Marriage has declined for many reasons– rising levels of education for women, the demise of the shotgun wedding, better contraception, living together has become more acceptable, and divorce has made this generation more skittish. ― Barbara Ray via Psychology Today

Is marriage just a piece of paper now? I certainly don’t think so. I think a lot of people who think argue that marriage is indeed “just a piece of paper” are battling commitment issues, so they try to make marriage seem less important and seem like less of a commitment than it is. If marriage isn’t that big of a deal – why avoid it so much? My best friend, Shoneice, and me had a conversation about marriage a few days ago. Our conversation inspired me to write this entry. Shoneice argues that marriage isn’t all that important and a committed relationship can be just as “official” as a marriage. I don’t agree with her at all.

Marriage is a different level of commitment. It’s one thing for a man to tell me he loves me, will never leave me, and will be faithful. It’s another thing for a man to take vows and sign a marriage license (a legally binding contract).

I watch the show Love and Hip Hop (please don’t judge me), and it was painful to see Chrissy propose to her boyfriend of 7 years, Jim Jones, and then he still not take that next step and agree to marry her. Chrissy’s situation is just like so many other women’s struggles that I have heard about or seen. It’s sad to see women who desperately want to get married, but their boyfriends will not marry them. Some women have to all but lie, connive, and manipulate to get a ring! I have even heard of cases where women have had to give men ultimatums to get them to the altar. Maybe it’s just me, but I wouldn’t want to be in a marriage I had to force the other person to enter into.

I asked Chris (my fiance) why he thinks men like Jim Jones are afraid to get married or genuinely don’t want to get married. Chris’ response was: “Half”.  Some people’s fear of marriage kind of made sense to me after Chris said that. It scares some people to have their finances intermingled. It also scares some people to know that if their marriage doesn’t work out, their spouse is probably entitled to half of their money and property. If a relationship doesn’t work out, you can leave and there isn’t much material loss or gain on either end. Marriage changes all of that. That’s just one more reason why marriage is more of a commitment than a long term relationship.

If someone doesn’t want to get married that’s his or her choice. People are certainly entitled to their own opinions and decisions. I don’t think a committed long term relationship is anywhere near the same thing as a marriage. But hey, different strokes for different folks. What do you think?