Perhaps coincidentally, I saw a comic on TV this past weekend. I didn't catch the beginning of the show, so I don't know who it was. However, he had a really good routine on marriage. The gist of it was thus...

People expect you to be excited about an upcoming marriage, yours or your buddies. Congratulations are made all around. But buddies complained that he didn't seem all that thrilled about it. In fact, he wasn't married himself, had no immediate prospects, and seemed not to be moving in that direction. His response was that it just didn't seem all that exciting, given a recent statistic showing the 54% of marriages end in divorce.

"Let's take the romance and love out of it and just use reason" he said.

Let's say you're standing at the side of the road.
Let's say people are moving out into the road, walking to the other side.
Let's say 54% of them don't make it.
How keen would you be to try it? I mean, really now?

"No, you go ahead, man, I'll just watch."

Now, that was funny. It must have been. Lots of people laughed - and it looked like it was an audience, not a laugh track. But, humour aside, you can't take romance and love out of it. If the right person is there, you can't help it. And even a 54% failure rate can't stand in your way. Traffic analagy aside, most bad marriages don't actually kill you. (Some do, but that's a completely different topic.) And even if failure is inevitable, some good usually comes out of it. A few good years, or good experiences or, once again, progeny that can enrich (and frustrate) your life. All it takes is the right person.