[hoosiermama]

Coud it be the "scripts" are so similar because there are only so many ways one can break this kind of news to another?

The script seems to be worded in such a way that relfects the following: guilt, confusion, wanting to let someone down easy, justification, etc, but the bottom line to what they're saying is, as my wife so bluntly put it: "I don't want to be married to you anymore".

I don't think so, TT, because the "script" is followed -- with only a VERY few variations -- at every step along the way, not just at the "bomb." I have my own theories on this, mostly spiritual in nature, that would be better discussed on another thread, but I think Hoozh's suggestion is a fascinating one: the gubmint oughta do a study!! God knows it could help more people than the myriad of "Dating Habits of Two-Horned Frogs" and such that we fund now!

Puppy

oooh--lemme just clarify here. we don't want the gubmint "doing" the study--just paying for it!! lol!


but pup's point is a good one--the "script" is not just a one-scene performance, but often a multiple-act play, often with a scripted prologue. and it keeps going on...my own Niebelungen epic has stayed true to script lo these two-and-a-half years, and with very few exceptions, each dialogue is absolutely predictable. and probably several other old-timers have experienced the same. I'm actually not so much in favor of a study as its (hoped) result--acknowledgment that "serial monogamy" is not a self-actualizing phenomenon, but rather a very destructive influence on the stability of society (e.g. rates of children subsequently raised in near-poverty). and it needs not "acceptance" and brief, temporary hand-patting for the left-behind family, but rather some form of "treatment." of course it will be argued that the treatment would be involuntary and therefore unethical...but so is treatment of pedophiles, paranoid schizophrenics, and others whose behavior causes permanent damage to its victims. extreme view? of course. but sometimes that's what it takes to get that pendulum to swing back towards the middle.