The Lasting Benefits of Fidelity
June 3, 2024 | Alton, IL
by Anne Schlafly, Chairman, Eagle Forum
The lyrics of popular music have always centered on love and heartbreak. These emotional songs touch us because we all yearn for everlasting love. Taylor Swift’s biggest hits include these lines: “You told me you loved me, so why did you go away?” and “I never thought we’d have a last kiss; I never imagined we’d end like this.”
Love does not have to be fleeting. For love to last, fidelity is the key. Without fidelity, love is just a passing fancy. It is only with faithfulness and fidelity that we can find fulfillment.
The beautiful marriage vows pledge fidelity for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. In other words, our fidelity to our spouse will hold us through every crisis in life.
Fidelity is the glue. June, the traditional month for weddings, is a time to celebrate fidelity. Let us honor and celebrate the couples who are faithful as role models for everyone. Let us parade and shout our joy for fidelity. Let us proudly wear our fidelity for all to recognize. Let us teach children to aspire to fidelity. Then they will have someone who still needs them and still feeds them when they are 64.
Fidelity has many benefits. For example, married couples have better health, probably because we have someone who loves us who is caring for us. A caregiver can never offer the same emotional support that a spouse can. A support group cannot equal the marriage benefit in health outcomes. In many cancers, the survival rate for married patients is larger than the survival rate from using chemotherapy. Even after adjusting for demographics, age, cancer stage, and treatments, being married reduces cancer deaths from 12% to 33%, depending on the cancer. Unmarried patients have a greater risk of undertreatment and metastatic cancer.
Plus, married couples have more money in the bank. Even after adjusting for demographics, cohabitating couples have only 25% of the net worth that married couples have in the same age group. Cohabiting is not the commitment to fidelity that marriage is.
The longest-lasting advertising slogan still in use since 1948 is “a diamond is forever.” The marriage ring symbolizes fidelity. A love that lasts forever is the one true love that satisfies. The rate of marriage is now at an all-time low; 25% of 40-year-old Americans have never been married. It’s too bad; to have a successful marriage is the key to lifetime health, wealth, and happiness.