A Perfect Storm on Marriage

Now the Internet is full of amazing articles but only occasionally do several of them come together in a perfect storm kind of way.

Reinventing Date Night for Long-Married Couples
ASK DR. HELEN: SINGLE MEN IN NEVER-NEVERLAND
Why Bother

The family unit has been under attack for a long time. You can create the heights happiness or misery in a family that is hard to reproduce outside of that basic social unit.

For dates, which we don't get enough of with our daughter around, I've never really liked movies since staring at the screen engenders little interaction. We are not learning about each other in any meaningful way. Too much of ours lives are spent in a boring grind and that is bad of all of us. I much prefer talking then anything else. I can barely stand going out to eat if the restaurant is so noisy you need to shout to be heard. Wandering around a mall is somewhat fun as we can discuss the relative merits of buying something.

I remember after our accident our doctor asking us about how our marriage is doing. He was worried because he saw a lot of divorces happen after the breadwinner was in a major accident. I once helped a guy who was recovering from a major stroke, so bad he was bedridden and had to be spoon-fed. His wife had left him almost immediately. It took him 15 years to be able to walk, talk and care for himself again. He may have forgiven her, but she was the one who ran away.

There is a lot of good going for marriage, but you have to realize it is a joint effort that can last a lot longer then just a few years here, it is not a zero-sum game. It seems for some people to be becoming some kind of competition, but the prize is not well defined.