To marry or not to marry (C7 - Reaserch your topic)

To marry or not to marry? I would like to ask you a question first. How many of you are single now? Please raise your hands. Have you ever been in a situation that people ask you the following questions, "When do you plan to get married?" "Are you going be to single whole life?" (Pause) In that moment, you might yell silently in your mind, "What's wrong to be single? Is getting married that important?" (Pause) I was in that situation and totally understand that kind of feeling. Even I have been married for more than 4 years I am not in the position of "marriage is a must thing in our life." However, which one is better? Today I am going to provide you some information for reference.

According to 主計處, In the past ten years, the single population between 30 to 44 year-old has been increasing for more than one million person/time (人次). The ratio for male to female is about 6 to 4. Among the single females, one fourth of them do not want to get married. The main cause is that women nowadays have better education resources, fairer working environment, independent economic status and the mutual support from family and friends with open-minded attitudes.

Take my closed friends for example, 6 out of 10 are single now. All of them have at least Bachelor or Master degree and make their own living. They are talented and independent. Some of them are seeing someone but not in the rush to get married, because there are lots of thing to be communicated upfront for mutual understanding and acceptance, life style, goals, values, family relationship, housework management, kids or no kids, etc. If above stated issues are not clearly communicated, marriage would not happen easily.

On the other hand, according to 內政部統計處, in the past decade, the divorce rate increases 4% annually. Take 2007 for instance, there were 58,000 married couples decided to get divorced. 31% of the divorce rate was contributed by couples in their first 5 years of marriage, the longer the marriage the lower the divorce rate. The reasons for divorce are different from case to case but mainly echoing to what I have mentioned, whether they got married with only ideal assumptions to each other or they had clear picture of who they were married to.

There was an interesting news report that a Chinese girl looked for a "rental boyfriend" to company her home for the Chinese New Year. The reason was that she had the pressure to show her family that she was in a relationship. That was creative. I have never thought of that. On the contrary, in western society such as France, many couples have kids together without a legal marriage relationship. They want to observe and learn from a real married life to see whether they are suitable for each other in a marriage.

To marry or not to marry? If you ask for my opinions, as a satisfied married woman and used to be a delighted single, I would say that marriage is not a fantasy. It is very practical and takes a lot of compromise. Your spouse is your companion for joy and sorrow, and for better and for worse. I would like to share with you a line of the movie Bridget Jone's Diary, from Mr. Darcy to Bridget, "I like the way you are!" If you have a relationship like this, it does not matter to marry or not to marry. The bottom line is if one plus one cannot be equal to or bigger than two it might be better to maintain single. In other words, marriage or relationship should be a plus but not a minus to our life. To marry or not to marry? Hopefully, the information I provide today could help you answer the question on your own.