Epiphany #5: Traditional is Tacky?

Flashback to 1947. A young military man just back from war asks a "beautiful dame" on a date. He asks her father and promises to have her back right after dinner. They get to liking each other more and more until one day in the late fall, he gives her a kiss at the front door. She knows what that means: They are dating now, and she's okay with it! They date well, doing a variety of activities and getting to know each other better. One night, amid a light snowfall, they walk down mainstreet, looking in all the store windows. She looks over to see his reaction to the new electric train and finds him with a knee on the ground and a ring in his hand. They get married in April and live happily ever after....

For years, the love scene in the United States has been changing. Not even fifty years ago, families were organized into a nuclear system consisting of a man (the bread winner), his wife (the stay-at-home mom) and their children. How much the world has changed since then! Now we are introduced and sometimes bombarded with new classifications of a marital relationship. Plus, cohabitation has skyrocketed in popularity. Now, up to 80% of Americans are or have cohabited in the their lifetime. So what's with the change? 

My epiphany from class this week is that we are no longer formal about our relationships that mean so much. We have gotten into the trend of just sliding through the steps of dating, courtship, engagement and marriage. If someone were to ask you when you officially started dating your significant other, chances are that you couldn't pin point an exact time or event. We may have gotten kissed on your first date, but it probably didn't mean anything. Then comes the controversial topic of living together before marriage. 

Sometimes I wonder if we are lost. We are becoming confused with what it means to move through a relationship. We need to have hope. We need to have faith. We need to be more formal in our progression of a love that can in fact last forever. It is possible to have this. We just have to be willing to work for it one clear step at a time.