You have to figure that folks who get divorced are more likely to have had fantasies and unrealistic expectations about marriage. It's easy to understand why people who have a fantasy about what marriage is supposed to be, might have a problem with folks intruding on their fantasy and changing the nature of the object they have romanticized.
I think everyone I know who has stayed married for a very long time, as I have, knows that marriage is a contract first and foremost. It's a promise to be there, even when you might rather be playing, or doing something just for you. It's a promise to stay connected to the marriage, and to resist those little emotional flameouts that are lust, that some people mistake for "true love". It's a promise to build something solid between two (or more) people, in a world that is not solid. ANYONE can do this. Two women can do it, two men can do it, a whole commune could do it- of course the more people who get involved, the more variables you add, and the less stable it becomes. But fundamentally I think people ought to be encouraged to "marry" and promise to love, and support each other, and the more people who do it, and really mean it, the better- no matter what sex they are. |
