Till Death do us part....

....the death referred to in the vows in today's case is the death of the relationship! All around me, I seem to viewing broken marriages - I believe I've blogged before about how the workplace has an unusually high number of divorced people but since then I've heard of a lot of marriages break up and I suppose it really hit home when a friend of mine announced semi seriously that she was thinking of leaving her husband. It just reinforces my belief that waiting to get married is not necessarily a bad thing - it makes you really sure of who you are as a person so you don't suddenly discover yourself a couple of years down the line and realise you are no longer fitting in to the half you have chosen. Essentially, in my mind that's it!! You choose to be one half of a whole - all decisions, all thoughts need to be shared and it makes it much easier if you come with your own views. I think in this case though, I'm definitely an idealist - my family's great marriages have obviously given me a rose coloured view of what really exists. My mother's great problem is that people don't give it a shot - they opt out for what she thinks are minor difficulties. I disagree in that I don't think affairs or physical abuse are the only reasons to opt out of a marriage - if a mistake has been made, a mistake has been made - and I don't see why you should spend the rest of your life tied to a person you have nothing in common with. I've also realised that it takes some adjusting to live with a person and if you don't learn how to deal with the smaller problems or if you ignore them thinking why fight over such a small issue, when the big one comes along, it blind sides you and you are left floundering coz you don't have the training to tackle it! There are so many reasons that people can't work out relationships and I know it sounds like I'm passing judgement on getting married early but it's not that - I think my problem is with getting married too soon - I agree if you started dating someone at 16, at 24 you need to take the relationship to the next level - you can't meander in the same state forever!! Not that I think that all divorces are necessarily acrimonious - it's just that I've never met anyone who thinks divorce helped them be a better person!
I suppose all this is coming from the fact that I am somewhat under pressure to get married by next year end and this is not a comfortable timeline for my already married once better half and I think it's not worth the effort to try to anticipate a tentatively agreed date when all around me I can see the not so succesful results of unions!