

I think that's really well put. She also states some reason for divorce. It's not your whole "irreconcilable differences" speech.
"To begin with, a lot of people who get divorced quit to easily. They give up without a fight, because they don't know that what they have is worth fighting for. They give up because they've been allowed to think that everything will be moonlight and roses, when actually it isn't. They give up because unconsciously they've come into the marriage with an escape route already planned, via the divorce court, if everything isn't automatically just dandy. That's one reason why one out of every 4 marriages winds up on the rocks.
Another reason it that women involved aren't using their heads. In this whole area of human relations, women are smarter than men. They ought to be able to study their man, figure out what his needs are, what makes him tick. They ought to help him know where he wants to go. They ought to be able to anticipate trouble and head it off. They ought to be brainy enough and sexy enough to hold a husband. But a lot of them are not, mainly because they're too lazy or too spoiled, or too busy thinking about themselves and what they're getting or not getting our of their marriages.
And the third reason is that too many people go around degrading marriage these days. It has become a favorite indoor sport. The result is that wherever I go young married women come up to me and bewail their fate. They've been brainwashed into thinking that they're caught in an unrewarding, unstimulating, unchallenging, drag existence. Sometimes I feel like taking them by the shoulders and shaking them. 'Wake up!' I want to tell them, 'Get with it! Here you are, right in the middle of the most fascinating role a woman can play and you don't even know it!'"

I think she just about covered it all.