I received some feedback on my Getting Married Again blog entry from Fiery Fiona in her Rebuttal. Apparently I’m not being realistic.
Is marriage as an institution realistic? With a divorce rate greater than 50%, it certainly begs the question. People live longer now. That means a lifetime of love and happiness may have to endure 60 years instead of 20. We don’t bear children to help us out with farm chores anymore. Instead, kids require 20 years of self-sacrifice, and are a money-pit that suck the life out of even the most decent marriages. And forget about “growing together over time.” In this era of instant gratification, sticking together through thick and thin is an ancient, lost art.
Despite all this, I have HOPE. Hope that in this great big world, I have a soulmate. Or maybe a few of them lurking in the shadowy corners of foreign countries…where I probably won’t find them.
Fiery Fiona pointed out that marriage can be like creating a fictional character (Lemony Snicket comes to mind, but he already exists) and then trying to fit our real marriage into them.
Instead of deluding ourselves that our prospects will fit our every need, I think we need to institute a pre-test. Agent calls this his standard screening process (SSP) for quality deal breakers (QDBs). Some qualifiers, like narcissists, control-freaks and high-maintenance mates need to be eliminated immediately.
Be warned! Some prospects get really good at faking on the qualifiers until you marry them...then they show you the real thing: beer-guzzling, football-watching, womanizing, lazy-a$$, court-hugging bamboozles!
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| A new direction |
Know the signs and act quickly! We’re getting older and don’t have as much time to waste...
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