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Marriage is an institution. Two people stand before witnesses and exchange vows. It used to be that those promises included a specific stipulation: Til death do you part. That's a pretty hefty oath to take.

While some religious wedding ceremonies include that promise, civil ceremonies no longer do. The ceremony itself actually gives the couple an out in the way that it is worded. In one wedding that I recently attended the couple agreed to remain married "as long as your two hearts shall beat in mutual accord." In other words, when you're sick of each other, get a divorce. Divorce has become so common place as to have almost become the rule, rather than the exception. Yet it remains so easy to get married and so difficult to get divorced.

It is rather sad that young people today have forsaken the ritual of courtship. Instead of dating and getting to know each other over months or even years the tendency is to move in and live together almost immediately. Two live cheaper than one in this day and age and it's rather more convenient to shack up than go through the bother of wooing each other. What happens is the 'ga-ga stage' quickly passes and the reality is not as pretty as it once seemed it was. But the couple decides that getting married will solve this dilemma, or a baby appears and the couple feel compelled to "do the right thing."

There is an old saying that goes something like this: She gets married hoping he will change; he gets married hoping she won't. Of course, this does not happen. At least not in the way that it is expected to. In many ways he does change and in many ways she remains the same, but these are often not in the desired manner. This leads to disappointment, which leads to conflict, which leads to lawyers.

Our disposable society has stretched to include marriages. Don't like what you've got? Get rid of it. Get a new one. This mentality permits couples to choose the easy way out. Unfortunately, the easy way out, divorce, isn't all that easy. And the lawyers thrive on churning up as much discord as possible between the couple so as to benefit themselves. One statistic says that divorce, on average, costs three times as much as the wedding. A ten thousand dollar wedding equals a thirty thousand dollar divorce. That's forty thousand dollars that could have been better spent!

Not to disparage marriage. A good relationship has wondrous rewards, but it takes work. It takes commitment. It takes cooperation, negotiation and conciliation. Those vows

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