In my current life I know a lot of people who live together. Some of them might have done this because they do not like marriage, and others have done this as a step towards getting married. In all, in my post-Witness life I find that I have no problem with either view. With one in two marriages failing, and seeing elderly people who stayed together because they did not want a scandal in their youth. I think that this modern generation is wise is doing what ever suits them to make a relationship work. Although, what brought me and my wife to our current point in the relationship. Would be considered odd by today's thinking, and yet for some odd reason it worked for us. There might be others who will relate to this as well. When I was about 22 I went to a different book study one night and met a young woman. I did not know her well, but we talked and got to know each other a little. It was only a couple of weeks later, and someone invited me over to a "get together" and she was there too. We talked more and soon we found that we wanted to date, it was not much longer and everyone knew we were a couple. Two months later, being the typical manner of a Witness life we were engaged, and then nine months from the time of that book study we were married. Two strangers saying "I do" in front of a lot of people neither one of us even knew. When most people marry someone they normally know all about them, well at least something about them. I can honestly say, that when my wife married me and I married her. We honestly moved in with two complete strangers in love. We talked more and we joked, we traveled and we learned more about our likes and our dislikes. We attended every one of those meetings, Pioneered, and traveled to all of those conventions. We were the couple everyone wanted to have over to their house. We studied the Bible, and read all of Watchtower and Awakes. We still were getting to know each other though, and some times things were not the peaches in creams people thought went on in our house. You can not have two people who met only nine months before they say "I do" know what drives the other one nuts, or what makes them upset. Yet like all things in life, you bounce from one day to the next. Your padding of knowledge in each others views makes your love stronger, and you days even better. Yet for the most part by the end of year one, I would say we were both still strangers. Why would I say such a thing, even though by that time we had spent so many hours talking and preaching? Well the years they went so fast and we learned so much and did so many things. We Pioneered, and I was in a positions of congregation authority. We were the pillar of strength that others thought they should model their life after, "two strangers in love" yet never knowing what was missing. Then one day when three years had passed in our marriage days. I come into the living room after a meeting, and set with my wife and said, "there is something I need to tell you." My wife had that serious look on her face, worried about what that something might be. Well I laid it all out, how I no longer believed this religion and I wanted to change my life and get out of there. I told her she could stay in if she wanted, that I would never stop her or hurt her. I just said it like it was, "I am gone, and their is no turning back from here." My wife was quiet for a minute and then stood up and walked out of the room. I set thinking that she might be crying or struggling with my thoughts. Then she came back with a trash bag in hand, looked me in the face and said, "thank God you said it first, now lets throw away all these stupid books." We took the books to the dumpster, every single one of them that night. I set there that evening thinking, "we are no longer strangers in love, but now we are people who could really learn each others true meaning." Now I would never be one to say, that every step I took from that day was the best. No, we made many mistakes and did things in the thought of "freedom at last", but I will say one thing in sitting here six years later, with our first baby only a month away. I know that for me nine months might seem to short before marriage, and I know for many that was a huge mistake. The thing is, some times we think we are married a stranger. Yet years later we learn we married someone just like us. We just needed to find "us" first before we realize we knew "them" better then we ever thought. "I might have married a stranger, but I live today with my best friend" My thought Dragon
Edited by - kenpodragon on 20 October 2002 17:58:37