I read an article from the Star and Tribune the other day,
which in effect said, working class people are being priced out of having happy
marriages. That somehow good marriages and happy couples exist only because
they come from prosperous roots. It gave an example of a woman who was in a
couple of loveless marriages and laid the blame straight on the fact that
without money there was no way to succeed. I don’t think I would have to go far
in my life, to find people, who have had solid marriages, which were based on
anything they were able to buy.
My parents, who by the way had a good marriage, never had
squat. We were some of the poorest people in the small town we lived in. They
had eight children and out of the eight, over a span of fifty some years there
has been one divorce and it had nothing to do with lack of money. I go to
church on Sundays and see all sorts of old couples, happy to be living out
their old age with partners they have walked the path of life with for many
years. I personally know most of them and they are not rich. Not in the sense
of riches the newspaper article was talking about anyway. The richness they
posses came from hearts that grew close together, working hard, raising
families and an admiration they had for each other for what they brought to that
marriage. Note I said brought to the marriage not bought for the marriage.
My wise old grandfather, God bless his soul, told me the two
greatest thing anyone could give to each other was love and respect. That those
two things were the absolute foundation for a good marriage and that’s where
you started to build from that day you tied the knot. You can take all of your
money and riches and go down to the Mall of America and walk the corridors for
days, looking in storefront, after storefront and you will never find a love
and respect store. You get respect one way- by earning it and you get love one
way too-- by giving it, it’s that simple and there are no shortcuts.
I was married for forty-nine years and except for the death
of my spouse I still would be. We were never rich or even mildly rich when it
came to money. We ate and paid our bills, bought most things we needed but not
many things we viewed as luxuries. When we had troubles in our marriage—and
yes, financial troubles too—facing them and solving them together only made us
stronger. The happiest moments in our married life didn’t come from buying
them. I have many friends who are rich and a lot of them are happily married.
But I suspect that those happy bonds they now share were made long before the
money was and if the money were gone, they would still exist. The money was
only the frosting on the cake.
We have done many things to dumb down and ruin marriages in
our society and not make them work. We have developed selfish attitudes about
what we should and shouldn’t have to endure in life. Troubles in and out of
marriage often become a blame game with couples, because someone isn’t man or
woman enough to face them any other way. Children, grandparents’ friends and
relatives are thrown beneath the wheels in the aftermath and no one is ever
more happy, rich or not.
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