commitment in marriage Quotes

I've been married 34 years. I have not been a perfect man. I have made mistakes in my life.

Marriage is very secure. It is safe. There is no growth in it. One is simply stuck. Marriage is a sexual arrangement; intimacy is a search for love. Marriage is a sort of prostitution, a permanent sort. One has got married to a woman or to a man - it is a permanent prostitution. The arrangement is economical, not psychological, not of the heart.

Better no marriage, than a marriage short of the best.

The idea that marriage has to be for all time - that I don't understand.

Close your legs to married men.

Most unmarried people have no idea what it takes to make a marriage work; they grossly underestimate the price people have to pay to build long-term, mutually satisfying relationships. And they fail to understand that the only people with the strength to pay that price are those who have plumbed the depths of their relationship with God, and have dealt with their own brokenness.

I'm sorry, if you've been married for five minutes, you've sacrificed something, you've looked over at your partner and have gone, "Oh my God this is the biggest mistake I've ever made in my life." And then the next moment it's "This is the most beautiful and extraordinary human being, and I'm going to stick with it because I love them more than anyone else." That monologue to me is the universal thing, especially for women because I feel like that's the big thing with women.

No long-term marriage is made easily, and there have been times when I've been so angry or so hurt that I thought my love would never recover.

I am lucky enough to be married to someone who I believe in totally and who believes in me totally.

The quality of a marriage is proven by its ability to tolerate an occasional "exception.

Marriage is a commitment, so you always have to work at it.

When I got married, I was all in love, but then came life intruding in, and sometimes it's difficult ... I would look at my husband and ask, 'did we do it too quickly?' ... But my husband was strong in his resolve. He kept reminding me that people go through this, and that we were going to be ok.

I think a man can have two, maybe three, affairs while he is married. But three is the absolute maximum. After that, you're cheating.

It is terribly hard to be married, harder than anything. I think one has to be an angel.

The secret of a long marriage is shaving your legs every day . . . because it shows you still care.

Their long years together had shown him that it did not so much matter if marriage was a dull duty, as long as it kept the dignity of duty: lapsing from that, it became a mere battle of ugly appetites.

Our society trains us to think of marriage as a contractual arrangement. If one party fails to fulfill his or her end, the contract is null and void. Increasingly children are raised in a contractual environment. When contractual thinking dominates our horizon, we can even make Jesus or the church an asset we think we can manage.

I wasn’t sure anymore what made a good marriage. There had to be love, of course, but there were so many different kinds of love. And clearly, some love was more enduring than others.