I'm saying that staying with somebody through thick and thin should be as a result of really loving them in the present and wanting to help them be well and happy, rather than because you signed a contract and gave them a piece of jewellery five years beforehand.
Agreed, and most happily married couples will tell you the commitment happened long before the ceremony.
However, as my pastor put it during our premarital counseling:
"Sometimes the love keeps the marriage together, sometimes the marriage keeps the love together."
Most of the time, the fact that you want them to be well and happy will keep the two of you together.
However, there will be times when the sheer fact that the two of you stood up and publicly declared your commitment before God and men will keep you from considering dissolving the commitment, and motivate you to work together and find a better solution.
Suit yourself. Maybe it's because I come from a long line of single-parent families, but I find it slightly creepy when people come to define themselves through a single other person. I much prefer to see two independent, autonomous individuals who choose to spend their time together even though they don't have to, and could function perfectly well on their own.
That can have a huge impact on your perception of marriage, or even committed relationships, since the first deeper-than-friendship relationship we see as children is in our parents.
I take it you've never been married?
Feel free to correct that assumption.
Experience is the only counteraction to that preference for independence.
Having found myself delightfully dependent, I can't imagine ever wanting to be a complete person on my own ever again.
I have built my identity as an adult on the foundation of my marriage.
I have chosen to be first and foremost her husband, now and for the rest of my life.
Of course, and this is a part of the argument that hasn't been brought into play yet, some people SHOULDN'T enter into a marriage relationship BECAUSE they prefer living completely on their own terms from start to finish.
That mentality is demonized because too many people treat the Cleavers as the pinnacle of American adult life, but just as some people (perhaps including myself and my wife) shouldn't have children because they enjoy living their lives a certain way, some shouldn't get married because their personalities (at the moment at least) do not easily endure compromise.