Parsing positions on marriage

I can't explain why, but the topic of marriage has come up often lately, especially at the office. Perhaps it's because a few co-workers recently found out that I am divorced, and once people find out I'm a 24-year-old divorcee, they tend to become deeply curious about my views on marriage. Or perhaps a few of my closer co-workers know that I'm in a new relationship, and they think it's so fascinating that my relationship is already serious this early. Or maybe it's because they found out I'm Christian, and they want to figure out how I'm a Christian who also works at the ACLU: What are my views on social issues?

I don't know why it keeps coming up, but it does. I've been fielding a lot of questions lately.

Why did you get married in your at 20? Didn't you know the statistics on divorce in young marriages?

How could anyone possibly thinking living together before marriage is anything but normal? Why do people choose to abstain from sex before marriage? You need to do these things to "test out" the marriage before making the commitment.

You really mean that you would get married again before you're 30?! Didn't you learn the first time?

I don't understand why people are so anti-divorce. If a couple is unhappy, let them divorce!

Let me be clear. I honestly don't completely disagree with some of these sentiments, though I majorly disagree with what I believe to be the foundations upon which these assertions are based, if that makes any sense.

See, the difference here is in our ideas of what marriage is meant to do and what it is meant to look like. If marriage exists primarily for the happiness of the individuals involved, then it makes sense to see divorce statistics and at least pause, questioning whether the happiness will last. It makes sense to take a "test drive" by living together and having sex, and to end things if those don't go well. It makes sense to make hard and fast rules about the age at which one will get married based on statistical likelihood of continued happiness. It makes sense to make divorce easy.

But if we look at marriages and relationships as living, breathing, organisms with a lifetime commitment (as I do), then we come out with a very different assessment indeed. If we believe, as I do, that it simply won't always be happy, that sometimes the organism will get sick, but that the purpose of marriage is to provide familial stability through perseverance and hard work, then we won't be scared by statistics. We won't necessarily form rules about when to enter into the challenge based on social scientific data that can't account for things like willingness to commit in an individual relationship. We won't see "test driving" as necessary (even if we do it anyway), because we will make it work either way. We will cringe at divorce (even perhaps while believing, as I do, that divorce is an unfortunate reality that shouldn't be a basis of judgment and shouldn't be legally difficult).

If we believe that marriages primarily exist for the rearing of children and the stability of communities, we are likely to have a different assessment of these issues. If we believe--as this survey showed many millennials do--that commitment is temporal,  another assessment would result.

I happened upon this article today, which discusses the author's religious perspective on these issues. In it, the author says:

At the end of the day, marriage is not about me, it’s about we. It’s about learning to choose another person over ourselves—because by choosing them, we are choosing to become greater in humility, strength, forgiveness and love. Marriage isn’t about becoming happier. It’s about becoming better.

And while I don't think the entirety of the article is especially well-written, and while I think that we have to at least have some consideration of individual happiness (lest we encourage people to stay in unsafe or emotionally unhealthy situations such as, say, abusive marriages), I think the above point is eloquently stated. In my view, marriage isn't about me. It's about the commitment I'm making to choose someone every. single. day. (even they days when I genuinely think that person sucks).

That's why I got married when I was 20. I was ready to choose my ex-husband for life, and I trusted him when he told me he was also ready to choose me for life. And that is why, if the right guy came along, I would be happy to get married again, even if I'm only 24.