Marriage?

What the hell is marriage? More and more I feel like I and everyone around me do not really understand what it means. Or is it that the meaning is changing in todays society? Here's the definition that I found on dictionary.com (sorry, I don't have a paper dictionary...christmas present?): "the state of being a married couple voluntarily joined for life (or until divorce)". Does anyone else find this definition a little contradictory? I mean think about it it says "joined for life" so doesn't that mean until you die, but wait what is that little bit on the end in parenthesis that says "or until divorce". Now this to me summarizes the state in which we view marriage. No, I'm not saying that divorce is a bad thing in all cases. What I am saying is that in todays society we use it as our get out of jail free card. Wedding is no longer as sacred as it was before. Before people went into marriage for life, for better or worse till death do us part, kind of life. Now people are making marriage as a kind of dating. Its like a: Yea I'm kinda liking you now, but if I get sick of you like my other 4 husbands I can always divorce you and take the house. Is this the way marriage was made to be? No I do not believe so. If we look back just 2 generations to our grandparents we usually see that they've been married and stayed together through thick and thin, and plan on going through the rest of thier lives together. Yet today divorce rates are up: "the proportion of marriages taking place right now that will eventually divorce, which has since been revised downward to roughly 43% by the National Center for Health Statistics but was moved back up to around 50% by the Census Bureau in 2002"(http://www.divorcereform.org/rates.html). To me this shows that something is wrong in our concept of marriage and maybe even our concepts of love. Marriage is a thing that should be forever. It is a contract that, although is just on paper, should be a bond that lasts forever. It is a formal declaration that you want to spend your entire life with another person. Not just at the moments when that person does something sweet and sweeps you off your feet, but even when that person is the most disgusting thing you have ever seen in your life. Marriage should not be taken as a feeling that changes in time so that in two years you are saying "I don't want to be married to you any more", but a connection that does not depend on feelings, a commitment that lasts forever. That commitment says that you will always work at a relationship. What, you may ask, if you work at it and the other person does not? The simple answer is : just keep doing your part. Not everyone is willing to work at a relationship and in this day and age you are likely to be married to someone like this, but this does not mean that you should just discard your part in the marriage. If your partner does not want to work for the relationship thats his/her choice, but do not let it be you that does not work for it. You have no control over any one else's life but your own so do what you can and do not blame someone else. Marriage is a union of two souls and it should be taken seriously. It does not guarantee the changing youthful infatuation that you feel at the beginning of a relationship, but it solidifies and forms a deeper bond that is what is needed to bind two people together forever.