Hit Submit
Grr. I had a whole entry typed up and ready to dazzle and then instead of hitting "submit" I hit something else and lost it. The entry that is. Then I lost it. My mind, this time.
Anyway, it was about marriage and how the divorce rate is already 50% and how we - as in, society - are having a hard time coping with that high rate of divorce and yet if what I predict comes true, soon we'll have a divorce rate as high as 75% with which we'll have an even harder time coping.
In a nutshell, my reasoning for this higher and higher divorce rate is that women no longer want to be wives. Not for any length of time, anyway.
I said a lot more stuff, but I guess that pretty much crystallizes it down to its essence.
The wife is a creature of days gone by, I'm afraid. No longer will she be there, sacrificing herself for her family. She's gone the way of the dodo bird and soon the panda. The whales, the elephants, the polar bears - maybe even the seals.
I'll miss the animals. At least, I'll miss knowing they were there. Somewhere. Living their lives. Surviving against all human odds.
The wife? Not so much. Or not at all even. But then, I was never going to get one, anyway. I'd have to be one, have been one, and never want to be one again. Living your life for someone else, whether he's your husband or your child (and sometimes...), is bullshit. The fact that I can say "bullshit" and not be beaten with a stick no thicker than my husband's thumb proves it.
The wife is dead, to walk among us no more. Only the retro wannabes will call themselves "wife" now. There's no such thing anymore. Alas, with women now able to live independently of men, to raise children independently of men, marriage is pretty much just an affectation and the wife nothing more than a kitschy bauble.
That was pretty much it. I had a lot of bombast and carry on, a few anecdotes, a broad smear of men d'un certain age (but not race or creed - this time). But it seems redundant now and I'm happy to distill the piece down to a Eulogy for the Wife.
Yeah. So instead of hitting "submit" I hit something else and my entry disappeared altogether into the ether. Now that's something that wouldn't have happened if the wife was still around, eh? Back in the day when there were wives, we didn't have entries disappear into the ether. They stayed right where they were, in front of us on our desks. My goodness what a difference technology makes in our lives. I damn near thought my head was going to explode. Then I thought, "What the hell am I freaking out for? It's a blog entry! If I can't remember the gist of it - and it's not like I'm losing money not producing it - then it couldn't have been much worth sending out to thousands of faithful readers, now - could it?!"
Anyway, that was pretty much it - the thing about nobody wanting to be the wife anymore because times have changed to such an extent that she's really just hopelessly out of date. Like a typewriter. Just... you know... I guess we'll all have to get used to losing the odd entry without her... or something...
But I'm right, aren't I. Look around. See those teenaged girls over there? You think they're going to live their lives for their husbands? Do you think they're going to be wives for longer than a two week honeymoon in the Dominican Republic?
No. Not even for as long as it lasts. They'll be wanting to stay up and have fun and he'll want to go to bed and have sex. And unfortunately, she didn't marry him for sex and he didn't marry her for fun. Or the other way around. I'm never sure about that one. But they'll get married in spite of themselves because marriage is like death and taxes in this society. Hey - and it ends in death and taxes, too.
Unless... Unless... Unless the reason why marriages have been failing at an ever increasing rate is BECAUSE of the wife! Hey! Maybe that's it! Maybe marriages have been failing because as soon as women didn't have to be the wife (i.e. financial independence outside of marriage) they didn't WANT to be the wife - they wanted to be a woman.
BUT, if women go into a marriage NOT being the wife, they may not want out of it! At least, not so badly that the divorce rate is a consistent 50% and rising.
Maybe, without the wife, marriage stands a fighting chance! And now, maybe, just maybe, if people were to be pronounced "Partners" instead of "Husband and Wife", it might last longer!
Hey - and maybe, if that "until death do us part" were to be switched to "until one of us no longer wants to be a Partner" - marriage could be like the bees knees because people wouldn't have that pressure hanging over their heads that they HAVE to stay together and so they would actually WANT to stay together!
Otherwise, I really think we're going to have to get used to ever increasing rates of divorce, I really do. And 75% might be low-balling it.
