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Originally Posted by McheleM  I agree. 50 years ago, kids got married at 14, 15, 16 years of age. My grandparents got married when she was 16 and he was 18. When he passed away, they had been married 66 years. |
Would that we could go back to those times in matters of the heart. Love and marriage seemed really special and to be cherished and held onto fiercely in "the old days"! My sister was married nearly 53 years when her husband died. My parents married when mother was only 18 but Daddy died at age 68 - she never would look at another man. Of all my aunts and uncles on both sides, only one divorced - all the rest stayed together as did, of course, both sets of grandparents.
I have a neighbor now that is 40-something and on her third marriage with kids from each husband and that is pretty typical in half our neighborhood. Today, people get married for 7 - 9 years and call it a long marriage and move on! I liked it better when couples had to stay together through the tough times as there was just no other way to make a go of it. Men wouldn't leave their wives as they knew she had no way to support herself or the kids and the women wouldn't leave for the same reason - that was just one of the reason society and mores of the times helped hold a rocky marriage together. There were plenty others that kept them from visiting the attorney. And then when they aged some, they were friends and found they really still loved each other and were so grateful to have their marriage intact to see them through old age as a couple. And the other marriages that didn't get really, really rocky had couples that just always stayed in love.