is marriage an obsolete concept?

[DGB454]

I believe in marriage. I have been married for 12 years now and I plan on being married for the rest of my life to the one I married 12 years ago. There have been some ups and down but we are both commited to each other. Before I got married we both agreed to never use the word divorce when talking about our relationship. It hasn't always been easy but I am sure that unless one of us dies early that we will grow old together. It seems to me like the people who don't believe in marraige are usually the ones who believe in very little. Marriages usually break up because one of the partners are selfish or have been selfish. IMO marriages can last through anything if both are willing to be selfless towards each other. It has taken me a while to learn that but I stand by that and will always try and be selfless towards my wife.

PS. This thread started and ended before I got here so it's new to me.

[Cavallino]

Originally Posted by taranaki

With the church playing an ever diminishing role in public life,and laws covering marital property rights now being extended to cover common-law and same-sex relationships,and the spiralling divorce rate,marriage as a 'normal' behaviour pattern seems to be increasingly endangered....will it reach the point where it just becomes a novelty?

I would say that knowing that it can be ended 'relatively' easily, (divorce compared to having to go to the church and asking their permission to have it annulled with the very real possibility of them telling you to f off and deal with it) and knowing when you're going in that there is a way to get out has already made marriage a novelty.

[Parmenides3]

At the risk of being relevant (which is practically a crime, these days), I must say that marriage is the building block of society. It is necessarily between a man and a woman. If there is no individuation of the sexes then there is no complementarity between persons, and if there is no complementarity, then there is no communion of persons, and if there is no communion of persons, no freely ratified, indissoluable bond between persons could exist. What I'm saying is that a Supreme Being made us male and female because He made us in His own image, and He Himself is a distinction of three persons within one Godhead, a Trinity. Distinction and "otherness" are the foundation of harmony and love. As Pope John Paul II said a few years back, "In Adam, the whole human race fell asleep, and woke up male and female." Any discussion of what it means to be a sexual being in pursuit of happiness should include reverence for the other sex, a "waking up" to the amazing beauty and wonder that there are two sexes within one species, and that the meaning of being sexual reaches far beyond physicality. The ultimate lesson of being sexual is that life is only good and satisfying insofar as it is placed at the service of another. Thus, the most romantic words ever spoken were "This is my body which will be given up for you."