SHACKING UP

The other day at work someone mentioned to me that one of our co-workers had moved in with her boyfriend this past weekend. Now, these days, this is the most normal thing in the world to do and the person telling me thought it was great. I knew this when I asked the question that just isn’t asked in these enlightened times:

“Why don’t they just get married?”

What?!? Why in the world would you get married if all you want to do is shack up together? My friend seemed shocked over question, she said,

“Married? She’s only like, what, 21? I wouldn’t want to get married that young.”

I let it drop. My “You shouldn’t live together before you’re married” views are so anachronistic that people look at me like I just said the sun revolves around the earth and leaches cure AIDS. So, I just decided not to fight that battle again.

But, I’ve been thinking about it occasionally since then and I wonder about something. In “the old days” people got married young (18-20) and stayed married through thick and thin. Now, according to current thinking, that must have been a nightmare. I mean, they got married before they could “live a little” and if the person they so obviously didn’t know wasn’t the soul mate they always wanted, then their lives were going to be a nightmare of biblical proportions. Thank God for our advanced lifestyles and we now have no problem shacking up, waiting until we’re “ready” to get married and not sacrificing our careers, Thank God we can divorce our spouse with no recriminations and not be stuck in unhealthy relationships – we’re obviously MUCH happier now.

Are we?

I’ve been wondering if people today are happier in their relationships than say, 75 years ago. Of course, I didn’t live 75 years ago, so I can’t say for sure if we are happier or not, but my gut reaction is we are not happier with our freewheeling lifestyle. We have a 50% divorce rate in this country, single parent households, therapy, counseling, Jerry Springer, etc. We’ve got 3,200 abortions a day at the same time we have fertility clinics popping up on every corner to give families to people who needed to wait. We have relationship neurosis in this country!!

So, maybe a little less “enlightenment” would be a good thing. And maybe for once, the “good ole’ days” really were better.