Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage

by Heather Havrilesky

The assignment, after all, is to stay together until you die. Once one spouse perishes, the marriage has succeeded. Death signals victory. Only an optimistic fool would declare victory before reaching the finish line. That’s what makes weddings such dark comedies.

I want to witness how you speak to each other right after you discover that the car’s completely out of oil, or the roof is leaking, or his cousin, who’s staying upstairs, might not leave until next month.

But it can also be hard to resist holding the people you love at arm’s length. Sometimes you fear possibility itself: the possibility of growing into something more expansive and generous than you are now, growing into a shape that might look ugly from the outside but feels beautiful from the inside.