Month: July 2007

Does marriage change you?

A woman I work with is getting married in a couple of weeks. She has been living with her fiance for a few years.

I mentioned that I thought marriage was different from cohabitating (disclosure: I lived with Honeybun for three years before we got married). The woman I work with is confident nothing will change after she gets married. I figure that if marriage wasn’t different, why would you need to do it?

So, what is it about marriage that is different from cohabitating? I haven’t really put it into words. I think it has something to do with commitment. Before being married, there is not as much a barrier to splitting up. You know you can leave at any time with no legal obligation except to split up any joint property.

Marriage has a much larger meaning. You have committed in front of God, friends, and family to stay together. That is pressure. You can’t just leave. Sure you can divorce but there is still a difference in this society between an ex-boyfriend/girlfriend and an ex-husband/wife.

I’ve also seen a study that shows married men earn more money than men who are not married (cohabitating or living alone). That indicates that marriage is different. It changes men at least so that they take more responsibility for the support of their family.

So what else is there about getting married that is different from living together?

Run Fred, Run!

So when is Fred Thompson going to declare he is running for President in ’08? Blogs for Fred says he has made up his mind about running, he just hasn’t announced what that decision is.

I think he hasn’t announced yet because he is doing so well in the polls without actually campaigning. When he announces, he will start having to campaign which means spending money. Why spend money when you don’t have to?

Dennis

I just found out the my uncle Dennis had a series of strokes last Sunday. The strokes have left him paralyzed and on a respirator. After coming out of an induced coma yesterday, Dennis removed the respirator. He has decided that he does not want the hospital to provide extraordinary measures and he is ready to die. The doctor anticipates he will pass away in the next week.

He was raised Catholic and I do not know the current state of his faith, but I pray that God will use this time to bring Dennis to a state of grace and prepare him for heaven.

Anti-Catholic sites

Today someone tried to anonymously post a link in my comments to an anti-Catholic site.

I’m hoping he or she comes back to see if the link is there, but I doubt that will happen. These people tend to be drive-by linkers. They aren’t really concerned about dialogue, they just want to spam as many Catholic sites as possible.

Now I’m not really afraid of anti-Catholic propaganda. I’ve been satisfied with my ability to find answers to the questions they believe must be answered by every Catholic. The reason I deleted the link is that I won’t let my site and bandwidth be used to link to Viagra, mortgage, or explicit sites, and I won’t be let it be used to post anonymous links to other trash either.

If you are truly concerned for me because I am Catholic and think I need conversion, feel free to use my contact form, or if that isn’t working, post a comment that actually invites me to converse. Posting anonymous links is like throwing trash on my lawn. It doesn’t convince me of anything. In fact, it shows me that your thoughts aren’t worthy of consideration.