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He who cheats on his spouse will cheat on everyone
A new survey out this week from the National Marriage Project shows that marriage is an institution in decline in many parts of American society. This "retreat from marriage in Middle America" will have wide-ranging social and economic consequences, say the survey's authors.
Another recent study of marriage, administered by the Pew Research Center, showed that nearly 40% of Americans believe marriage is becoming 'obsolete.'
What is marriage? Is it a civil union or is it a religious institution? How do you define it? Is there a marriage crisis in America today?
Marriage is not just held together by a contract but through the spiritual connection of three partners, our sages teach us; man, woman and God. Marriage is therefore the most sacred of partnerships, and the Bible is full of romantic stories from Adam and Eve dealing with their mutual contract with god, to Abraham and Sarah praying for children, the same patriarch who sent his servant Eliezer to find a wife far away from his corrupt neighbors for his beloved son, Isaac.
Children learn almost everything important about life from their families, and therefore the home, which is also the cradle and schoolhouse of society, must be healthy. With statistics showing that most marriages will end with divorce, our society has drifted away from this most sacred bedrock and it is crucial that we return marriage to a transcendent foundation. If familes can not get along, how can neighborhoods, communities society as a whole function well? They won't. Parents and siblings are the closest people in our lives, and only if we respect them and maintiain our dignity with them can we do so with the larger society around us.
The precedent from the Bible is clear: A successful marriage is one in which each respects his or her partner even more than him or herself. In Genesis Chapter 21, verse 12 G-d tells Abraham the father of Monotheism about his wife, Sarah, "all that Sarah tells you, heed her voice." From such mutual respect comes adult morality, and the placing of one's partners needs and desires before selfish and trivial urges. Without a doubt the opposite is true and moreover a person who cheats on his spouse will ultimately cheat on his boss, her employees, their business partners and friends.
By
Shmully Hecht
|
December 10, 2010; 12:52 PM ET
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Posted by: lepidopteryx | December 13, 2010 10:48 AM
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..."From such mutual respect comes adult morality, and the placing of one's partners needs and desires before selfish and trivial urges."
Yes...sounds like Abraham's respect for his wife was really working. Monogamy didn't work back then either, did it?
Posted by: lifeonmars | December 13, 2010 9:29 AM
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I'll pose the following questions, and we shall see how committed Americans are to sustaining families.
1) How many Americans would be willing to give up $100K in home equity in order to make housing more affordable for the working poor families among us?
2) How many politicians would be willing to publicly link the breast cancer epidemic to the use of birth control pills, and the consequence that without birth control, more women would like choose to be stay-at-home moms instead of working full-time.
3) How many Americans would be willing to pay taxes so that job-training programs and substance abuse reduction programs could be provided for unwed mothers?
The dearth of marriage is just another symptom of the kind of "me-first" philosophy which is particularly rampant among the generation of the tail-end of the baby-boomers (people born between 1955-1965) and their parents (people of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney's age group born in the 1930s and early 40s.) These people are the bedrock of the Republican Party, and they are the most selfish generations we have ever had in this country.
Posted by: armyofone | December 12, 2010 12:27 PM
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Good that you brought up Sarah and Abraham. Sarah was so respectful of Abraham that she approved Abraham having sex with Hagar to bear his child, Ishmael.
Perhaps if women today were more respectful of their husbands they would be more understanding of their needs to have sex with other women and their marriages would survive.
BTW. The US has the highest marriage rate in the world and the highest divorce rate in the world.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_mar_rat-people-marriage-rate
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_div_rat-people-divorce-rate
Posted by: James10 | December 12, 2010 9:08 AM
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ArmyOfOne,
Without hormonal birth control, more couples would use physical and chemical barriers (condoms, diaphragms, spermicides). There would be an increase in unwanted pregnancies, some of which would be carried and some of which would be aborted. The more mouths you have to feed in a household, the more money it takes to buy groceries, so I don't see how increased family size would cause fewer women to seek paid employment.
James10,
My husband is free to have sex with as many other women as he wants to. He just can't do it while he's married to me. If he ever decides that he wants someone else, all he has to do is initiate divorce proceedings.