I have no idea what I’m talking about

PEA RIDGE — “What is it with people these days getting divorced?” my best friend of 20 years asked me the other day, in search of comfort regarding her own parents’ separation.

How do you find reason for something you don’t understand? Not in the sense of not knowing why two people can’t stay together or fight to make it work, but rather in the sense that times and expectations change and she or I can’t relate. What may be acceptable today may have been unheard of back then and vise versa, but never living in those times leaves my generation pretty clueless.

The only sense that I could offer her was to be glad in the fact that in this age, if two people take a look back on what theyhave made of their lives and realize they are completely miserable, it’s possible to make a change. Wouldn’t you want the guts to take that chance if it presented itself?

It’s hard also to understand that people were and are sometimes forced into marriage, by parents, unexpected children, tradition, financial matters or whatever, and didn’t necessarily choose their life-long mate.

As a survivor of a parents’ divorce myself, I hope to find marriage meaning once and only once. But Ican talk all day about planning to do things one way, however, if I have learned one big lesson from life so far, it’s that you can’t plan to do things one way because they are going to go another.

What would life be like without the luxury of choice? Years down the road, after a hypothetical marriage situation I may have entered into out of necessity, after I had made my home and raised my children and am alone with someone I didn’t care to even have a conversation with, would I have only the choice to be miserable? Why couldn’t I chase dreams I may have once had?

I feel I might be rambling and possibly sparking some angry thoughts. But mypoint, if I even have one, is that I have no idea what I’m talking about. I don’t know when or why I might marry or how long it will last - I hope forever. I have yet to be in a situation where I am OK with putting all my dreams aside for another’s (and, call me selfish, can’t really foresee that happening because why would you want to marry someone who asked that of you anyway?).

I do know that marriage is sacred, religious or not - it’s a promise you make to another person and broken promises of that magnitude always hurt. I know it hurts being a child on the receiving end of the “we don’t love each other anymore” speech. I also know that pain eases with time.

Other than that, I’m clueless.