Gone Girl

It was refreshing to see such a negative take on marriage. We always joke about how marriage makes you loose your freedom and how you have to sacrifice on all kinds of shit. But it is always accompanied by something that compensates it. Love, sex, kids, security, just the company. This movie was devoid of any positive side. It was what the idea of marriage can become if taken to the extreme. And it is a rather unnatural idea when you think about it.

Given a choice nobody will marry an ugly person. It might be an insensitive statement to make, but is it not true? So what would you expect to happen to a relation which is based on physical attraction to begin with? It will be as fickle as the attraction which started it. But we fight with it day in and day out. To add some substance to it. Kids are of course a game changer. But what of a long and successful marriage without kids? In the end what will become of the two people involved in it? When none of them is attractive anymore.

Actually the end is easy. It is the middle years when all the infidelity and such-likes happens. When both think they deserve better. It is like marriage is designed to ruin you. But somehow, by a stroke of luck, you might be saved. The more successful and genuinely happy marriages that I have seen look more like any other friendship rather than the added baggage that is part of the marriage bandwagon.

But like any other hard, near impossible thing (like rock climbing, deep sea diving, cliff jumping) marriage, if done right, can forge character. Of course it might be a tad difficult if the spouse is a psychopath. But in most cases they are not. What remains is letting go of your ego and being kind. Ah, but what seems clear in writing, is hazy in doing. What seems like an obvious thing in principle, is always the hardest thing in practice.