I have a problem.
My Facebook newsfeed is clogged with blog posts about marriage. "Single and Not Waiting." "My Husband is Not My Soul Mate." "I Wasn't Ready For Marriage." "Got Engaged and Immediately Doubted My Decision." "Hey Young People: Now's the Time to Get Married." "Stop Dating Someone You Don't Have a Future With."
Oh. My. God.
Leave. Us. Alone.
{And thus, my problem: How do I blog about blog posts about marriage clogging up media without it being ridiculously ironic? Answer: I don't know. If I figure out a way before I finish this post, awesome. If I don't, I'm posting anyway. Everyone knows I love irony.}
I honestly don't know why this annoys me so much. Maybe because I feel like it's a trend. It's TRENDY to talk about marriage right now. It's an infinity-scarves-and-Starbucks thing. It's just what profound Christian twenty-something bloggers discuss. The theme came up out nowhere, and will probably disappear having made no lasting impression on the world.
Marriage is important, yes. There are lots of misconceptions about marriage, and singleness, and the terrifying pop-culture concept of "The One;" I get it. We need to talk about it. We need to clarify the misconceptions and dispel the terror. We need to return to the Bible and be smart about how much we depend on another human for happiness and wholeness. Yes.
But damn. I'm dating a guy and I love him and I'm happy and we both love God and we get along great and we see a future together and I don't need some chick in Canada telling me that I have to put God first--I know that. I don't need some guy telling me that getting married isn't going to cause me financial stress--I pretty much know that it will, in fact, because combining two separate incomes and lifestyles will always pose adjustments. I don't need someone to tell me that I'm going to have doubts if I say Yes to a proposal--I am human and also Stephanie. Of COURSE I'm going to freak out and second-guess. {Although I do happen to have liked Mo's post a lot.} {And I like Matt Walsh, too.}
Maybe I'm just being bitter and petty and immature, but I feel like the media avalanche of marriage commentary is unnecessary. Anyone seriously considering marriage will come to these articles' conclusions on their own, and if they don't--in some cases--maybe that's okay.
If you're a Christian and you don't know to put God ahead of your spouse, then there are issues that a bubbly blog post is not going to fix.
And maybe you can marry someone you believe to be your soul mate and have a totally healthy marriage. Maybe you can live a totally moral and successful life without the disillusioning kick in the teeth of "HA HA YOU JUST HAVE TO MAKE IT WORK BECAUSE THERE IS NO ONE RIGHT FOR YOU."
Don't get me wrong, those articles are well-written and I understand the merit of being freed from counterproductive notions of marital perfection. I just subscribe to the Morgan Freeman method of social problem-solving. How do we fix all these problems? "Stop talking about them."
Can we stop obsessing and looking to other people to feed us Truths about life? What ever happened to logic and personal prayer and self-awareness? I just don't see taking someone seriously who comes up to me and says, "Oh my gawsh, this article, like, changed my life-ah."
{See, I can't even hear that sentence in anything but a Valley Girl voice.}
I think lasting, heartfelt revelations regarding anything, but maybe ESPECIALLY marriage, need to come from sources much more personal than mass-distributed blog posts.
I like to think that my role as a blogger is to start conversations. I have conversations, debates, and evaluations in my head, and I write about them as a way to process my thoughts. I hope that my posts might spark similar discussions inside your heads. But I never presume to tell you what to think. I'm not going to lie to you, but I will also be the first to tell you that I am not an end-all-be-all source of Truth. I'm not an idiot.
I'm still not sure if I've answered my own question of "why do I hate the torrent of marriage-related articles." Yes, I think they're overrated; Yes, I think they're pretentious and unnecessary; Yes, I think real heart changes come from more personal sources than blogs.
But maybe I just hate them because they're trendy and I'm tired of them. That also sounds like something I would do.
What are you thoughts on this?
~Stephanie
at first i was like "cool! marriage articles i agree with! my opinions are validated!"
ReplyDeleteand now i feel like they all say the same thing and make the same ten points and i am not learning anything new, not that i was really learning anything from them to begin with other than a winning sense of validation. but, whatever.
so, i'm with you sister. you can only say the same thing so many times before becoming unnecessary and superfluous and these articles are definitely that.
i believe there are important questions to ask your partner before tying the not, but whether or not we will have a TV in the bedroom is not one of those things - and yet there is an article i just recently read that stated if i do not ask that question before i walk down the aisle then my marriage will probably end in divorce. (okay, there was a little bit more to it than that, but that was basically how the article made me feel) and i stepped back from that and thought to myself "wow. how many people are going to hold all these stupid questions dear? and if whether or not a TV in your bedroom dissolves your relationship then there's no way you were ready to get married in the first place and you're probably just looking for a way out anyway."
shoot. i mean, people these days have a lot of things backwards i think. and putting all this emphasis on "real relationships" and ways to "keep them spicy once you're comfortable" is not necessarily the right thing to be doing. it might come from a good place, but enough is enough already.
so there.
I approve of this post.
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