I Do....Until I Don't

I love documentaries!! I will watch one about just about anything. The other night, I caught one about infidelity in marriage. It followed two women who went outside of their marriage.

The first woman was married for about 8 years, had a set of twins and a pretty normal life. Somewhere along the line, she decided she was bored and her devoted husband was no longer the man for her. She then decided to have a relationship with her co-worker (a definite no no). She left the home she made with her husband, bought a new house, moved this man into her new home with her children. Fast forward -->she realized after spending quite some time with her Mister that she missed her husband and ended up re-marrying him. Smh.

The second woman was having communication and fertility issues with her husband. She started "hanging out" with her ex-boyfriend who also happened to be a co-worker. Smh. Needless to say, that went on for quite some time. She ended up pregnant. (She and her husband were Asian, her baby was black.) Fast Forward-->Her married bf (15yrs) shunned her, she gave his baby up, husband took her back, they had a little girl of their own.

I couldn't believe it! I started really thinking about what I'd just watched and had conversations about it with my married friends. One said (and I still can't believe she said it): "If you don't know, it can't hurt you. After all, you're not meant to be with just one person." The second (who is a newlywed) said: "People don't try hard enough to make things work before giving up. Marriage isn't always easy. No relationship is."  Now, I would have to go ahead and agree with the second friend.

I began to wonder, when people adopted such non-chalant attitudes about marriage. Do vows mean nothing anymore? If not, what's the point of going thru the trouble of developing a relationship and spending a whole heap of money on a wedding, if you're ultimately going to do what you want? The first friend said the point was to "build a life, start a family, have someone to wake up to..." Ummm, okay. Maybe it's just me, or maybe it's the fact that my parents have been together forever (through  good and bad times) but I thought vows meant something. Some folks will read this and say it's easy to say because I'm not married. It seems more and more though that people are all gung ho about saying 'I Do', the honeymoon period ends, things get rough, then ultimately divorce. :-(