What does it mean to be married?

Katie and Jim on a train in Switzerland
Originally uploaded by KatieZVoss.

So, you would think I would have asked myself this before... but I guess I'm thinking outside my marriage...not why did I marry Jim, no, this isn't like that. It's a little bit different.

What does it mean to be married?

It means choosing to be spiritually, emotionally, sexually, financially, legally, connected to a single person for the rest of your life.

In a way, it's as an enormous responsibility. A shared responsibility.

I can see how it would be easy to say that if one or all of those things is missing, lost, or unequally distributed in a marriage, then it's time to end it.

But it seems inevitable that one or more, or all of those things will get messed up at one point or another within the span of a marriage. Life is too unpredictable.

So what does it mean to be married? It means choosing to be responsible, and then actually being responsible for all those things I mentioned before.

So who can get married? Any two people equally willing to take on that responsibility.

Who can get divorced? Any two people that failed to truely make that commitment of responsibility in the first place.

Yes, marriage involves loving your spouse, and it means being a family. But there are other ways of loving and being a family.

I don't know.

If half of marriages dissolve in this country... I have to wonder, if we need to adjust the way we think about marriage to compensate for the change, or to strive to make a change.

I really don't know.