By Iesha Westmoreland
Writer, Contributor

Between the years of 1990 and 2017, an average of 616 hundred-thousand per day and 225 million per year is the national average of couples getting married. Of that marital rate, 40-50% of married couples divorce each year. As shocking or not that number may be, it may come as even more of a shock that the divorce and marital rate has dropped in the past few decades.

The teeter-totter range in the numbers are mostly due to the baby boom of the 80’s and90’s. Many individuals are choosing to stay single. Why? Is that the right choice? What you may not know about settling down. Whatever the statistics may be, there are greater benefits to being married than staying single. Benefits that effect both financial and health aspects of your life. Greater income tax
refunds, increase on your government assisted income, and more preferable health plan rates are offered to married couples. While positive aspects to your health show that married couples have
a longer lifespan with higher serotonin levels and are less likely to suffer from depression than single individuals.

The D-word is what scares everyone about marriage. They hear too many stories of the failed marriages and not the positive ones. By being exposed to the negative aspects of marriage people are apt to look at the failed relationships of their past and wonder if a marriage would lead them down the same route. Some single individuals feel marriage would hinder them from reaching goals, or reroute their life’s path. Others feel it is just an over glorified religious practice. With the latest rise of pop culture glorifying having multiple intimate partners, impressionable individuals feel as though this is there fate as well.

That is not true more than expected surveyed individuals stated they are only not married because they have not found the one yet.
Marriage is the universal symbol for unity between two people, but throughout these recent years the dynamic has changed. The question more traditional thinkers wonder is if the moral fibers are still present. Traditionally, marriage is a holy bond of man and women. Even though sexuality preferences have been present, they were not seen as a fit for a holy union in past generations. The Christian and Catholic faith frown upon same sex or multiple partner unions.

While religious groups such as Mormons and Muslims value having more than one wife. The marital status between couples does not have any negative impact on the moral and ethics. Even though there are newer ways of getting married, some people still have a stigma on what being married means.

A survey of married men revealed startling results, “I was against it to the fullest, then I met my wife. Then all my thoughts and feeling about marriage changed. It was one of their best decisions they made, and would do it again. No matter who was asked, one rule was mentioned, marriage is only right when it is with the right one.

So the question should not be is marriage for me, but how can my marriage for me?

Scholarly Sources :
Richard fry – journalist for the Pew Research Center Feb. 6, 2014
Sarah Jacoby – Journalist for the Refinery 29 Feb. 2, 2017