For the Love of Marriage

Girls and women all over dream of finding Prince Charming and living happily ever after.  We dream of the big, white weddings and all the focus on how beautiful we look on that day.  We look at it as our day.  Television shows, movies, and books always have to throw at least one "romantic" moment in there, if it isn't focused on love completely.  This just enforces our desires to have a man in our life to always love us and make us happy, but some girls become too focused on this one desire.  They plan their wedding in advance with no man.  They imagine themselves ten years down the road with kids playing in the backyard with their husband, but they yet to have even a fiance.  How is this healthy?  Especially when it leads to the woman becoming desperate once she hits the mid-twenties and there is no man in her life, so she takes the first man that shows the slightest bit of interest even if he is a jerk and does not deserve someone as wonderful and beautiful as the woman who just wants to find happiness with a man.  The woman settles.  Then instead of living happily ever after, it becomes living miserably ever after because she feels that there is no man who will love her.  As women, we feel the need to be loved, and we want a man to love us and dote on us.  However, the fact of the matter is that some of us are meant for celibacy while others find the love of their lives at 62 years old while others meet that special someone in middle school.  We do not know what God has planned for us, but I can tell you that because of the emphasis our culture puts on relationships, women and men settle for just anyone and do not think through the decisions they are making.  For example, my mother has a friend who was just married last April.  She is in her late thirties and felt her biological clock ticking.  She met a man who had already been married twice and divorced for different reasons, but she still gave him a chance.  It was soon realized that he was mean and cruel to my mom's friend emotionally.  Yet the woman would not end things because she believed no other men would come around to love her.  My mom's friend was scared of being alone for the rest of her life.  She wanted to grow old with someone, which is completely understandable, so she settled.  But sometimes it pays to be patient instead of rushing into a bad marriage like so many women do these days.  So when Wilde mocked marriage in The Importance of being Earnest, I really enjoyed it.  Yes, he was writing for a different time period where marriage was based on financial gain and social status, but the people of today need to step back and look at how much importance we have put on marriage.  I believe marrige is important, but it is not important enough for someone to give up their own happiness and dreams.  The people of that time were not marrying for love, and the people of today, in some cases, are just marrying to be married.  It should not be like that.  In the play, the characters were more focused on marrying someone based on their name and not about what kind of person their "love" interest was on the inside.  Today, people jump into relationships because of how someone appears, whether it is physically or socially, instead of whether he or she is caring, kind, trustworthy, and respectful.  And these relationships can occasionally turn into a quick proposal and marriage before the two people really get to know each other.  In this way, The Importance of Being Earnest can relate to our culture today.