Holy Matrimony, Batman!

I had a conversation with someone last week who scoffed at my saying I will never get married. Now usually I would be one of those who says 'never say never' about anything, but not when it comes to this topic. It's well known I was on the fence for a very long time about whether marriage was something I wanted in my life. Then in a moment of clarity I realized it wasn't for me, one of the reasons being that it's not what it was or what it should be. It's been cheapened and I want no part of that. The person I was talking to about all this - a commitment phobe, no less - agreed that marriage is a lot less sacred than it used to be and we moved on to another topic. The marriage talk came up again a few days later (as if she thought I'd change my mind in that time span?) and I again tried to explain my stance. Her opinion being that when I meet the right person, I will be chomping at the marital bit and be walking down an aisle within months. She's entitled to her opinion, of course. But I know, with 2000% certainty that goes up a few more percentage points everyday, that I do not ever want to be a married man. I'm not the marrying kind and I know that now.

I couldn't sleep the other night and started running my brother's situation through my mind and that led me to start thinking about the married people I've known in my life. My family's track record with marriage (or commitment, really) is not good at all. But I threw out the statistics about my elders since they're from a different time. Thinking about people around my age I realized I don't know anyone who married in their 20's that is still married now that they're near or in their 30's. (Phew, dodged a bullet with that whole failed engagement thing huh?) Of those who are now divorced/divorcing, a solid 99% have said they don't want to get married ever again. The general sentiment being, 'Well that was "fun" but I'm done now'. They seem to have realized it's something they just don't need in their lives. That is very interesting to me. I might dive deeper into this later on, but I have to gather my thoughts first.