The measure of a person’s humanity can be isolated down to a very simplistic level if we want to somehow measure someone’s personal integrity. Awareness of the world around them, self-awareness about our own actions in an objective sense, it is a very good barometer about a person’s grasp of not only reality, but where they fit in this world. For example, I would say that the person who marries, has entered into, what should be, a sacred alliance should approach that relationship with a degree of grace and even humility as that person you have joined with is there to share the good and the hardship alongside you like no one else in the world should be able to save for your parents when you were a child.

Of course, we will all fall short in one way or another, but for those who stick it out together and endure the temptations, the arguments, and the challenges, they have a special bond and support that few people seem to be able to comprehend anymore with all the me, me, me, emptiness of social thought.  We simply have a majority of society who don’t know the rewards of self-sacrifice when in the end one still has a comrade who cares enough to share this commitment that was no easy task from the very beginning. Some couples seem to have had a charmed life together, being able to make each other happy, but that is probably a very low percentage. Most of us, if willing, must work at that all important bond, and be there for the hard earned rewards that eventually happen.

Church, God, and family, used to be tantamount to the structure of the family, but somehow pop culture, liberalism, women’s lib, identity politics, the expectation of immediate gratification, all programmed into each successive generation of empty minds eroded that noble institution of marriage, selfless commitment, and the ability to give of oneself. For some of us, at some point, we are finally persuaded from our foolish ways through betrayal, broken heartedness, or a brush with death, and God puts things back in perspective for us, mostly in a way we would not prefer.

But, if one has a spouse who has so little appreciation for the other that they show no respect or very little as they value their own desires, their own way, or they drag on with a contemptuous regard for a wife or husband who may not be perfect but they’re doing their best, then that visualization of the life they wanted together will gradually fade away into a futile struggle that neither can see any further past than a very short sighted future as in day by day struggles, the dream will extinguish, and the magic that once held them together like glue will simply fade into meaningless while the pain and the memories persist. The once dedicated wife, the once strong and reliable husband will lose the glow of their noble effort. Today’s society will simply shrug as it notice if it even reacts to that tragedy at all, and the greedy message of self-satisfaction will echo down the empty corridors again.