Marriage

I have a lot of friends with divorced parents. I even have friends who are divorced themselves.

My parents have been married for 30 years, and they still hold hands when they go out.

One of the couples that play volleyball with me have been married for 17 years and they steal these knowing glances at each other at the courts that totally gives away that they're still in love after so many years too.

My grandfather was in the hospital for months last year and every time I talked to my grandmother, she would proudly announce that he was the "cutest old man in the whole hospital, all the nurses are crazy about him." They're 85 years old.

Those are the types of relationship I want to have when I finally tie the knot.

My sister has been married for about 18 years. 3 kids. The love? Has been dead for years. She is officially staying together for the kids at this point. She doesn't talk about it. She doesn't have to. You can tell.

Yesterday I was talking to her how she should go to Assateague, that I can stay with my nephew for the weekend and she could go up there with my brother-in-law (my other two nephews just left for Brazil this week for their summer vacation). She got this terrified look on her face and said "just the two of us? We'd be bored out of our minds, we wouldn't have anything to talk about"

It's sad. I'm still single, no "future husbands" in sight. My parents marriage gives me hope -- you can be married for life and be happy and still love each other after years of waking up in the same bed. Then I see my sister -- and I hope I don't turn out that way. On a loveless, unhappy marriage, staying together for the kids, because now there are too many of them, and leaving seems harder than living the rest of her life with a man who no longer gives her the butterflies...