Love & Marriage...Horse & Carriage

I was talking to someone today and telling him that he should just marry his girlfriend already. They've been together 5 years and he is still 'thinking about it'. I said the problem with that is that either one of them could get up and walk away at anytime with no legal obligation or consequence. His retort was 'That's the beauty of it. You don't have to get married. You can live together, have kids and never have to be married.' Well, I didn't know exactly how to respond so I didn't say anything. But, it got me thinking. Why do I think that this is wrong? I'm not a very religious person so I can't say that's the reason. I do consider myself relatively conservative, though not as conservative as my husband. So, my reason for this being wrong is this: The children. That's it, just the kids. What kind of example are we setting for our children if we don't get married and just get up and leave when things get rough? The underlying message that they receive is that they don't matter enough for you to stick around and work it out. The only legal obligation we have is to pay child support. There is no law that says you have to 'raise' your children (although there should be). Of course our legal system has made it pretty simple to just get up and leave a marriage anyway. It just seems like people don't put the effort into marriage anymore. They look at the wedding as a great big 'look at me' party and expect the marriage to be 'perfect' afterwards. You know, knight in shining armour/princess in the castle. Real fairy tales aren't like this at all. You either create your fairytale or create your nightmare. It really is what you make it. I got married and always told myself that I would never have the option of divorce no matter how hard things got. Because I knew how damaging it was to me as a child. At the beginning of my parents separation/divorce I just thought I was a bad child. I behaved badly and made lots of poor choices that at the time I attributed to being a bad child. In hindsight I know that it was the lack of focus on my parents marriage that was the real problem. Don't get me wrong, I don't wish to change anything. I'm glad things turned out the way they did. I learned a lot about independence and how to deal with things on my own. I'm now able to look back on that chapter of my life and feel ok about it. And, it could've been worse; much, much worse. Granted, I took the 'scenic route' but I think I turned out OK. At least Ty thinks so. It really all boils down to choices. You can choose to be happy or choose to be sad. You can choose to work honestly or you can choose to steal. You can choose to live within your means or you can choose to acquire debt. So, I choose to be happy, work honestly, live within my means and to stay HAPPILY married no matter what.