Marriage Is Half the Responsibility of Each

More than a century ago, Goethe made this remark on marriage:”The sum which two

married people owe each other defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be

discharged through all eternity.” What two married people owe to each other does defy

calculation, and it is an infinite debt. Marriage is a momentous commitment that requires the

best of all we have within us to make it all it ought to be. Too often those who face what they

assume is an unsuccessful marriage are too quick to feel that breaking up is the easy and simple

solution. But we never go back and begin where we once were. And always there should be an

earnest, determined effort to succeed and not lightly to dissolve a sacred and solemn covenant,

with all the confused and troubled lives it leaves. Sometimes one person might be led

erroneously to consider only himself, but with all who are affected, the lives of children, the

lives of loved ones, the lives of each other, no one in marriage has an obligation solely to

himself. Marriage cannot be concerned only with the preference or convenience of one person,

nor only with the passing problems of the present. Each one must consider the total effect of

what he does – on himself, on others, on children, on all the lives and all the factors, into the

farthest reaches of the future. In marriage we have a sacred obligation to make home a place of

happiness – and it doesn’t just happen. “It comes as a great surprise to younger people,” said

Dr. May E. Markewich, “that a husband and wife must work at marriage all the years of their life

…” Marriage is half the responsibility of each. In a couplet on this subject William Cowper said:

“The kindest and happiest pair, will find occasion to forbear; find something every day they live;

to pity, and perhaps forgive.” There is nothing which we should go to greater lengths to save

than a home, a marriage, a family; for marriage is an obligation of incalculable consequence,

and should never be rushed into immaturely, but once made, it should never be selfishly or

immaturely set aside. “The sum which two married people owe each other defies calculation. It

is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through all eternity.”