Congratulations on Adjusting to Your Loveless Marriage!

As a young man you dreamed of your future wife. You always thought she’d be a beautiful, brilliant woman, capable and full of grace. You also believed she’d love you.

But like most people you mistook sex for love and shit kind of went wrong down the road. You ended up with an incredibly gorgeous girlfriend in college who studied particle physics and did ballet in her spare time. The two of you seemed to get along alright and when you were around one another you seemed to have fun and enjoy each other quite a bit.

So you did what normal people do: you waited five years then got married. You settled into a house and a pair of well-paying jobs that gave you money, although not too much money. You had problems. You had pets. You had bills. You shared pints of ice-cream and watched shitty movies and had sex three times a week, sometimes more, sometimes less.

You did all the things normal people did and something felt like it was missing. When your wife was gone you thought about her leaving you for other people. When you were away she thought the same about you. The two of you always considered the vast human sea of other possibilities, the possible “rights” that might’ve been out there had they only looked a little harder. But you both get on well enough with one another that you will never attempt to divide the love that you’ve found. Why shake your head at a good thing, after all?

You’re both suffering from the effects of being wrapped in a loveless marriage. It’s common, and many people can live with it for their entire lives with only the slightest pangs of loneliness appearing to make them feel sad about the shit they’re missing by never tasting the fruits of true love. You’re both content. But neither of you are really happy.

But today the two of you are going to be sitting, watching a romantic movie with John Cusack. There will be a moment where Cusack realizes something important about the woman he’s interested in, where he realizes she’s worth giving everything up for, and at this moment you’ll have your own realization: you could never do this.

Your heart simply isn’t big enough to abandon everything for the sake of love. So, with this realization, you’ll become spontaneously all right with your loveless marriage. Suddenly the burden of finding love will fall away from you.

Because if you found it you’d have to fight for it, and that’s really not worth it. And knowing that you don’t have what it takes to really earn love makes you feel okay about never experiencing it. Because if you never experience it you can never miss it. You can just hear people talk about it and never have it, even though it’s out there. Like ostrich meat. You’ve never eaten ostrich meat either.

Congratulations on Adjusting to Your Loveless Marriage!