Here’s a brief excerpt from the pages of Finding It Again. For more excerpts, see the listing on the left side of this page. And check back often, as we change these posts frequently.
This one’s from Chapter Fifteen:
On one of my early post-marital dates, the woman—a 40-year-old divorcee—revealed to me that as she was walking down the aisle on her wedding day, she knew, in her head and in her heart, that she was making a mistake. Yes, she had, at one point, been in love with the man she was marrying, but the love had peaked long before the wedding, and had been trending steadily downward even as she stood there in her veil and her white dress and said, “I do.” After a second woman, a few dates later, told a similar tale, I grew curious, and began to ask the question (“So, did you know you were making a mistake as you were walking down the aisle?”) any time a woman, on our first or second date, started talking about her divorce. And while my sampling, though large, was hardly scientific, the anecdotal evidence was unambiguous: For a significant percentage of the divorced women I’ve encountered in my middle-aged single life, love ended—or was clearly headed for the chapel’s exit door—even before the wedding vows had been uttered. And if the same is true for a comparable proportion of divorced men (and why wouldn’t it be?), one must move beyond the obvious observation (“No wonder those people ended up divorced!”) and ask a more fundamental question, a question applicable not just to all those who had doubts at the altar, but likewise to all the Dougs and Sandys, all the married men and women for whom love is a thing of the past, all the wounded, aching people, attached and unattached, for whom the hope and the promise of an unending love is but a bitter, disappointing, oversold lie:
What the hell is this “love” thing anyway?
I think I know the answer.
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Excerpt content copyright Ó 2007, Kenneth W. Shapiro
