HI SD...great post...and great to see you again.

If you step back, the ring...the wedding license...is a legal contract. We stand before friends, family and G-d and we promise a whole heckuva lot to another person.

Contracts DO get broken. People DO change. Perhaps, it is the way we go around doing things.

As per SD, there is no doubt that from childhood onward, marriage is portrayed as something it isn't. Cinderella, studly princes that kiss women that have been sleeping for a hundred years (what kinda morning breath is that?), and they all live happily every after. We are saturated with a picture of handsome men and drop dead women tending to each others needs and dying holding each other in their matrimonial bed.

Huh?

Men are taught that boy meets girl....girl meets someone else....boy fights back and in the end, he always wins. Good, cocky and funny defeat evil and we run off with the hot babe in the end.

Huh?

The author I talked about above discusses how marriage...for women...is the wedding. They meet a man....attraction...sex....and then they pursue the commitment. It doesn't take long for them to see after a bit that marriage, in many cases, works out better for the man. Disillusionment sets in. Attraction fails. Sexual desire is lost.

Women have fought hard enough over decades to get to where they now...for the most part....they can out compete men without difficulty. In my own sphere, medicine, the majority of applicants are now women. We spend hours at the workplace and spend more time with others than our spouses.

Will classes truly help?

Don't we all say here that marriage is a choice? Perhaps there is a new bird out there. Let's call it serial monogamy. Fall in love with someone. Stay with them. When it gets boring, dump them and go for the next.

Is excitement and novelty superior to longterm commitment and familiarity?

Is a 'rock my world' orgasm that is more exciting because it is novel...worth changing up your partner for every few years? Is life meant for living and fun?

Who is right....us or them? Are we...the LBS'ers...right? Is forcing someone to stay in a stale M or loveless M...right? If they are truly unhappy....why should they stay with us? Do we have the right to rationalize away their behavior if ours was not Prince Charming-like or Helen of Troy-ish?

FIB (PS..the views and questions posed are not necessarily those of the poster)


Me 55; XW 47; 2 kids (S13, D11)
Bomb 05/19/06 Original thread http://tinyurl.com/yg2ou2t
Last anniversary 04/25/10, Divorced 5/12/10
Status: Loving father of 2 beautiful children;