The trouble with marriage
Marriage: the new blue-light case of the week. Everyone is terribly worried about its condition: can it be cured? Or, has the time arrived for drastic measures - just putting it out of its misery?
Euthanasia is a dirty word but, frankly, the prognosis is not so great for this particular patient, a stalwart social institution is now scabby and infirm, gasping for each tortured breath.
Many who had once so optimistically pledged to uphold its vows are fleeing its purported satisfactions.
In the US, a well-publicised 50 per cent failure rate hardly makes for optimism. Certainly there are happy marriages - no one disputes that - and all those who are happily married can stop reading here.
And there is always serial monogamy for those who can't face up to the bad news - yes, keep on trying until you get it right, because the problem couldn't be the institution itself or its impossible expectations.
For these optimists the problem is that they have somehow either failed to find the "right person" or have been remiss in some other respect.
If only they'd put those socks in the laundry basket instead of leaving them on the floor, everything would have worked out. If only they'd cooked more (or less) often. If only they'd been more this, less that, it would have been fine.
And what of the growing segment of the population to whom the term "happily married" does not precisely apply, yet who nonetheless valiantly struggle to uphold the tenets of the marital enterprise, mostly because there seems to be no viable option?
Rest of Article
Euthanasia is a dirty word but, frankly, the prognosis is not so great for this particular patient, a stalwart social institution is now scabby and infirm, gasping for each tortured breath.
Many who had once so optimistically pledged to uphold its vows are fleeing its purported satisfactions.
In the US, a well-publicised 50 per cent failure rate hardly makes for optimism. Certainly there are happy marriages - no one disputes that - and all those who are happily married can stop reading here.
And there is always serial monogamy for those who can't face up to the bad news - yes, keep on trying until you get it right, because the problem couldn't be the institution itself or its impossible expectations.
For these optimists the problem is that they have somehow either failed to find the "right person" or have been remiss in some other respect.
If only they'd put those socks in the laundry basket instead of leaving them on the floor, everything would have worked out. If only they'd cooked more (or less) often. If only they'd been more this, less that, it would have been fine.
And what of the growing segment of the population to whom the term "happily married" does not precisely apply, yet who nonetheless valiantly struggle to uphold the tenets of the marital enterprise, mostly because there seems to be no viable option?
Rest of Article
posted by Taxi Mark at 12:35 AM
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