From: utzoo!decvax!decwrl!sun!megatest!dre Newsgroups: net.singles Title: breaking up Article-I.D.: megatest.190 Posted: Wed Mar 9 09:25:56 1983 Received: Sat Mar 12 06:47:54 1983 Well, unc!wm, I'm in the middle of a divorce right now. You say you can't understand "how two people who have been so close and in love could ever break up and stop being friends." There are probably as many reasons as there are divorces, but it seems to me that there are a few major ones. People change as they get older. A marriage is fundamentally a partnership. If the partners grow apart and don't have the same goals any more then the marriage is a failure. Some people choose to stay together anyway. Others (like me) decide that they're going to look for something better. The closest thing I have to advice is that I think everyone should wait until they are at least 25 and maybe older before they get married. There is a lot of difference between 21 and 25. It takes that extra maturity to be able to tell if you're seeing through a person or projecting an image on them that they can't live up to. Something my mother once told me (unfortunately I never listened to her then) was that you should meet your girlfriend's mother. If you can't see yourself being married to that woman when you are thirty years older then you should keep looking. I don't know if this works, but she had my marriage pegged as a failure from the start and for exactly the right reasons. I don't think I'll get married again without her permission! If, on your wedding day, you say to yourself, "There is a good probability this will end in divorce," then RUN, don't walk from the church! Divorce is an emotional disaster, not to mention a financial one. Dave Emberson megatest!dre