David Mills wrote about the compromises many young people make in their relationships and the harm that these compromises can do to a lasting relationship. He writes:
A marriage becomes a ship with two captains who enjoy sailing together, at least for now. When they disagree about the course to take they chart a course halfway between the ones they each want. It’s good enough if all you want to do is sail together and don’t want to get anywhere. If they can’t compromise on their course, one or the other can abandon ship. It can work, because some people have a truer idea of marriage than they can put into words, and because years of practiced love can teach you what you didn’t know when you started and perhaps still can’t put into words. I’ve known elderly couples who talked about marriage like libertines, but loved each other like an old couple in a Norman Rockwell painting.
The idea of “practiced love” is somewhat foreign to the younger generation. Millennials, your correspondent included, grew up with movies depicting love at first sight, an attraction based on physical desire. A study from Pew Research cites marriage rates for Millennials at 26%, less than half of the rate in the 1960s. One reason for this trend is that “practiced love” requires patience, which has nearly been deleted from our coding by years of digital downloads and instant gratification.
There could be many reasons for this trend, and we would like to know:
And today we celebrate...