Having serious neglected these blogs for a month, I am back on track with a question. Has marriage become a temporary condition? While California gays expending enormous effort to gain the right to be married, fighting for same sex marriage, I wonder if heterosexuals have lost the ability to understand the entire idea.
I know a young couple, married for five years. Two children - prekindergarten and toddler. An idyllic couple, really; so in love they couldn’t wait to marry. Husband has great job. Nice home. Family support and encouragement. social life. Education. They have it all.
One day, the wife decides she’s bored. She trolls Facebook for someone to relieve the boredom. Her family watches her accumulate male “friends” on the website. Her husband, secure in knowing he provides well, helps out with the kids, runs to the grocery store when required, and tells wife she’s pretty when he thinks of it, feels pretty secure. Life is good. He believes women and men can be friends without hanky panky and he trusts his wife. He sits on his couch, a lot, watching TV. He’s tired - 60 hour work week.
Later, after it all implodes, she will tell. him she made a conscious choice to hurt him. She never articulates why. Boredom?
So the wife hooks up with a boyfriend - a guy the husband befriended when they served together in Korea, and later, Iraq, bombs bursting in air. The scumbag came to visit the couple often. Lived off them for a time - he doesn’t choose to work. Bonded with the wife while the husband slept.
The couple went on a lovely vacation with the kids. NO, not the husband and wife. The wife and the boyfriend. they traveled three states, posted photos of the happy family entertaining the children. Lovely mountain venues. Stayed with the wife’s mom for a bit. And then the wife came home, packed up three small backpacks, and ran away with the kids to another state, where the scumbag resided in a rusty trailer. He’s unemployed, of course.
Refused to come home. Husband got a court order to bring home his biological son, the toddler. Wife said - ok, fine. I have one child and a boyfriend.
The marriage has now become a “case.” The children are confused, lonely and scared. They have each lost one parent, and each other. One has lost his friends, his home, his toys, his school, his clothes, too. the wife says - hey, he’ll adjust and get over it. I have my boyfriend. But no job, no money, no prospects, no place to live. She bunks in with whatever people will have her and a child for however long.
The husband and wife send unbelievably accusatory text messages to each other more often than hourly. They phone each other on prepaid cell phones and detail what action they each will take next to make the other feel like trash. They are out to annihilate each other and it’s working.
The kids? Adjusting to an extent. On the outside. They laugh sometimes. They play, and at least one of them gets plenty of hugs. No one knows where the other is, in what conditions, or with whom.
The husband and wife aren’t gay. they have always had the right to choose a partner, create a “relationship” and marry without giving any thought to the long term. When the wedding is over and the housework sets in, the job takes over, the kids get messy and cranky, the dog pukes, and the in-laws interfere, the husband and wife have the right to dissolve the marriage.
Gays, all over the country, are petitioning and fighting for the same right. Perhaps they will get what they want and maybe they will have the good sense to figure the marriages they may create in the future are worth fighting for, not fighting about. We heteros seem to have lost that perspective. It is so damned easy to get bored, resent housework, feel tired, and run away to something else. But what happens to the kids?
Nearly every U.S. state has boiled divorce down to irreconcilable differences. You don’t have to have a reason to break up. You don’t have to think about the pros and cons. Just sign the papers, pay the lawyer, and walk away. Most women never recover financially. Most children never recover emotionally. But hey, if you’re bored with housework, you gotta do something, right?
Take a moment to check out my guest post at HealMyPTSD.com for 
