Take Love for Granted by Jack Ridl Assume it’s in the kitchen, under the couch, high in the pine tree out back, behind the paint cans in the garage. Don’t try proving your love is bigger than the Grand Canyon, the Milky Way, the urban…
We’ve spent the past two weeks considering what marriage is in an effort to answer the question “why do we marry.” We’ve done so by defining covenant and contract and then asking – which one is marriage? There are certainly pieces of marriage…
Contract: an agreement between people (or entities) that creates mutual obligations enforceable by law. The basic elements required for the agreement to be a legally enforceable contract are mutual assent, expressed by a valid offer and…
One of the most challenging aspects of this blog series has been the question of covenant versus contract. Marriage is one of them, but which one? I thought this would be a quick and dirty blog: define and then defend. All with the goal of quickly…
As a systems-oriented marriage and family therapist, my short answer would be: because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Creating something greater than ourselves is an intrinsically human goal. From the first cave dweller who…
“Why Marriage?” This was a particularly deep question, after my first marriage ended in divorce after 14 years. The new love of my life was, well, still new to me, so a very reasonable question to ask myself was, is this just a rebound? Will this…
Last week I publicly posed a question that I often privately ask my clients in the context of writing their marriage ceremonies. Why are you marrying? And much like the answers we’ve received from clients over the years, the responses to our…
“Why are you getting married? Be specific.” If I’ve married you, I’ve likely asked you this question. I might have even pushed a little bit, following up with: “We live in a time when marriage is neither required nor necessary in our society….
Well, if you live in Texas, Valentine’s Day seems like it was about twenty-three years ago. We’d always intended to write a blog titled “Beyond Valentine’s Day” after February 14th’s love fest. But we never thought it would look quite like…
OK, so there are two camps on V-Day . . . the one willing, and even happy to overspend on restaurants, make excuses for all of the extra chocolate (since it’s covering fruit), and pay for proposals in skywriting. Then there is Camp Cynic. The camp…