Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage

People always fall in love with the most perfect aspects of each other’s personalities. Who wouldn’t? Anybody can love the most wonderful parts of another person. But that’s not the clever trick. The really clever trick is this: Can you accept the flaws? Can you look at your partner’s faults honestly and say, ‘I can work around that. I can make something out of that.’? Because the good stuff is always going to be there, and it’s always going to be pretty and sparkly, but the crap underneath can ruin you.”

In so doing, I have finally found my own little corner within matrimony’s long and curious history. So that is where I will park myself

Maybe the only difference between first marriage and second marriage is that the second time at least you know you are gambling.

Maybe divorce is the tax we collectively pay as a culture for daring to believe in love—or at least, for daring to link love to such a vital social contract as matrimony.

Sometimes life is too hard to be alone, and sometimes life is too good to be alone.

It doesn’t take a great genius to recognize that when you are pushed by circumstance to do the one thing you have always most specifically loathed and feared, this can be, at the very least, an interesting growth opportunity.

MARRIAGE IS A FRIENDSHIP RECOGNIZED BY THE POLICE.
—Robert Louis Stevenson

When you have only one path set before you, you can generally feel confident that it was the correct path to have taken

lant an expectation; reap a disappointment.

Never let it be said that you were not warned