I sit here wondering about relationship. I had thought about love in my last writing, now I think about caring and ego. I have watched as grown long married men and women have sat looking at each other without anything to say. I wonder what happens when the children have all left. What happens when previous lovers stop caring. We all know those first feelings of love or should I say lust. It feels as if one cannot live without the other. Any amount of time apart is too long. We look and act our best. We know eye contact. In fact we know many details of our beloved’s face. We envision our lives together and all of the magic that will happen. The fairytale says so. It tells of living happily ever after. Until one day, we stop looking, we become distracted, we become busy and we forget the color of our beloved’s eyes. We resort to drinking too much, watching too much tv or merely sitting on the couch picking lint from our navels. Sex? what is that. It becomes ok not to respond to text or to say goodbye or for that matter to hold our beloved in our arms for human contact. One day we wake up and ask how did we get here and what happened. We are surprised when someone else has recognized the color of our beloved’s eyes. All along we were just too busy.
I once asked an esthetician if men ever visited for facials or grooming. She tells me the only time they do is when they are separated or divorced. I wondered why? Are we too wrapped up in comfort and taking our beloved for granted to put our best foot forward? We are all too happy to be the lure for something or someone else but the one we have cared about the most is now something to be tolerated, something for our comfort. We merely have stopped caring or trying.
It has been said the divorce rate is approximately 50 percent. We come to the place where we say no more and we can no longer go forward. It leaves me and others to wonder if there is in fact an expiration date on marriage or if in fact marriage is something that has outlived its usefulness. Make no bones about it, for many to wake to the same face for 50 or more years especially with very little affection left is akin to a sentence in Alcatraz. You wake one day to a man or a woman 50 pounds heavier with hair peering out of every orifice and wonder what the hell and top that with one who is emotionally void and lacking in concern and what you have is a recipe for disaster. When we realize from day one we are not designed or cut out to be a husband or a wife or for some reason feel we have made a mistake the onus is on us and no one else to stand up to our reality and take Relationships are not for the faint of heart or the timid. They require care, time and committment. It ceases to be just about us and our needs. For once we have to sometimes hold the heart of the other and some are just not capable.
