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This is one of the definitions of marriage in the Urban Dictionary

2.	marriage	2202 up, 418 down
	What straight couples have legally and commonly don't want, and what gay couples don't have legally and commonly want. Irony in the first degree. That's a pretty accurate definition don't you think?

I married my husband in 1977 when I was 18 years old - happy to say that we're still married today. Of course we had some odds against us. In fact, according to most people which included our biggest skeptics(family) we would never last because of our age, beginning our marriage with a baby and being an interracial couple. I think my dad gave us a year and Tom's parents gave us two years, but we were young and determined so none of that mattered to us. We had an I will show them attitude... we weren't going to be a statistic in the world of failed marriages. So there we were, two young kids in the 70's with a baby and on our own.

It's now 2012, we have five children and eight grandchildren. I'm not saying that it's been an easy ride,   but it has been worth the hard work. Yes, work. If anyone thinks that marriage isn't work, you're kidding yourself. We all have our own way of doing things, habits that are hard or impossible to break, different hobbies and interests and most of us are products of our upbringing. We are individuals with our own unique personality that is liked by some and not so much by others. So it's a game of choosing your battles. I for example was raised in a family where my parents should of never stayed married... it was beyond the definition of dysfunctional. Just maybe that's why I worked so hard to have a different type of marriage and a different kind of family. I really don't think for us age, race or having a child young was a real factor. If anything would have made our marriage fail, it would have been all that baggage that I came with. Growing up with constant chaos, distrust and no love can make or break a person...I was fortunate enough to have a survivor attitude and blessed enough to be able to escape the nightmare at age 18; but I brought a shit load of craziness along with me. A lot of men wouldn't have wanted to be part of my crazy life, but lucky for me I found the one that did. You really have to decide what things you love about a person and not focus on all the things that you don't love as much. Furthermore, you both need to have the desire to want a successful marriage. Most of my friends have been in a long term marriage like us, but I also have divorced friends that their marriages ended due to infidelity, ones that have never married and just enjoy dating, and the ones that are still looking for Mr. Right. I'm not advocating that everyone needs to marry or that you need to stay in a bad marriage for the sake of being married. I'm for whatever makes you happy and whatever works for you as long as no ones getting hurt. But I do believe if you choose to marry and you know in your heart that this is the person that you want to spend the rest of your life with - work hard for your marriage to survive.  "It's got to come from the heart, if you want it to work." -Susannah Clark                                                                                                                              
 

More marriages might survive if the partners realized that sometimes the better comes after the worse.

- Doug Larson