Kevin's World - A Successful Marriage

In case any of you haven't noticed, I'm a big fan of the New York Times.  This week, they published an article on what comprises a successful marriage, titled "The Happy Marriage is the 'Me' Marriage."  I'm sure that many of you, like me, have gone through life being taught that the key to a successful marriage is selflessness and a willingness to sacrifice for your spouse.  It therefore seems counter-intuitive to think that the successful marriage might be the "me" marriage, as the article claims.  By viewing marriage from an individual perspective, though, perhaps we can discover ways to foster more fulfilling and deeper relationships.

photo courtesy of: purple-wedding-flowers.com

In the article, Tara Parker-Pope claims that marriage has changed from being a social institution to a partnership of individuals.  Many, based on the view of marriage as a social institution, have argued that a successful marriage is one that survives and produces children.  Ms. Parker-Pope challenges that conclusion, arguing that a successful marriage is one in which individuals achieve self-fulfillment and help each other to grow and expand, a concept known as "self-expansion".  While I disagree that the nature of marriage has changed, I do believe that putting an effort into self-expansion can lead to more meaningful and fulfilling marriages.

If marriage is not an institution for individual benefit, as Ms. Parker-Pope claims, then one may question why self-expansion is important to achieving a successful marriage.  One study cited in the article determined that couples that experienced a high degree of self-expansion also felt a greater unity with their spouse.  In today's society, with divorce rates skyrocketing, unity and satisfaction in a marriage has far-reaching effects for married couples and their children.  By putting some effort into expanding our horizons and growing together, we can strengthen our marriages and satisfy our own emotional needs.

The Silent Killer

I know that this doesn't fit very well with our theme of joy, but I believe this to be an important issue worth taking the time to consider.

Today I saw an article in the New York Times that caught my attention more than any other article that I have read recently.  Ross Douthat, one of the conservative opinion columnists for the Times, is trying to draw attention to what he considers to be an urgent and persistent social ill.  Abortion, though occasionally brought to the national consciousness for mostly political reasons, is largely just swept under the rug, so to speak.  In 2005, 1.21 million pregnancies in the United States were terminated by abortions.  By comparison, about 230,000 were killed in the Southeast Asian tsunami in 2004, and about 222,000 were killed in the earthquake in Haiti in 2010.  Mr. Douthat does an excellent job expressing what abortion actually means on a human level, both for those who participate and those who suffer indirectly through lost opportunities to adopt, etc.  This is a stinging rebuke to those who say that abortion is about a woman's "reproductive rights."  When lives are lost, society has the responsibility to intervene.  Why haven't we?

Please read the whole story here.  It's well worth the few minutes it takes to read it.  This link included in the article has some statistics on abortion that I found rather startling.