fuck you.
yeah that's right, you.
fuck you, 1970's mad men, who got bored at home and left your wives for the secretary.
fuck you, next generation of divorcees, because your statistic is that once your kids went off to college you and your spouse looked at each other, realized you had little in common and went your separate ways.
and fuck you, you single mid lifers, because your generation couldn't even wait till your kids went off to college. most of you bailed before your second kid even hit their teens.
and fuck you to me! that's right... my own generation. we are the ones who simply "married the wrong person" because what other excuse would we use? we are the generation of the "starter marriage" oh how chic! yet we dont know how to take blame for any part of it, and how could we given how confused we are by the examples we've witnessed over the last 40 years of marital mess?
and can someone explain to me the surge in "grey divorce"? have we really gotten to a point where nursing home residents turn to each other and say "my last 5 years will be so much better without you" and "I'm going to go bunk with Mildred down the hall"?
are we living too long to stay committed to one person? i mean we're living longer, but divorcing younger, so what gives?
can we blame it on this snap-decision information age that values self discovery over self discipline? is being true to ourselves over being true to someone else making us any happier?
are we becoming habitual loners? no longer equip to handle caring for anyone other than ourselves when push comes to shove? in that case can we blame the recession? the pressure cracked your commitment in half, didn't it?
fuck divorcees... lets call out the permanent bachelors/ettes for a moment. you say you're looking for the one but you sure don't act like it. most of you are doomed by the fact that your parents did stay together. you're all so scared off by the increased divorce rate that you barely dip your toe in the romance pool for fear of drowning.
but really there has to be a happy medium somewhere. maybe it is being single until you're in your 40's, or maybe its a healthier mutually satisfying exit strategy. maybe its a matter of accepting that we live long enough to be married 2 or 3 times.
or maybe marriage isn't the answer at all anymore. after all monogamy and commitment only seem to exist in small towns and fairy tales at this point.
but maybe it was easier to stay committed when our life expectancy was only 65? in that model you were married by 20, kids at 23, empty nest by 45, retired by 60 and spent the last few unencumbered years looking into each others eyes, watching tv, going on trips, visiting the grand kids, reminiscing about the good old days and giving your children relationship advice through tales of how bad it was for you when...
see those days are mostly gone, are they not? and is there a future generation that's going to rediscover how to stay committed to one person for a lifetime? given we now live to about 100.
or are we going to opt for the road my divorced mid-lifer friends are taking? the "i don't want to remarry but i want my forever relationship/life-long partner" route. those so scarred by divorce that they never want to tie the knot again, ever.
all i can say is that its terrifying to think that i myself and all the generations to come are doomed to walk this earth as lifetime singletons with semi permanent relationships every decade or so. breaking things up with starter marriages, marriages for the purpose of having/raising kids, and the end of life partners who keep us company...it all seems so shallow and self serving.
the weird truth is that in between these relationships is the healing/recovery/alone time which probably equals to the years it would take to suffer through the issues and changes one would have being committed to one partner anyway.
so in the end, are we really better off?