The message is always there, although it gets worse over the holidays: when you meet a woman and feel intense attraction, it will last FOREVER.
If it doesn’t, either you’re a failure OR she misrepresented herself and fooled you. Therefore she must pay.
What a crappy message. Sure, it lines the pockets of jewelry stores, wedding planners, bridal shops, the state, private investigators, divorce attorneys, and everyone else who makes their living from the Marriage-Divorce Financial Complex.
However, it has absolutely nothing to do with reality, no matter how much we might wish it to. And while the Marriage-Divorce Financial Complex is all too real, in the end, it is YOUR choice whether to participate in it or not. I have no issue with exchanging goods or services if someone wants to buy or someone wants to sell, but along with that comes the personal responsibility of being an informed consumer.
The reality is this: intense attraction fades over time, and the blindness that comes with it wears off. It is a scientific fact that this initial attraction is completely gone after three years, and it doesn’t come back. People who make legal relationship decisions based purely on this feeling AND the constant bombardment of messages claiming it will last forever inadvertently find themselves sucked into the Marriage-Divorce Financial complex, set up to feed that beast by assigning blame to the other party.
However, when you recognize the reality that attraction does, indeed, fade over time, you prepare yourself for it AND you can make better relationship decisions. I have no issue with marriage at all, but I do have a huge issue with the way people make decisions to get into it, and how it’s sold.
Very few people make it to “death do us part.” Most, at some point, break up, get divorced, or simply grow apart into roommates who tolerate each other while remembering there used to be an attraction there. If you recognize this decidedly unromantic reality, you can make very good relationship decisions, and decide whether or not marriage is for you.
People whose marriages tend to last take reality into the situation—whether they have like minded goals, sex drive, ways to handle conflict, negotiation, etc. In other words, they have business skills applied to what is a business environment, and those skills can make the “business” (marriage) last. But even then, it might not last forever, and when you realize this is simply a human condition, you can end the agreement with no malice and move on.
When you get the idea of “forever” out of your mind, and concentrate on the present and near future, your experiences with women change. When a relationship “ends,” you don’t take it personally, which sets you up for the next one. And when you realize attraction fades but can be replaced with a good working relationship and fondness for each other, you give yourself to approximate forever, just not in the way you thought.
Never get into a relationship based on the expectation of forever. It’s a good way to quickly destroy one. Get into one based on reality, and strangely, you might find you last a hell of a lot longer than all those wide eyed fools wondering why their forevers have a definite expiration date.
