What is the expiry date to love?

Jennifer Lopez' breakup with Marc Anthony was kind of expected for me, looking at her track record I was surprised it even lasted this long.

The pair that disappointed me is Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradiz. I hope he doesn't go for some 20 year old model as his next.

And then blogger Heather B. Armstrong broke up with her husband Jon. I am a new follower of her blog but by reading her About page, she seemed so happily married to the "charming geek Jon" as she so lovingly described.

What I find a little hard to understand sometimes is how people who are so glued together by having children un-glue? I mean Children are the super glue of a marriage, right? And with every new additional baby, I always feel "this couple is going to stick for a long while".

I can see how people grow sick of each other, grow to only see the bad in them and not the good that they fell in love with. The beginning stages of love is like going to some soul changing place like Nepal, and the rest of it like going back to the mundane work life in the city. The "life changingness" of Nepal soon give way again to constant cursing of the traffic and office politics.

If the question of "Am I happy?" is taken away from the consideration set of a marriage, how long can it last? Once two people commit to each other, should they be thinking in more fatalistic, doomsday terms? After all, the vow does say "till death do us part". If two people prepare for the worst to come, instead of expecting the best, would they be less prone to discontentment?

The other thing people can try is to not make a big fuss about their love for each other. All these big wedding celebrations is like jinxing yourselves. Look at Elizabeth Hurley and her super rich Indian husband. Get a humble ring, throw a small dinner. Take less happy shots of the wedding day. The less happy things you do, the more you prevent jinxing it. I still remember the day my idiot boss popped a bottle of champagne to celebrate the selling of an advertisement concept to a client. I knew then that she had jinxed it. True enough, it was a bloody train wreck.

When I was in Kerala staying at a home stay in Alleppey, I asked the owner of the home stay what is his recipe to staying married. Motty, the owner and his wife Lali, have been married for about 40 years from an arranged marriage. Motty replied, "give and take". And when I asked further, what was Lali's recipe to the marriage, he said "Lali has learnt to give and take of my many flaws." I agree that "give and take" is very important and not something that you can necessarily expect both parties in the marriage to do. Sometimes only one person has to bear the cross, be the one to give and take. Maybe this role falls more on the shoulders of the woman than the man. In a long standing marriage, isn't it true that more often than not the wife is somewhat of a virtuous woman?

The fragility of modern marriages should make us all treasure the limited time we have with our spouse even more. I am not an advocate for marriage as I do not want any children. But I am a cynic who wants to be proven wrong. I want people who attempt marriage to succeed. I want to see a revival of old-fashioned love.