From the time that boys and girls are able to understand that they are different genders, they think about partnering up with the opposite sex. Elementary school girls play the game where they use some arbitrary counting method paired with letters to figure out which boys they will marry later in life. “I counted to five! That’s an E! I must be marrying Eric when I grow up!”
We all know this is bullshit. The chances of a girl marrying someone they went to elementary school with is what, one in a million? Please.
So why is this marriage mentality so ingrained in our children, and in society? Why do we urge people to sell their options down the river in favor of putting all their eggs in one basket, so to speak?
One answer: fear.
People are afraid they will live and die alone. Never mind all the family, friends, and significant others we encounter along the way. People think they need to find “the one” who is the other half to their whole – someone to complete them. Someone who will finish their sentences when they are 80 years old. Someone who won’t care when the breasts start to sag, or the age spots sprout up, or the gray ear hair peeks out of an obscenely overgrown ear. Someone who won’t care that the nice ass her husband used to have turns in to a saggy pile of flesh. Someone who will pretend to not notice the stretch marks blooming from stomach skin.
Here’s the deal: we notice. All of the creeping symptoms of age appear in the mirror every day, so even when your husband lies to you and tells you your body is just as hot now as it was 20 years ago, he’s lying.
Is this the future we are trying to sell to people? Settling?
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