Marriage

Miranda Devine's column in The Herald this morning caught my eye, as it read in the little ad, 'men and women still want marriage'.

Getting to the end, I was very surprised that she finished the article with a quote from Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis.

You can see the full article here, but here are some bits I found interesting:

'..the enduring popularity of the Austen-esque search for Mr Right in popular culture shows feminism and the sexual revolution haven't changed a thing. Women and men still dream of monogamous marriage and family amid deteriorating social stability.'

'Celebrity breakdowns like those of Bullock and Woods show when marriages are bad, they are toxic. But they are the exception. More marriages survive than don't, especially in Australia where more than two in three remain intact, while divorce rates have been dropping and marriage rates increasing.

Regardless of Hollywood pessimism, a generation which has felt first-hand the effects of marriage breakdown and instability is embracing the institution afresh.

Instinctively they know the truth of what C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity:

"If you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned person for the rest of your life. It is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all round them."'