Infighting

ALL ACROSS AMERICA'S fruited plain, and all around god's green Earth, people are beating up on each other, domestic violence is, as we say, "spiking", by as much as thirty percent. My father, a wise man, always said that a husband should never play meed doubles with his wife. Maybe they shouldn't live with each other either. married couples, even the best of them, seem to be able to stand each other for no more than a few blessed hours per day. It turns out that bowling alleys, poker games, and girls nights out exist for a reason; domestic tranquility. All this hype about sheltering in place with family is much overrated, it seems. Modern marriage is a recent invention. We have grown to expect much too much of our spouses; business partner, best friend, soul mate, mate, all rolled into one. When one domino falls, they all fall. marriage serves a valuable function. It organizes society, protects women and children, and, to a degree, prevents men from behaving like wild animals. marriage is as sacred an institution upon which civilization has ever been built. but it isn't for everybody. Not everyone should get married. In teh United States, about ninety percent of the population gets married. About one half of all married people get divorced. In the U.S., about one half the people are married, one half are not, at any given time. The single life is greatly underrated. We need alternatives. arranged marriages, gay marriages, multiple interlocking marriages, monogamy, polygamy, marriages with a prearranged expiration date, marriage to inanimate objects, interspecies marriages; all should be available as alternatives. Despite religious conservative resistance to progress, social institutions, all of them, evolve, and it is pointless to resist evolution. When chief justice John Roberts cast the deciding vote legalizing gay marriage, conservatives were horrified, predictably, and were left in teh dust, choking on it. People used to ask my mother why her cute, handsome, brilliant, successful con was not married. her answer was always the same: because he's smart.