Stories like this make me realize my decision to file for divorce at 14 years of marriage was the right choice. I’m happy someone has a wonderful and happy marriage, I really wished mine was like this. Maybe someday.
Considering a 50% divorce rate and an unknown % of people remaining because they feel stuck, (i’d guestimate another 25% at least) the modern, societal imposition of a happy lifelong partnership feels like a manufactured ideal to prop up the marriage industry.
“What you call love was invented by guys like me to sell nylons” was not far off the mark for a tv show.
Divorce rate spiked in the US when no-fault divorce was finally introduced, and that is when that idea of “50% of marriages end in divorce” popped up. According to these stats it’s been roughly a third for the past 20 years. So about 66% of marriages go the distance in the US.
When I was younger, I worked with a guy named Gene. I’d hear him on the phone with his wife, so happy, so loving and I asked him about her and he said, he’d been in a bad marriage, gotten divorced, and was in a good marriage with a great woman and every single day he realized what he had now and was grateful for it.
Also at the same job a woman named Delena, she had come out of an abusive marriage and had a great boyfriend, she told me sex was better for women when they are older, and she was really happy too.
I think about them both now I am in my first marriage but second long term relationship (last one my ex got unemployed, got radicalized on the Internet and eventually got physically abusive, it started good, 15 good years 5 bad ones). I am happy every day now like Gene and Delena were. I wish this for you and also want to tell you old people make better decisions with relationships, you have a better chance now.
BTW, Delena was also right about sex. It’s better when older.
