Oh, and I apologize for the double, and now triple posts, but since I can't really edit them (the 5 minute mark thing gets annoying, can't we change it to 20 minutes or something?)... I guess I'll just make a new post.
My main intention of this thread, beyond what I've already stated (and I did state this in the OP) was to get a few answers to justify marriage, mainly because divorce is my BIGGEST fear. I WANT to get married, because I surely don't feel the calling to be single my whole life, nor do I want to spend my life going from girlfriend to girlfriend, as that isn't very fulfilling. What concerns me is how divorce destroys people, both physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It really does.
As a case point: I spent 5 years in the US military. One of the reasons I got out, beyond the obvious stress and other things I've seen which I really wish, hope, and pray that others do not have to see or feel in their lives (a lot of death, stress, depression, and overall... I could feel the negative/evil vibes all the time.. spiritual discernment FTW?), was that I KNEW that I'd never have a successful relationship/marriage if I stayed in. Divorce rates in the US military hovers around 80%. That's a legitimate statistic, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was much higher in reality. It simply destroys people, and I've seen plenty of men, shipmates, battle buddies, and even military wives be absolutely destroyed by it. Physically, it destroys how you look, because I can't name how many 40 year old lifers I've seen in the military, all of which looked closer to the age of 60 or 70. Part of this could just be the nature and the stress of the job, but the vast majority of them have been divorced at least once, and many of them became alcoholics later in life because of it. It frankly scared me quite a bit, because that isn't how I imagine myself in 20 years. None of those men were happy, and all of them were self-destructive and destructive towards other people as well.
Actually, I'll give one example, one which I don't usually talk about, but maybe it gives a hint of where I'm really coming from with my absolute fear of divorce. I was on a submarine in the US Navy for 5 years, and so I knew quite a few people that were in the same situation I was in. I had a girlfriend at the time who was back home, but that isn't what matters. I'm not specifically talking about myself. Anyways, we were on deployment for 6 months, and in a submarine, you have no contact with the outside world. It simply isn't allowed. You have no phone calls. You can't tell anyone where you are going (classified), what you are doing, or even when you are going until one hour before you leave. It all has to do with terrorism and things, but it's just the way it is. Both the military men and their families know of this beforehand. The best you get is POSSIBLY (if your CO is nice) one email a month (sent from the boat), of which you can send to a loved one. This email gets filtered by the Department of Defense, and so a 10 page letter gets sifted over by people who remove anything that could possibly become classified, and by the end of it, you may have sent a large letter that in the end turns into a simple "I love you, bye" thing. That's just accepted knowledge, but it's a sad truth to it.
Anyways, getting back to the point, we were on deployment, and we ported in a foreign country. One of the men on my boat tried using his debit card to buy his wife a gift. As far as I knew, he loved his wife very much, treated her very well, and he never cheated or did anything worthy of what was about to happen to him. Anyways, his debit card did not work. It kept being declined. He tried multiple times. He eventually tried using his credit card, which was also declined. It was maxed out, which he thought would be impossible, but he simply decided to ignore it for the time being, and he borrowed some money from one of his shipmates. His usual tactic was to buy her a gift or souvenir from every country we ported at. After we eventually returned home, we walked into his house, and what did he find? His house was empty, literally. All the furniture was gone. The lights wouldn't work. His car was not there. Nothing was left in the house, not even the dog. His bills weren't paid whatsoever, so his electricity/heat/etc would not work. His credit cards had been maxed out. His bank accounts were completely empty. Everything disappeared, including his wife. What happened? His wife had ran off with his neighbor, cheating on him the entire time he was away, and eventually just up and leaving without even a note to tell him what happened. She stole every penny he ever had, destroyed all his credit, sold his car, and basically left him penniless and without a home or a wife. Eventually, he got a divorce letter in the mail, and he never even saw his wife until the divorce proceedings. What did the military do for this man? They forced him to pay alimony. That is a simple law in the UCMJ, one that probably will never change. The military even tells you in bootcamp to not get married while you are in the military, because you will most likely get divorced and be destroyed. They literally tell you that, so it goes to show how bad things are. This man lost everything he had, he was financially ruined, and he had to pay half his check every two weeks to his estranged ex-wife, one who cheated on him, stole everything he ever had, and ruined him in every way possible. She was the most heartless person I've ever seen in my life. It became so bad that he could not even afford toothpaste, shampoo, nothing. We all had to pitch in to help him buy those mini travel versions of things, just so he could keep up his basic hygiene. The military was also going to kick him out, because if you can't afford your bills, they take it out of your check automatically, and since he could not afford everything his ex-wife had done, they kick you out for hardship. He had nothing at that point. No wife, no job, no financial stability (one that he would never be able to fix in his lifetime), and he even had to pay her after she destroyed him. I wont get into the idea of how unfair that all is, because it was legal by the court of law. Anyway, long story in a much shorter form... this man eventually blew his brains out. His ex wife didn't even bother to show up to the funeral. I'm willing to bet that if suicide was covered under military insurance, she would have claimed the $400,000 and ran off again. Either way though, this is just a simple story of what happens to military men after their wives divorce on them, ones whom are well known to be unfaithful, because they cannot handle being "neglected" for any stretch of time. The courts supported her in every way, and so this man had no options whatsoever. Financially, he'd never be able to recover, and she ran off with everything.
