Culturally, marriage is becoming less and less significant. The idea of saving sex for marriage is, of course, rare.
Cohabitation is on the rise. And according to recent reports, people are even buying their first homes together before getting married. There’s of course much to be said about this as a matter of societal decline. It seems, the main point of getting married is to dress in finery and get religious relatives off your back.
I really think that what these couples are missing out on is sad. They’re losing a lot of significance in their marriage. It’s why a film like The Five-Year Engagement bombed. I mean why exactly should the audience even care that the characters marriage is being delayed when they’re having copious amounts of sex as far as an R-rated film to go? A long-delayed engagement would have been an interesting plot in the golden age of film because there was something really being delayed or denied until marriage. Now, it’s a minor annoyance. It’s like if someone made a movie about having to wait to get their VCR repaired.
There’s a really blessings that I think many couples are missing out on. When my wife and I married in 2002, I moved in with her the same day. This had followed many months of me walking her to her apartment and never staying the night. Marriage represented a fundamental shift and change in my life. Similarly, it was a big deal a little less than three years when we bought our first house together.
The more and more things we decide to do before marriage and delink from marriage, the less it becomes a life-changing event, and the more it becomes merely a ceremony we go through for the sake of going through it, without understanding its meaning. The best you can get is that it’s a celebration of a couples feelings for one another, but even that doesn’t really require a wedding. Young couples should be encouraged to do things in God’s order. It will bless their marriage with significance that in needs to stay strong.