Solo

At work, I'm witnessing the fallout of two marriages. Two couples making each other unbelievably miserable over half a lifetime. I walk out of there feeling lucky and on the right path. Maybe there isn't that much to cheer about, but there isn't that much to suffer either. Whatever madness, ugliness, cruelty or passive aggression I deal with is mine and my own damn fault. 

The Doc is also single. We talk for a couple of minutes about marriage, divorce, the single life. He's a few years out ahead of me and has been single for several years longer than I. The divorce was brutal - we agree on that - painful, soul crushing, and very difficult to recover from. Marriage - with children - made sense though. He says he's happy being single now. Marrying again, especially the contractual part of it, is about as attractive as polio.

He's old school, but he acknowledged that marriage seems to be becoming obsolete. People aren't having children as much;  it's become possible and easy to connect with people all over the world; women are increasingly economically independent. There's no reason to marry. 

Part of me wanted to argue against that idea. There's love, I wanted to say. A free choice. That place you've made with another person that feels like home. The place you want to be more than any other place.

I have relative peace, but I don't have that.