That's just one story, one of very man I can name, but it is by far one of the saddest cases. At the very least, he is lucky he didn't have children, because that would've added to the stress when he would've had to pay child-support as well. It can be said I guess that it was his own fault for marrying a gold-digging woman with no heart, but I'm positive that he didn't know she was like that, and the few times that I met her, I didn't suspect she was like that either. She proclaimed to be Christian as well (clearly she wasn't, but that's not the point), so you can't always judge a book by its cover.
Things like this are how I grew up, because I grew up in the military environment. I grew up with knowledge that women can and will do this in a lot of cases, and finding the right one is not as easy as people proclaim it to be. I've seen things like this happen in the civilian world as well, and it becomes even worse when the wife waits til the man is 40 years old to do it. What options does a man at that age have, after the wife he spent half his life with ups and leaves, after he pays for her education, pays for his own children to go to college, etc? At least the man I know who had his wife leave him in that situation at least got to keep his children. He got to keep his house. I believe his wife was nice enough not to pursue that. I don't believe she is very happy, living in an apartment by herself, chasing younger men in bars and things like that, but it remains a point to be thought about. Not many men do this to women, and while there are cases of such I'm sure, it isn't nearly as commonplace as the women doing it to the men.
So... with all that said... divorce scares me to no end. I don't want to live my life with someone, assuming all is well and being happy, and then one day having my entire life destroyed. You can say these men were ignorant, but I've met those women, and I wouldn't have suspected a thing. None of them fought nonstop, none of them seemed like bad couples, and none of them seemed to be in the stereotypical bad marriage. You simply CANNOT read other people's minds, and not everyone shows you who they really are inside until it is too late. A LOT of women marry men simply for financial stability, as the men are the security blankets they long for. Once they have that, some women long for something else that maybe their husbands cannot fulfill. Maybe it's just a midlife crises, but the point remains. None of those women took responsibility for the destruction they caused, and none of them showed signs of the impending destruction before they ran off. It's simply a scary proposition for men my age to even ponder.
I don't think the people that did this ever thought they would affect the younger generations, but they were mistaken, because the younger generations learn from the older ones. When half the baby boomers all split up and divorced, their children learned from this. It affected the children as well. My parents are luckily still married, as were my grandparents and their grandparents, but that doesn't mean I don't see what happens to everyone in the world around me. I highly disagree with divorce, and I hate it in all its forms, but it is simply something that probably will never change. With that being said and known... think of the risks that are involved in marriage/divorce. Just think about how it destroyed these men in all forms, killed them on all levels of life. None of those men were neglectful. They all loved their wives and their families more than themselves. They simply were dealt bad cards, but those cards destroyed them.
When someone is destroyed so easily by someone they care about, and the people they care about were able to hide their true natures so easily, and as one poster put it, men are just dogs chasing a fire truck who don't know anything about women when they are single (if that were true, then whatever, it just ADDS to my point)... then HOW are we to know who the right person is to marry, and HOW are we to be able to protect ourselves from these evil women out there? At least with men, if a man marries a woman, most likely he goes into it knowing it is forever. Not all of them, but most men have commitment issues to begin with, so doing so usually gives you enough comfort to know better, and if it doesn't work out, at least you know you won't be financially destroyed. The opposite tends to be true with women (generally, not with all), so how in the world are we supposed to know better?
All I'm trying to point out is that it isn't always based on the neglect of a man. Not everyone has the same situations. Oncefallen may be correct with a lot of men, but even if these men neglected their wives... how is it OKAY for those wives to divorce these men without even trying to fix things first? Instead of saying "well he is neglecting me so forget him!" type of thing... why not go up to the man and tell him first? Why not fix things, instead of divorcing? Divorce destroys people in so many ways, and while some get over it, not everyone does. I don't know how well I'd handle it if one of the aforementioned cases happened to me. It's just a very scary thing... marriage. It isn't scary because of the marriage, but because of the divorce. If divorce never loomed over every marriage that occurs these days, then I'm positive I wouldn't be so afraid of it. I don't have commitment issues, but I do have issues with divorce. Mainly, I already know that whomever I marry, I would die for them and give them every part of me, both physically, emotionally, and financially. I'd place myself in that vulnerable position, because that is the entire point of marriage.... Trust. The problem is when that trust is broken. Love is one of the greatest things in the world, but it also is the one thing that can completely destroy someone as well. Few people seem to realize how much it really can destroy a person. That's my point. That's why I'm afraid of it. That's why I brought up this thread. What in the world makes it so worth it, when it can completely destroy a person to the point of suicide?
. I still haven't found much of an answer though, because just praying about it and being close to Jesus isn't the answer for marriage, at least not the only answer. If you are THAT close to God, most likely you won't get married anyway.
