The One and Only Reason Why You Should Ever Get Married

By Vladimir Plantin, February 14th, 2019

Throughout human history, people have chosen to marry one another for a wide variety of reasons, commonly to gain something beneficial for their own personal lives: it could be for money, power, fame, career, sex, children, social approval, avoiding loneliness, the list goes on and on. These motives, while alluring at first, are all too often so misguided and nearsighted, that in modern-day America alone, the rate of marriages that end in divorce are at around 50%, and have been that way now for decades.

The main reasons behind this epidemic, in my humble opinion, are not only that these gains can be conditional, but also because either one spouse, or both spouses, chose to focus on what to get, more so than on what to give, to the other person involved. The exact same problem has also occurred in dating relationships, possibly A LOT more often so than with those who’s ever walked down the aisle!

For a moment, let me tell you a story about 2 Princes and the women they took as their wives – one couple now appears to have a Happily Ever After, and the other couple we all know ended much more as a tragedy. And in case you’re wondering, this is no fairy tale – this is about the real-life marriages of two Princes from the United Kingdom – Prince Charles and his son, Prince William:

Once upon a time in England, Charles met with an lovely, young aristocrat named Lady Diana Spencer; upon their marriage in 1981, she was granted the royal title of Princess Diana of Wales. While their union helped her become a great philanthropist, proved successful in bearing a new heir to the throne (their son William), and the couple did at first appear to share a common courtesy, the marriage itself also proved a failure years later, as both the Prince and Princess committed infidelity out of getting along so poorly. This led to a massive and messy divorce, and Diana would suffer a tragic death from a car crash just one year and 3 days afterwards.

Many years later, the now-grown-up Prince William would meet his own future bride, the commoner Catherine “Kate” Middleton in college. With all the common interests they shared, the two became close friends and got along very well. It is perhaps from the tumultuous marriage he once witnessed his parents have as a child that he learned the lessons to chose her as his wife instead of a certain princess or another aristocrat, putting a priority of love and compatibility over any fancy titles.

True love does exist, and it can be found, but not without the path or social method of true friendship; in any given marriage, friendship is the oxygen that feeds the fires of love and keeps the passion alive and healthy. To be clear, there are indeed certain emotional differences between friendship and romantic love, but there are also so many common keys to success that both platonic and romantic relationships always have: humility, kindness, trust, communication, compassion, cooperation, compromise, support in both good times and bad, enjoyment – all of which are achievable only when any 2 people involved with each other are truly best friends.