It's not just a piece of paper!

It really grinds my gears when I see someone saying "Marriage is just a ring and a piece of paper". IMO, the people who say that haven't ever been married. "Well it's already like we're married, nothing is going to change"...um yes it will. It doesn't matter how close you are or how much you've been through together, taking the step to get married will change everything. It doesn't do it in a big way, it changes things in little ways. My husband and I were very close before we got married, he left for boot camp 2 months after we started dating and his 13 weeks there really defined our relationship. We had only letters for contact and it was one of the hardest things we've done, but we made it through and we made it through together. It made the decision for us that we would end up married, we just didn't know when. We both knew we're meant for each other, neither of us had ever experienced the kind of happiness we felt when we were together with anyone else. Everything we did or said just clicked, and it was and still is incredible.

I didn't think marriage was going to change our relationship, but once we were in the little room holding hands and saying "I do" it hit me that it was going to change our lives forever. A change doesn't always have to be bad, this change was so far from bad. There's nothing we love more than each other, and being married to each other. Someone who's never experienced that with someone can't possibly understand that marriage does change an already close relationship in small ways. It's hard to explain, hard to put your finger on, but the changes are there. Marriage is much more than a ring and a piece of paper, it goes so much deeper than both of those material things and reaches levels that are intangible. Levels that, if you're not paying attention, you don't see.

In these times, it's sad to see that the divorce rate is so high. Especially military marriages, young kids are getting married because they think it's the cool thing to do and getting divorced at the first sign of trouble. To make a marriage successful, military or not, you have to work at it. Marriage doesn't work by itself, you have to put in the hours and sometimes overtime to ensure it stays in working order. It takes an incredible amount of understanding and patience, time and love, attention and passion. You want to feel the same passion for your spouse 10 years into marriage that you felt when you were dating. If you can't understand that marriage takes a lot of hard work, then you shouldn't be getting married. If you think that marriage is just a piece of paper, maybe you need to look at what marriage means to you.