Marriage Means Forever Essay

Submitted By selinathadani
Words: 1746
Pages: 7

Marriage Means Forever “Twenty years and two children later, the only man I've ever loved walks out our front door for the last time, closing it softly behind him.”1 R. M. Yaqub was married to her husband for 20 years, until the day he left her on their anniversary. After an argument so insignificant, her husband turns to his wife and says, “I want a divorce.”2 This wasn’t the first time divorce was brought up, but the first time one of them truly initiated it. The husband reveals to R. M. that he has already seen a lawyer. This shocks her as she thought their marriage could last even through the worst of times. “My husband and I weren't wildly mismatched. Neither of us cheated. We weren't even the type to yell. How do you accept that your marriage has ended when you can't figure out what exactly went wrong?”3 Through intense counseling, this couple could have been able to resolve their problems and stay as a married couple who had loved each other from day one. However, divorce is too easy nowadays. Marriage is supposed to be a sacred bond between two individuals. Once you have married that special someone, you have made that long-life commitment. There is no walking away, even through the bad times. Married couples are supposed to love, honor, and cherish one another, for richer, or poorer, in sickness and health, through good times and bad, as long as they both shall live. What ever happened to honoring these vows?4 The divorce process needs to be less accessible for married couples so that generations to come can look at marriage in a more sacred fashion instead of how it is viewed by Americans today. Divorce hurts couples and their families in ways that take years to amend. One way is that it is financially stressful. Researchers have estimated that “divorcing individuals would need more than a 30% increase in income, on average, to maintain the same standard of living they had prior to their divorce.”5 The women generally suffer more from financial losses than men because of unequal wages for men and women. “It’s hard to imagine that the number of men suffering from “alimony unfairness” is anywhere as near the number of hardworking divorced mothers who receive minimal or no child support or alimony, and are barely making ends meet.”6 Women usually have more expenses associated with the physical custody of children after divorce. About one in five women fall into poverty as a result of divorce. About one in three women who own a house and have children at home when they divorce lose their homes. Three out of four divorced mothers don’t receive full payment of child support. The financial burden is greatest during the first year after divorce and varies for each woman depending on how much money she contributed to the family income before divorce.7 As a result of all of this, women have to often rely on public assistance programs to increase their family finances. The financial support granted is most vital for many of these divorced women; however, it is still quite unlikely that all the financial needs will be covered. As much as women are hurt post-divorce, men also do suffer to a somewhat similar extent. Since most families these days have two incomes, most men experience a loss in their standard of living in the years after divorce, “a loss generally between 10% to 40%.”8 The reasons for this is if a man’s ex-wife contributed a considerable amount towards the income of their family, he will henceforth struggle to compensate for the second lost income. In addition, it is very likely that he will have to have to cover the child-support as well as having to pay for a separate home. Furthermore, if a father has custody or shares custody of his children, there will be even more additional expenses. Similar to women, the amount men lose financially varies depending on how much he contributed to the family’s overall income. “Men who provided less than 80% of a family’s income before divorce suffer more