The recent floods in marriages and remarriages amongst people of the 30-40 age group can border the astounding when I really put my mind to it. The stench of desperation in the air as people who are unsuited for each other marry in order not to be alone and spend their evenings and weekends under the influence of alcohol to make life less painful. Wouldn't that be more depressing then being alone? Couldn't there be something better then settling for less in order to have someone to bring to the mundane parties thrown by others who share the same, pathetic fate?
Perhaps the most interesting of these marriages are the women who define themselves by it. As if marriage validates the mistreatment of their husbands and the husbands that have come before them. I have found, that a great deal of the married women I know (with some exceptions) use married as an accomplishment. Which by definition is not. A great deal of unaccomplished, uninteresting and unintelligent women seem to think that marriage is their claim to fame. As if the marriage ceremony immediately gives license to their advice and unsolicited opinion, and makes it in anyway viable. A particular member of The View should be proof enough of that.
The truth to the matter is that marriage is a choice and it in no way adds to or depreciates the value of the individual in anyway. However, is it so sad if the title of "Wife" or "Husband" makes someone feel as if they are part of something important. A non-exclusive group of individuals that share similar stories and few changes among them. Bloody Mary, Cape Codder, and gin and tonic mark the times of day as they become the only welcome companion to the drudgery that is the married life. Is it still better than having a close knit group of friends you actually find interesting?
That may be the worst part of the pathetic scaredy marriages, is the way that friends are completely dropped. Why is that? I must admit I have a couple of married friends, very accomplished, incredibly interesting to whom I still speak to on a relatively frequent basis, where as the mundane nine to fivers somehow never have time to even return a phone call. Knowing a proud divorce' who has sworn off marriage forever after having been in one which was devoid of passion but financially convenient, I was told that they hate being around their single friends because the spouse gets jealous or they don't want to hear about life that exists outside the marriage. Depressing? I find it again, pathetic and a terrible and selfish excuse when not being a good friend.
In the end, friends are what is really important, because they love their friends for nothing more then their company, where as with spouses their is always sex and money and both lead to the most heinous of crimes and the worst of intentions. All this being nothing more than a reactionary rant prompted by watching a friend ruin his life in order to make someone Else's more comfortable. Someone who isn't at all worth it, and when he learns that lesson, it will alter the person he is forever. All this to not be alone. How can any word other than pathetic be used? Not to be mistaken for an insult, pathetic describes the reasoning for the union and the existing body of it while a piece of the soul decays with every passing year untill all that is left is a couple of ill company only interesting around their drunked kindred spirits couples who their their fate.
This is of course just an observation of a thirty something person who finds time around married couples suffocating and false. As mentioned earlier their are the obvious exceptions, but observation can be an extremely powerful tool.
