I’d differentiate between the first and second cases myself there though. Whilst children might not like their parents having massive screaming matches or fist fights in the kitchen every other night I believe they’re rather more capable of putting up with them being quietly miserable than you think. I remember my parents marriage going through bad patches when I was small involving occasional loud arguments, slamming doors and crying jags and I still remember desperately wanting them to stay together, unhappy or not. You really don’t like the uncertainties involved in divorce at that age and just don’t want to deal with them at all.

The thing about the kids: have you compared those kids to miserably unhappy marriages where people stay together? Believe me, there’s a lot of screwed-up kids in those marriages, too.

My point is that, in a really bad marriage (not just a sorta bad one where people are bored, or all their needs aren’t perfectly met, or that sort of thing) children suffer no matter what you do, and they do not necessarily suffer any less in a really bad marriage that stays intact.

Please see this.

Oh my.

I can understand disgust at “lavish halo-polishing” certainly. But isn’t it simply another of the sins you are thankful for because sin makes life interesting?

By the time I was 12, I knew my father was serially unfaithful to my mother. They didn’t divorce until I was almost 30. My Mom filed, my Dad fought it.

About 5 years after they divorced, I finally realized they were still in love with each other.

My mother got her wish though. Dad learned his lesson and I know he has not strayed from his last two wives (he outlived one, still married to the second) and I doubt that he strayed from the ‘mistress’ he married soon after Mom divorced him.

And that was her wish – that they should marry and make each other miserable.

What I learned is that loyalty and fidelity are not synonymous and that love is not enough to sustain marriage. Of the three, I’ve begun to think loyalty is the most important.

Wonder if that’s the same “Shouting Thomas” from the blog that used to be called Roissy in DC? Certainly has the same arrogant attitude.

And of course Tatyana, with her fathers mean nothing bullcrap, and her curious indulgence of the most inane impulses. Honestly, if this woman was grown up, she’d have never chosen to marry this “boring” or whatever he was man in the first place. And if she did, and had some kids with him, she’d have been better to be a responsible mother and work to keep the family together.

Oh well, we reap what we sow. This is what society has done to marriage. Gay marriage will merely complete the process.

I don’t have an attitude. I don’t have a political mission. I’m not interested in overmining or undermining the western world. I don’t represent some mode of thought.

Now, you may think the world would be boring if people honored their wedding vows and cared about their children. I expect you won’t find it so exciting and interesting when some woman dumps you.

None of this is up to me. Women dump boring men. I’m not boring.

I was speaking reality, with which you seem unacquainted. Life is not really about themes in magazines, TV and weblogs.

Nobody’s halo-preening. We’re condemning bad behavior. Who the fuck are we to disapprove? We’re human beings, most of us are married, many of us have children.

It’s your attitude, in which distinguishing good from bad is somehow the sin, that has undermined societies throughout the western world.

Now, you may think the world would be boring if people honored their wedding vows and cared about their children. I expect you won’t find it so exciting and interesting when some woman dumps you.