Before I get started, let me clear up a few things. I love my wife. We have been married for 3 years and we went out for 7 years before that. She is 28 years old, stunningly beautiful (really), comes from a wealthy family, has a great job where she travels the world, and is a great cook. I really like her.
However, I have found that I don’t really LIKE being married. It is Ok and rather mundane but a lot of the time I feel that I am just going along with an institution that society has created to crush the life out of men (and women too for all I know). I don’t really care for the family obligations every holiday (my family lives 1800+ miles away) and hers live in the same city as we do. I also don’t care for the constant togetherness. By constant, I mean being together most every day. It is not like we work together or anything. I am usually glad when she has to work late so that I can get some time home alone to myself. I also don’t really like having to take my wife into account for every nit picking decision that I have to make. If I want to by something for the house, I just want to be able to do it, rather than debate on whether it will fit in with the decor and then “compromise” on something that is not really what either of us wants. I could go on but I think you get the gist of it. I don’t think marriage is bad but I wife that I could magically turn it off a lot of the time. I don’t want a divorce because I am sure it would be much the same way if I found someone else and I do want kids in the near future.
The problem is that I think a lot of people (especially men) are in this same boat. TV shows make jokes to this effect much of the time. Do other people feel that most other married people slowly get smothered by the sheer mundaneness of the institution and the impossibility of the situation. If so, is there anything that can be done to help us lead the life of ecstacy portrayed in romance novels.