Marriage - Overated? Milestone? Luxury?

[Uchiha Barles]

You know, that's exactly my point. When you say "you treat a girlfriend differently than you treat a wife", I'm saying you don't marry a girl you're not already treating like a wife. And mind you, how one treats a wife is subject to a great deal of variability (same thing with how a wife treats a husband). Not all women try to "suffocate" their husbands with their constant presence, and not all men require their wives be home, waiting on their arrival. I know you understand this, but the extent to which this is true might surprise you.

I actually a know a few couples who got married, and still do the hanging out thing. I get to see either of the members chilling at a bar we frequent and often times the partners aren't there. For one of the couples, that changed ONLY when they had a kid. If you're going to raise a family, then it's kind of necessary that things begin to change. Now of course, these are young couples who've been married for just a few years, but I haven't noticed any change whatsoever in their social lives, except for the couple that had the baby. They don't complain about each other either.

I know I'm not part of the marriage, so I'm not privy to what happens between the couples when I'm not around, but if they seem happy with each when they're hanging out together, and happy with themselves when their hanging out apart, that's about as good an indication as you can get without being their therapist.

Oh, forgot to mention something about those quirky traits that tend to magically appear in your partner after marriage. Well, I'll amend something I said earlier: only a marry a girl you're already treating like a wife, and who's already treating you like a husband, assuming you like how she's treating you. I don't know about the quirky traits that may or may not have revealed themselves in the couples I mentioned, but I for one will NOT marry a girl who I believe is remaining too guarded to be herself around me. No one's perfect, everyone annoys me to some extent. If my girl doesn't annoy me, she's perfect, and thus she's lying.