With a 50 percent divorce rate building over the past few decades and literally millions of middle-aged people looking around for someone (at a time in life when more advanced family lifestyle issues should be center stage) we have become a society with a large segment of people out of mainstream living.
Sexually speaking, this has caused a lot of messy problems, including the so-called "serial monogamy" phenomenon, along with a preoccupation with "safe sex". Not so terribly long ago, safe sex was a "given" -- most of us experienced sex with the person we were married to.
I've talked some about the many honest discussions I have had with a man friend of mine. I am single and in search of a suitable relationship (for me that means marriage). He is in his second marriage and it is anything but blissful. In effect, it is not a marriage at all since there is no longer any sex.
Among the many conclusions we have reached is one that is quite startling: There are very few single people (single following a divorce or other non-successful relationship) who are actually interested in marriage. For our generation, marriage has become a thing that is more of a hobby--something we do or "be" when we're not busy with making money, pursuing a career, getting into politics, or being absorbed in other lifestyle and cultural issues.
If you are single, ask yourself to recall the last time you met someone for whom a successful marriage was the most important goal in his or her life. Meaning that everything else, work, career, money pursuits would be bent and shaped to enhance a coupled relationship (for me this is defined as marriage). Personally, I can't remember the last time I met someone for whom this is a priority. Most of the people I have met (including me, at times) have been reticent--maybe I will, and maybe I won't. We are a society that loves to keep all its options open which rules out commitments of any kind for the most part that are longer than, say, a week a month or maybe a year.
The realization that there are actually very, very few prospective partners for me around at this time has brought me to a place that only a person recovering from addiction can appreciate: It is a place of hopelessness. The reason that hopelessness is something that I celebrate is because when I reach that point, I know that I can "give it up", that nothing I do is going to "pan out" and that if it's up to me -- fuggeddaboutit. However, that is also the moment when I know with great certainty that, "I can't, God can." (There aren't many recovering addicts around today who haven't tasted the sweet nectar of 'God can'.)
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