A few words about modern marriage: some criticism on Adriana Cohen's article

With the approach of the next Forever Aloners' Day, which will take place tomorrow, it's truly time to write about such a thing as Love. I am not going to write a book with this name or even scare you by promising to do so. Just a couple words.
When ordering my weekly cappuccino at a coffee bar today, I also bought Boston Herald. And not by chance, just because I wanted to spend extra two bucks not knowing where to put them. The cover page grabbed my attention.

My favorite topic! Looks like today's issue has Valentine's special. While The Boston Globe had a cover story about a new old Mayor's table, how an antique or just significant Boston Mayor's table was discovered in somebody's garage and returned to Mayor's office. I quickly scanned the Globe and made sure that it had nothing else interesting. Herald had. I quickly paid for my purchase and rushed to read it immediately. Having no idea what Adriana means and actually who is she, I ran to the second floor balcony where some free tables were, immediately opened the paper on the needed page and drinking cappuccino with their wonderful unrepeatable French waffle, started reading:

What? My first reaction as soon as I recovered my brain from the shock caused by reading this was something between anger and anxiety. I, as a person who thinks, lives and does only traditionally, could not believe my eyes. My entire life I sacredly believed that even death could not do a part of once married couple. But instead tearing the paper apart and then jumping on it in my still wet and dirty from the snow boots, I started reading the article again from the beginning, trying to understand what the author means, and suggest you to do the same.

First of all, I hated that she evaluated such a terms as Love and Marriage as "little things". I should say, "little", huh! And secondly, how can you re-evaluate them? Love is love. Marriage is marriage. Can you name more important things in life and for life (I won't count air and water)? Marriage is armature of a family whether small or extended, without marriage even children are considered "out-of-law", basically illegal.

Traditionally, it is the main idea of marriage - to tie a knot, once and forever. Our present life contracts are life-long, so they are signed once, and until the death of one of the spouses it does not expire. I would suggest to enter a eternity-long contracts, which once signed can never be expired unless there is a divorce. While continuing to read the article, my anger grew. First of all, why those who are happily married must pay a tax? They should be paid a prize for keeping their marriage instead. Secondly, what does she mean by "lover"? Who does she thinks a lover is? What's in her opinion difference between a lover and, say, a friend? And the most horrible thing is how can she compare a lover, or even a friend, with a dentist, employer, hairstylist and landscaper? Can you treat your intimate personal secrets to those people? Can you live one life with a dentist, employer, hairstylist and landscaper? These are the questions I would like to ask Adriana Cohen, who is the author of this article, first of all.

But she is right in something. Firstly in the fact that roughly half of fairy-tale eternal and endless marriages end up in divorce. Sad but true. Secondly, she is right in stating that in traditional marriages people take each other for granted. She offers to re-evaluate this point, so when signing a decade contract, those who really love each other will value the spouse, treating wife or husband as a gift from destiny. I completely agree with Adriana at this point.

However, what she suggests is a new law according to which, couples are, I would say, "automatically divorced" after a decade of staying together, unless they won't prolong the contract. And that's her main mistake. Yes, some changes should be introduced in marriage law to make a special kind of partnership between man and woman stronger. But the contract must stay eternal because, I will repeat myself, it's the idea of marriage. The idea of dividing the history of relationship into decades is not bad at all, but it should be done in another way.

People think very critical, they can never find a "golden middle". Endless love can be easily turned into endless hate, same as the opposite. And the most disappointing thing is that it's not only about people's relationships, that's about almost everything. To oppose the common opinion, times are not changing. Divorces take place as they always did. There are more of them, but does it happen because of technology, because people don't take marriage as serious anymore as they did before, or because they are not afraid of some gods or deities as they were in old times? What do you think?