A recent email got me thinking.

I got the following email today from an acquaintance who saw an interview with me, and clips from Why Get Married? airing locally in Albuquerque.

"Hey Ms. Stirling!
Very happy and surprised to tune in to channel 27 and find two of the greatest doing a captivating, realistic of times, important presentation, that truly brought paramount understanding of this institution in this day and age.
It just so happened that I had escaped to the den after a spat occurred between my spouse and myself to run into your show!
Thanks for all You do !"

When I worked on this documentary, beginning with the germ of an idea in 2001, I kept learning and distilling down the important topics and issues that interested me, but that I also felt were universal. They would touch anyone who had thought about marriage, in one way or another.

Now in 2007, recent statistics someone spouted at me were that 75% of the couples marrying this year will be divorced within the next 5 years. WOW. As my Mom says, quote your source. Well I don't know where my friend got that percentage, but I intend to investigate.
What does a 75% divorce rate, or 90% mean to us in the western world? Are we going to hell in a hand basket? Is the institution of marriage and government slow slow slow to catch up with what the population has been choosing for themselves these past many decades?

I find so many aspects of marriage fascinating because we have U.S. leadership saying it is grand, yet the evidence says no. And to not marry, does not mean we don't have committed, loving primary relationships, or well loved children. It just means the institution of marriage, the contract, the "rights, the privileges" that are to go along with it in the U.S. are outmoded. And people are voting with their feet, it would seem.