Page 64 - Advanced Romance

Advanced Romance* 61
The above four issues make looking at romantic love objectively nearly impossible. Yet the almost 50% divorce rate, the increasing rights of women, reliable birth control, and the relationship experiments begun in the 1960s have vastly changed the circumstances under which the issues are practiced. Bewildering new freedoms are available for romance, but we’re still getting most of our advice from traditional sources.
Before we proceed any further along these heretical lines, let’s get as straight as possible the fact that I’m not trying to discourage life-long mating. Again, if you fall in love for the first time in high school or college, and that love lasts till you die, you may have had the greatest relationship route that a person can have. So please don’t jump all over me saying I’m against it when I’m actually not.
I know it sounds like I doth protest too much.
And it’s true I’ve not had a life-long mate, though my current monogamous mating is ten plus years. Yet my parents were a splendid example of life-long mating, having a happy marriage for about 62 years. Most of my family are life-long maters. I’m impressed with all of their marriages and find them worthy of imitation. So, I don’t have a too jaundiced view of marriage from my family.
And though motivations in such cases are probably impossible to pin down, I don’t think my lack of life- long monogamy is mainly due to negative views of