Getting Married - Why People Get Married And Practices || To begin with, marriage is defined as a legal document binding two people to an agreement in a form of a contract with specific rights and obligations including to love, honor and obey each other for the rest of their lives. Marriage has been a popular tradition for centuries although, in today's society the number of people who are willing to get married to one another has declined dramatically. There are several factors that contribute to this major change in American culture. A few of these factors include cohabitation, out-of-wedlock births, social media and also high divorce rates among the couples who do decide to commit. Due to these current trends in place we ask ourselves, what are the benefits of long term commitment? This research proposal reviews literature on goals and benefits of marriage and includes an analysis of modern cultural marriage practices.
Marriage is more than just wearing a ring on your finger. Marriage is an intimate and enduring relationship that grows over time and makes you a better person, says Harvard psychologist and psychotherapist Mark O'Connell, author of "the Marriage Benefit: The Surprising Rewards of Staying Together in Midlife." Setting goals in a marriage is as important as setting personal and professional goals. However, it is ironic that most people fail to set goals for their marriage. They set goals for their career, finance, health and they set goals to find their soul mate and get married.
Most people have the preconceived idea that once they are married everything would be fine. All their problems would be solved and they expect to live happily ever after on autopilot. This misleading notion may have stemmed from fairy tales that indoctrinated us when we were young. We are all familiar with the story of how the prince meets a beautiful girl, falls in love, gets married and they live happily ever after. Unfortunately, it is not as easy and smooth in the real world that we live in. Marriage requires work and effort from both spouses. Although love plays a major role in the marriage, that is only the beginning. It is crucial that you make a conscious and continuous effort to make your marriage a success.
Statistics show that almost half of marriages in the United States and other western countries end up in divorce. It is unfortunate that most couples do not give their marriage the proper attention and nourishment it needs to thrive. With the high rate of divorce it is obvious that you should spend time and effort to make sure that your marriage is a success. Your marriage should be your top priority. Do not just concentrate on your children, career and finance and neglect your relationship with your spouse. Ultimately your relationship at home with your spouse will determine how happy and successful you are. If you are unhappy in your marriage it will affect everything else in your life including your happiness, health, career and business. On the other hand, if you are happy at home you are more likely to succeed in everything else in life.
Marriage does not have to be mundane and a struggle. So what is the recipe for a happy marriage? To make sure your marriage thrives, you should spend time planning your life together. Set goals for your marriage, short-term as well as long-term. Reflect on what both of you hope to achieve this year. Ask yourselves what you want to achieve in 5 years, in 10 years and 20 years down-the-line. If you set goals for your marriage you have a better chance of making your marriage a happy and fulfilling one. So what is your recipe for a happy marriage? So what are your goals as a couple? How similar are your and your spouse's goals for the marriage? Start by asking yourself "What do I want out of my marriage?" and "What do I want my marriage to look like in the future?"
Besides love and companionship, there are many benefits to marriage, especially in the eyes of the law. In fact, there are 1,138 federal benefits, rights and responsibilities associated with marriage. Some of those benefits of marriage include, spouses have or are entitled to: visitation rights and can make medical decisions, unless otherwise specified in a living will; benefits for federal employees -- many of which are also offered by private employers -- such as sick leave, bereavement leave, days off for the birth of a child, pension and retirement benefits, family health insurance plans; some property and inheritance rights, even in the absence of a will; the ability to create life insurance trusts; tax benefits, such as being able to give tax free gifts to a spouse and to file joint tax returns; the ability to receive Medicare, Social Security, disability and veteran's benefits for a spouse; discount or family rates for auto, health and homeowners insurance; immigration and residency benefits, making it easier to bring a spouse to the U.S. from abroad.
Social scientists have also found many positive benefits for married couples and families, including fewer incidents of poverty and mental health problems in families where the parents are married rather than simply cohabitating. Many studies also support the idea that children living with married parents do better in a variety of ways than children in any other living arrangement. So what should goals for marriages be? Goals for marriages should include all aspect of your marriage – physical, emotional, intellectual, finance, health, recreation, social, spiritual and everything else that could affect your marriage.
"Marriage is an enduring relationship, and it should create an environment in which you can change and grow," O'Connell tells WebMD. "As our culture becomes more focused on the moment, it's important that two people look at not only now, but 10 years from now so they can better understand what marriage will add to their life in the long term." It's more than just getting along and having a good relationship -- two components of marriage that can be fine-tuned in "traditional" marriage therapy. Marriage therapy is usually designed to help a couple better communicate, resolve conflicts in a more productive way, and find paths to compromise.
If you're susceptible to vice, find a wife. She'll save you from yourself—and improve your life—in a variety of ways. Notably, she'll . . .
1. Increase Your Pay
A Virginia Commonwealth University study found that married men earn 22 percent more than their similarly experienced but single colleagues.
2. Speed up Your Next Promotion
Married men receive higher performance ratings and faster promotions than bachelors, a 2005 study of U.S. Navy officers reported.
