My little heart has been heavy the past days as I think about Jillian Harris, the cute Canadian who won the heart of Ed on the past season of The Bachelorette. I do confess that Devin and I watched nearly every episode on our computer, which allowed us to skip the embarrassing parts, and I have rather grown to like that plucky girl. She seems so fun and would be a good friend, I think.
So, it was with sadness that, on the “After the Rose” episode (I know, pardon the cheesiness), I watched her and Ed talk about their plans to live together for the next few months and get married some time within the next year.
The hopeful couple
Because, she deserves to have the best chance for married happiness, and yet she is doing the very things that weigh heavily against that happiness. Living together before marriage increases a couple’s chances of divorce by upwards of 15%, according to a recent study published by the University of Denver. And, contraception, which we assume she’s using, increases a couple’s divorce rate yet again; I don’t have exact numbers for this one–can one of our readers who is a NaPro instructor supply us with some statistics there? She and Ed, at the time when they should be most discerning and clear headed in preparing for marriage, are befuddling their brains with the very powerful hormone called oxytocin, the bonding hormone that is released by the act of marital relations. A couple engaging in sexual relations outside of the marital context are opening themselves to lots of confusion and unnecessary poor choices, simply because they weren’t perspicacious enough to see through the fog of hormonal bonding and pleasure that they are not right right for each other.
Here is this cute couple who are just the same age as I, and I want them to make it. I want them to have a good marriage and live to see their dreams of sitting on their front porch at 80 years old come true. And, I ache that their decisions have made that likelihood very slim. Will somebody please send to them to some good, and I mean good, premarital training and give them some solid books to read and help draw them to a conversion in Christ? Because, they deserve to be happy in the happiness that only Christ can give.
Great post, Katie. I didn’t watch the show this season but am glad that she got engaged and I hope it works out. I recently became engaged on my 30th birthday last month, and I can tell you that both my fiance and I are so eager to get married that we almost eloped! However, we are now having a wedding that will please our parents, this coming November. We are so excited to live together, and have had a lot of fun planning for our new home. I am eager, as a bride-to-be, to join my future husband in the days following our wedding, and starting our new life together afresh. I hope that this couple decides to do the same!
Congratulations, Katie! That is exciting news.
Congratulations, Katie! Engagement is such a fun and blessed and maddening time. Devin and I had our engagement blessed at Sunday Mass after Devin proposed Friday evening, and the thought seriously crossed our minds–we have a priest, we have a congregation, and we have a ring, why wait? Please be assured of our prayers as you prepare to become a bride.