I often laugh at the people who, while holding hands and looking into each other’s eyes, say, “love is a full-time job, it takes work to succeed.”
That is patently ridiculous. Love should be effortless and if it isn’t, chances are the two people involved are incompatible. It doesn’t get any simpler than that. Love should be the one thing in your life that brings you uncompromising joy. Not joy tempered with periods of misery. If you fight with your sig other more than say, once per year, you’re kidding yourself into believing you’re compatible.
I can’t think of anyone who thinks that work is a good thing, so why do these people use work as an analogy for a relationship? Work is the complete opposite of FUN. Who wants to work at having fun? Isn’t that what love should be? Fun?
When I talk to friends and family who express concern over the fact that I am not married, I often point out to them that no marriage ever lasts forever. All marriages end eventually, the only question is whether it will end because you fuck up or because one, or both, of you dies. I’m not sure what your perspective is, but neither of those two options is all that appealing to me.
What is marriage anyway? Is it a legally binding contract between two parties to love, honor, and obey til death do you part? Is that really the romantic notion of love that you want to adhere to? To me, love is simply two people working toward a common goal. If that goal ceases to be important to both parties, then disolving the union is paramount to progress. When you’re married, that disolution can become quite expensive and downright painful. If you’re unmarried, you can shake hands, agree to disagree, and run into the waiting arms of the next victim in line.
Am I the only one who can see this?