There was a time when I thought marriage was not for me. I had been engaged to a girl, who eventually broke off the engagement and the relationship altogether. It soured me on the idea of being married.
Apparently, a lot of people my age feel the same way. A 2020 Pew Research Center study found that 44 percent of Millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) were married in 2019 (12 percent of Millennials were living, unmarried, with a romantic partner). This is a marked difference from previous generations at a comparable age – 53 percent of Generation X, 61 percent of Baby Boomers and 81 percent of the Silent Generation. Marriage rates, in general, Pew reports, have been on the decline since the 1970s, especially “amongst the least educated adults.” Why is this? Experts suggest a variety of reasons, everything from a shift in priorities (education, careers, travel) to economics, to the fact that many Millennials witnessed the divorce of their parents and want to avoid divorce themselves. It certainly does not help that the definition of marriage, set in moral stone for eons (it is, after all, fundamentally a spiritual, not merely contractual union), has been twisted to the point of cultural irrecognition and thus, meaninglessness. So, what’s the point? The point is that we, with few exceptions, are hardwired for marriage. We were designed to be married. We were made to live in a lifelong, harmonious relationship with a member of the opposite sex in order that we might not be lonely, that we could help one another, and that we could bring children into a world where they have the security of a mother and father bound by love, commitment and the weight of the law. Is the beauty and purpose of marriage violated? Every day. Adultery, divorce and all kinds of abuse have tainted countless marriages. But the bastardization of marriage does not change the fact that we are hardwired for the real thing. Fundamentally, we still long for its blessings, and we still hope that it is possible to have the kind of long and happy marriages experienced by many in our grandparents’ generation. Personally, it was the loneliness issue that got to me. The Lord’s decree, “It is not good that man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18), was just as true for me as it was for Adam, and I knew it. That knowledge (along with a good measure of curiosity) is what prompted me to create an eHarmony profile in 2016. It was there that I met a beautiful, blonde-haired girl from Kalamazoo. Not only were we both from the Mitten (although I was living in Las Vegas), we had shared convictions, shared interests, and, much to our surprise, shared friends. Next week, that girl and I will celebrate four years of marriage. Already, we have experienced losses and challenges of various kinds. But we have also found the innumerable joys of married life, not the least of which was holding our newborn babies in our arms for the first time. There is a Yiddish term that I so often think of when I think of how Elisabeth and I found each other: bashert. The word means “meant to be,” and I can think of no better term for my own experience. I may have been soured on it for a little while, but there’s no doubt in my mind, now, that true marriage — that is, marriage as defined by the Creator — is, indeed, bashert.
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AuthorTy Perry is a writer based in metro-Detroit. Archives
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