And I Wore It Out
You know your girl was unhappy about her tennis right? Well there’s nothing like a little failure to spur me forward. Went out there like a champ today. I didn’t even get tired. ROLLIN!!!!!!!!!
Can you believe Al Gore is getting divorced? I am not going to belabor it but I think it gives us an opportunity to think. Getting divorced is usually difficult enough without the whole world talking about it. So I will not speculate about them but I will take a moment to muse about what that unexpected piece of news brings to mind.
1. Like Duchess said: you never know what is going on in someone else’s house.
2. You can never take your marriage for granted.
3. There is such thing as a good miss. Stick with me on this one. Divorce is not always a bad thing. Yes, we did not make it to our goal: till death do us part. Yes, there is a sense of loss . . . usually. But when the marriage has been oppressive, divorce can be wonderful. (A friend of mine told me that when I expressed my sympathies upon her divorce. She said it was the best thing she ever did.)
4. Sometimes married couples do grow apart especially when they are both active and involved all over. No blame. Just happened. Could the marriage have been saved had they addressed it earlier? Maybe. (That’s the lesson I am taking away from this. I plan to step up my game with E.) But who knows?
5. We all have to take a good look at what marriage has become under the current socio-economic climate. We are living far longer with far more leisure time and different types of stress than we did even a hundred years ago.
Staying together is not as much a socio-economic necessity as it was hundreds of years ago when we were just surviving. It’s a new playing field, with new stressors and problems. When you had to have each other to survive and all you were worrying about was eating and staying alive it is one thing. . . Now we’ve got options. When life spans averaged 45 years not so long ago, until death do you part was easier to get to. Now we got time to sit down and look at one another for decades. Puts a whole new spin on things.
Anyway, just my rambling thoughts for the day.
On a personal note (and you know who you are): You can’t pick your blood relatives. But when they become injurious to you, you can decide to stop the bleeding. “Why would they treat me this way? is not a useful question after a while. What do I do to alter my relationship with them in terms of time and interaction that will make me feel better? is. Work that like a job. Duchess and I were talking just the other day about change. She said she could not change my father but that she could always see what wasn’t working with him and then tried something new. And she kept doing it until she hit on something that worked. She then said (metaphorically speaking, of course) “Once I figure out what kind of crazy you are I can beat you to death with it.”
For what it’s worth.
This is me in my victorious tennis pose:
