Lord of the Rings

I sat on the porch of that house for a month, smoking and crying. When I had finally had enough, I made a decision. I was through with marriage. My first had ended as tragedy, the second as pants-dropping farce, and not my pants, either. Moreover, I had nothing to offer a woman so misguided as to be inclined to marry me. I was jinxed, a heartsick two-time loser, a 42-year-old freelance writer--which is to say, unemployed--with a teenage son. Dad was a wreck. Dad was no help at all.

I wasn't giving up women. Oh no no no no. . . . I was soon back in action. Men are such pigs that they can be emotionally devastated and still be horny--indeed, that might be our defining characteristic. But I had pretty well concluded that a lasting monogamous relationship, with or without benefit of clergy, was not in the stars for me.

Giving up on marriage was hard. It felt like the end of youth, the opening stanza of a sour and pessimistic middle age. To get married is to embrace an exceptionalism that says, despite everything informed people know about the odds and perfidies of the heart, we're good. We're together for life. Anybody who gets married with less than that total conviction--paging Pamela Anderson--is deranged. If they are under 50, they should probably be sterilized.

In most other respects, I think, I was pretty sensible. I was (and am) hostile to notions of the supernatural, i.e., that God or divine providence, karma or some other celestial magic has a hand in people's lives. Rubbish. I had also studied literature and knew that Petrarch--the 12th-century Italian poet--was responsible for more divorces than alcoholism. It was Petrarch who codified Western culture's absurd, you-complete-me expectations of romantic love. But far from there being only one true love for every person--the needle in life's haystack--there are thousands of people who are potentially fit mates for one another. Love isn't destiny. It's epidemiology.