how sweet it is?

I was just reading some comments left by people on another website, and it suddenly struck me that words like "husband" and "wife" are generally left out of the majority of public discourse. They were replaced with words like "partner" "lover" "mate" "boyfriend" and "special friend."

Disappointed? yes. Saddened? most definitely.

There's an astonishing lack of commitment present in today's society. We're so accustomed to microwaves, shortened semesters, cell phones that are mini-laptops, and planes that can fly us from Texas to Tokyo in eight hours that there's just no real need to commit to normal things. Unfortunately, we've pulled this attitude into our relationships and attitudes as well. Someone who stays a second or two too long at a green-light will get a terse honk to move things alone.

Churches rarely retain most members for longer than 3 years at a time. Friendships come and go based on convenience of communication and interaction. A married couple who's stayed together longer than five years is becoming hard to come by.


Marriage. I don't wonder why it's such a discarded relic of the past. It simply saddens me to see people substitute a similar relationship to suck the "good stuff" from a marriage, then leave when there's nothing left. Civil union couples have a fight with the knowledge that one or both can walk away at any point without breaking any commitment to stay; frequently, that's exactly what happens. Even some marriages are like that.

Without the commitment of "for better or worse," there's no incentive to dig deeper, to invest, to get to know the individual you've decided to move in with.


What have we lost?