Can [this] marriage be saved?

[lolaraincoat]

I forget which women's magazine of my childhood, back in the early 1970s, used to run a monthly column titled "Can This Marriage be Saved?" but I remember reading it while my mother did the grocery shopping, and I remember that the answer was always yes! it can be saved! with just a little more feminine self-abnegation! etc. Even as a cranky

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[goseaward]

Someone else (catrinella?) also made the point that this figure includes women in prison--a number which has, also, certainly gone up from 1950. Still interesting, though.

My parents apparently used to worry/wonder when I was younger because I'd cheerfully chatter about my future house and my future job and my future children with no words about my future husband...:D

But, yeah. The more weddings I go to the more I feel marriage is just...weird. I mean, I know weddings ≠ marriage, but the whole thing seems to be a collection of behaviors which have no meaning now other than "everybody else does it," and that just doesn't bode well for the institution as a whole for me.

[goseaward]

Also, dude, seriously, I forgot the main part of my comment, which was: just a few weeks ago at the gyno's office I read a women's magazine with the "Can This Marriage Be Saved?" column. No shit.

and that reminds me of a true-life story that really happened to me

[lolaraincoat]

Years ago when we were first dating and both living in a very small town, Fishwhistle took me to an appointment in a nearby city for an outpatient gyn procedure. While waiting for me, he picked up a copy of Cosmo in which he encountered an article titled, no kidding, "Set His Thighs on Fire! Here's How!"

He still asks me about it once in a while -- "Lola," he says, shyly, "you wouldn't ever set my thighs on fire, would you?"

"Not even if you asked me to," I assure him. "It's probably not even legal here."

And the moral of the story is, magazines can ruin your relationship.

[lolaraincoat]

I started boycotting weddings, except for immediate kin, about ten years ago. (I'd skip family weddings too if it weren't that I am STILL getting scolded about the step-sib's wedding I missed in 1989.) I love my friends, who mostly seem to have chosen to share their lives with delightful people, and I'm glad they're happy, and I support them in their struggle to wear unbecoming outfits and be given small appliances, and I agree that ritual is meaningful and important to the people to whom it is meaningful and important, but I don't need to go to any more weddings, thanks.