3. Keep You Out of Trouble
According to a recent U.S. Department of Justice report, male victims of violent crime are nearly four times more likely to be single than married.
4. Satisfy You in Bed
In 2006, British researchers reviewed the sexual habits of men in 38 countries and found that in every country, married men have more sex.
5. Help You Beat Cancer
In a Norwegian study, divorced and never-married male cancer patients had 11 and 16 percent higher mortality rates, respectively, than married men.
6. Help You Live Longer
A UCLA study found that people in generally excellent health were 88 percent more likely to die over the 8-year study period if they were single.
Tying the knot in any culture comes with a laundry list of traditions and rituals, including the old rhyme, "something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue." What is the "perfect wedding"? There are countless wedding planning kits out there complete with a checklist to help guide couples through the process. Though useful as a general guideline, checklists can hinder the imagination and they typically do not account for different cultural/religious traditions that might be important to the couple.
Many brides and grooms would love to marry in the tradition of their ancestors or at least introduce elements of a traditional wedding ceremony or reception from their cultural backgrounds. Incorporating cultural wedding traditions and customs to a wedding is not only a fantastic way to share something personal with the guests but a nice tribute to the families. A simple way to infuse a little culture is by using traditional wedding decorations, wedding supplies and other visual elements. A little more difficult is serving a traditional meal, because in many cases the menu is limited by the venue. If having a customized menu is not possible, try serving signature drinks like sake for a Japanese reception or chai instead of coffee for an Indian wedding. Music and entertainment are easy areas to help set the mood.
Needless to say, the stars of the wedding are the bride and groom. Isn't it only natural to showcase their lives, and spotlight their love? The most memorable weddings will touch the hearts of those in attendance and make even the most distant relative and that friend of a friend of a friend feel as if they've known you all their lives. The wedding doesn't have to be small and exclusive to be intimate and personal. Even the smallest attention to detail and thinking outside the box can turn a typical wedding into a unique experience that leaves an impression.
Marriage means many different things according to the time and place of the culture and people involved. What for some people are obvious assumptions are for others unthinkable. No-one is correct: there simply are different forms of marriage. It is the right of no culture to impose its own ideas of marriage on other cultures, and the right of no sub-culture or religion to control marriage taboos within their own culture. So some believe in multiple marriage partners, some believe in having only straight marriages, some place age barriers in different ways. None are right, all are different.
Governments should allow their people access to all forms of marriage according to peoples' wishes but this is impossible. In order for legal contracts to have legal value, they must abide by certain known specifications. So in the West we have a particular type of marriage that is legal; other forms are illegal. What this does is alienate and standardize marriage, codifying traditions into unchanging legal codes and making them stagnant as society changes. What is worse is that in modern legalized culture, the illegalization of forms of marriage not recognized by one set of institutionalized norms causes other unrecognized forms to become taboo, wrong and looked down upon.
A problem of modern cultures therefore is that we become biased towards our own form of marriage and come to consider any other form "wrong", "stupid", "silly", etc. So, those who practice arranged marriages consider those who marry freely and romantically to be silly, short-sighted pleasure seekers. This is not how romantic couples see themselves. They probably see arranged marriages as inhuman, inferior and oppressive. Both people lack understanding that other forms of marriage are different and mean different things. When one victim-of-culture argues that another victim-of-culture prescribes an immoral form of marriage, no agreement is possible because in arguing about "marriage" they are arguing about completely different things. In different cultures, marriage means different things. And even within cultures, marriage means different things to different people.
Marriage is a legal union of a man and a woman for life. The definitions range in all dimensions is defined as covenants, a total form of life change, commitment and even an intimate relationship between a man and a woman. Some regard it as a backbone of any society (Brian Craig). All these aim at clarifying the importance of marriage and its significance to any particular individual. Marriage is considered as a form of transition in a person's life. Marriage is divided in accordance to the various communities in different regions of the world. It is also divisible according to forms of marriage like the Jewish, the Muslim, the Indian, Chinese and even the Xhosa. All these groups have different customs and hold different sentiments with regard to this important practice. Some groups even have further divisions that specify their rights and cultures practiced in these ceremonies.
Some individuals regard marriage as practicable ranging from very tender ages to the mature. Traditionally it is a rite of passage that individual pass across. It is regarded as a means of procreation traditionally which is the biggest essence of marriage and a form of prestige and wealth to have many children. There are many traditional practices which are carried out in various cultures in order to give this the weight and the value it holds in the two individuals who decide to enter into marriage. Marriage still holds its views and reactions across all aspects because it is very important both traditionally and modernly. This practice acts as an introduction into an agreement which changes the individual intellectually, socially and even economically as the decisions made affect other people in a person's life. The responsibilities become more and choices made seem to matter a lot.
Source : ArticlesBase
About the Author
Dr Alusine Melvin Moseray Kanu
Dr. Alusine M. Kanu is a native of Sierra Leone and a three-time graduate of George Mason University in Fairfax,Virginia,
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