It’s hilarious, and in spite of its title it’s not really _against_ love, it simply is a, well, yes a polemic concerning the various ways society has fucked people up when it comes to love, loving, and so forth.

Also Sal shared a link over on FB that is intended to support the notion of gay marriage but which also speaks to any other non-traditional marriage: Traditional Marriage Perverts Tradition

It’s a blog entry, but the writer has some historical background provided in there along with his opinion

Gotta get busy. Getting deskbutt, here.

Time wears on relationships. Little hurts tear things down unless we’re alert to them and mend them. Things left unsaid, or actions done in the interests of someone else but which run counter to one’s own wants/needs/likes/whatever also serve to build up little resentments. And, as Professor Dick notes, people do change.

TUFKAS’s adaptation to my changes was to take himself out of what he saw as an untenable situation: he could not be married to someone if he could not have all of their <em>eros</em> devotion. He was more than willing to share the other types of love.

Other people adapt in other ways to changes. I know one couple where he cheated. She looked and continues to look the other way. Somehow it works. She has overcome her feelings of rejection. He comes home to her, stays by her side when she needs him most, etc. His lover(s) cannot say the same. I know another couple where he lives in ever-lovin’ mortal fear the missus will find out and will dump his ass. She knows quite well he’s cheating, and she tolerates it because she can hold it over his head in this way. She pretends she knows nothing about it. Still another where they divorced, then moved back in together each one dating others and one another. Happier that they don’t have the “rules” of marriage, happy that they can enjoy one another’s lives.

There are other “adjustments” people make, not all of them nice.

There are a couple of different dynamics. On the one hand, a couple could still love one another but not like each other very much. In spite of the love, they probably will drive each other crazy and end their relationship.

OTOH, It sounds as if Don and Mrs. Don like each other but have lost that lovin’ feeling. This may be more fixable since I reckon love can grow out of like far more easily than hot weasel love can spawn like.

Don: “When (or if) I move along, it will only be because I am shifting the ground rules a little bit.”

A little bit?

People do change. Call it shifting the ground rules or learning new tricks or growing apart, it is part of life. A relationship, like any other Darwinian being, adapts or dies.

Relationships succeed because the people in them do like each other.

That’s so simple it sounds flippant and yet it is also true. Or at least, after a shave with Occam’s Razor, a relationship’s inflexion point can be so described.

I’ve blogged and commented about the shifting dynamics in my long marriage. One of the factors that draws the process out so long is the fact my wife and I sincerely like each other. When (or if) I move along, it will only be because I am shifting the ground rules a little bit (have been for years and it was not conscious for many of them but now my eyes are fairly open) and after much open discussion she has determined she cannot align. That’s fair, nor will I say it’s just her choice because that wouldn’t be fair. But still we like each other, and it may be that the extant and ways in which we do NOT (and there’s also much not to like sometimes) will end up the remaining elephant in the kitchen that needs airing out. (Kitchen elephants are stinky.)

Or maybe that won’t matter. Eh, prolly not. When it’s time, it’s time.