Marriage...pah: the Sequel
Reading over my last post got me thinking (oh yes, it does happen) about marriage. I read some statistics somewhere that if couples live together before they get married, there's actually a higher chance of them getting divorced than if they hadn't lived together, even though avoiding future divorce is one of the main reasons of living together in the first place. I wonder why that is. Probably because living together isn't really "real" - there's always the option to get out of the living arrangement by ending the relationship...so when they do get married, that mentality remains, and they make less effort to stay together if things do get rough....? I don't know.
I suppose marriage can be terribly disillusioning, if people think that romance and intimacy are the same things (they're not). Every aspect of your life is shared - or at least, it's harder to keep them secret. *Every* aspect - all your little weird quirks, bad habits, strange habits, rotten moods, illnesses, PMS, satanic rituals...well, maybe not that last one. Anyway. No one is ever the same in private as they are in public, and I suppose love is - amongst lots of other things - both the process of exposing both sides to your life partner, and accepting the same process from them...and still manage to keep the sex going :P
Someone once told me, from experience, that he gets so caught up in the logistics of married life (who buys the bread, who'll pick up the kids, where's the money going, who's making dinner etc.) that it becomes increasingly difficult to consciously remember the reason they got married in the first place - because they loved each other.
The point is that it's too much to expect that married life can be just as star-spangled and whirlwind as romance...although, hey, if you're married and that's how your life is, you have my 100% respect and 600% envy :) And divorce is so easy these days ("talak" x 3 - see previous post) that there's really so much less of an incentive to make the relationship work - so any little bump in the road becomes cause for quitting (cf. Jennifer Lopez/any other Hollywood star).
Anyway, I suppose this is just an attempt to dash all your romantic illusions on the cruel rocks of reality. Maybe I've even succeeded in making you start to fear marriage with a vengeance, in which case, I apologize for ruining your life :P After all, my parents are happily and comfortably married, and they've certainly had their spats (isn't that the silliest word? It sounds like something wet hitting the floor). And everyone needs their illusions dashed once in a while. I wanted to marry Chris Martin.
Die, Gwyneth.