"Marriage and love"

The saying is supposed to be "love and marriage," but Rev. Mark Gungor is turning my old verities upside down. Maybe the cart has been before the horse. The author of Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage dispenses the opposite of all I took to be settled marriage dogma.

First debunked truism: "Don't get married young." Wrong, says Gungor (who was married at age 18). By postponing marriage till our late 20s and early 30s, we set ourselves up for promiscuity. For millennia, the age of marriage has roughly coincided with the age of sexual quickening. In the last few generations, the marriage timetable changed but the sexual timetable didn't. Something's gotta give. If a raccoon keeps getting at your trash can, no matter how many times you shoo it away, you'd better put a lid on the trash can because you're not going to change the behavior of the raccoon.

Second debunked truism (related to the first): "Wait till you're mature and responsible." Wrong, says Gungor. You become mature and responsible by being married. By waiting till you're 32 to get married, all you will achieve is to become a 16-year-old in a 32-year-old's body. You will have developed lots of selfish habits and accumulated lots of relationship baggage.

Third debunked truism: "If you get married young, Sonny, you're on your own. Expect no financial help from me and your mother." Wrong again. If he were in college you would help him out, wouldn't you? Why cut him off when he's trying to get a marriage off the ground? A new marriage needs family support.

Then Gungor said that by and large people who get married young have better marriages. Of course nobody lives in the "by and large." I have to believe that seeking God's help, December marriages can fare as well as those of April.