Chase on... Romance
My how the times have changed. If this were 1820 (and if gay marriage were legal), I would be married right now. Actually, I would have been married long ago, as would most of my friends. Think about it. Go to the library, or even your book shelf if you're like me, and pick out a Victorian Period novel, something by the Bronte sisters or Jane Austen especially. Don't bother reading the whole thing, just the last few chapters. Everyone gets married in the end. It's the happy ending of the novel. If a novel came out today with that ending, we'd be like what the hell?! Characters who hardly know each other get enaged after only a few weeks of being courted. Already today's world is radically different. We don't get courted. We get asked out on a date, sleep with them, and decide to try another. We date around a lot. Sometimes we marry a lot as well, but that's reserved for sultans and Elizabeth Taylor. The point is we take our time. We shop around, see what looks good, compare prices even, go for a test drive, and then keep the guy close around, wondering if we're going to have to trade him in for a better model. This is a drastic difference from the Victorian Period, and especially times before then. The only person who really shopped around back in the day was King Henry VIII, but let's face it, he was just rich and fickle. People back then pretty much met someone they got along with and went ahead and got married. Things moved quickly back then so that families could receive doweries, get their daughters out of the house, and the women were prepared for birthing not long after their own birth. Once a guy showed interest, the family had their daughter go ahead with the marriage. In Victorian novels this was called love. In Victorian novels the marriages always came in the end. There's a good reason they were at the end, and I've stumbled upon Austen's dirty little secret. When people get married without really knowing if they're with the best person, it doesn't always turn out so well. Divorces weren't heard of so much back then, so homelife could be a real mess after the wedding. The novels cut off at the marriage because any further into their lives and there wouldn't be a happy ending.