A Young View Of Marriage

University of Puerto Rico at Bayamon

A Young View of Marriage
Jesús Serrano Negrón

March 29, 2012
Prof. Vivian Mayol
ENGL3202; KM1
A Young View of Marriage
Recently, I read in online news that it’s not good for young adults to live alone because loneliness can be a risk factor of depression. It was then that I started thinking about what encourages young people to live alone and not bepart of the institution that could end all their problems: marriage. Meanwhile, I gave myself the task to do research and find out why this happens; I found out that new generations seem to think that marriage is obsolete. For this reason, I decided to look up why marriage was formed as an institution in the first place, taking into consideration three basic points: a more fulfilling maturity andthe self-learning of the spouses, and the creation of a device with which all of these elements will be transmitted to future generations. I’ve yet to experience what being a parent feels like, but being uncle of fifteen beautiful children and teaching bible school to approximately thirty children, ages ranging from 4 to 12, hastaught me that many children, if not all, are with a trait to help them survive that we now refer to as egocentrism. Children are guided by this instinct to satisfy their needs to further develop. As the child grows, that instinct goes through a process were it broadens. Now, it’s not only their needs that need to be sated but other people’s needs too. It is at this point that marriage becomes acrucial part of that growing process. It is through the compromise and dedication of sharing your home with a significant other where individuals can break free from their innate selfishness to improve themselves. It’s the way to become less aware of themselves and become more aware of others as individuals too. Then, we can say that they’ve successfully developed and matured as an adult and, not onlythat, they can also learn a lot about themselves.
As crazy as it sounds, being part of such an institution can help the individual achieve a lot of self-discovery. How is this possible? Marriage is based on a compromise where each person has to contribute their 50% in order to make a whole and make the relationship work. Within life’s situation, each person needs to be sure that they’re pullingtheir weight to fulfill their task as part of a relationship. We are all aware that life is composed of both good and bad experiences, for this reason couples are constantly put in a spot where they need to reassure themselves that they’re doing their part of the job properly. If they are a functioning marriage, then that stops affecting only themselves and start affecting others too.The last point to ponder on is the ability to transmit that marriage has. As we saw before marriage requires a set of essential elements and traits for spouses to function as social entities. It is at home where people forge great part of their personality as they absorbed a substantial amount of traitsfrom their parents. As a result, marriage can become a form of transportation with which parents will transmit essential life lessons and abilities to children in an environment where principles are of great priority. Principles like: fidelity, compromise, patience, perseverance, reconciliation, tolerance, faithfulness, and above all, love. All this things enhance the lack of moral values that thesociety is confronting nowadays.
Is it worth living in such compromise for the sake of obtaining a “few” invaluable traits? Mrs. Denise Anderson offers a magnificent analogy regarding this dilemma on her article “What marriage was designed for” that could clarify any doubts. She comments about “a young man who purchases a car and during a relatively short period of time he finds...