You must understand, though the touch of your hand makes my pulse react
That it's only the thrill of boy meeting girl, opposites attract
It's physical
Baby don't hurt me no more.
I still don't know how to answer that.
The dirty little secret that no one admits on planet earth is that most of our "love stories" boil down to a beautiful woman marrying well.
The Cinderella fairytale ending where if she is pretty enough and dresses well and he's happy to introduce her to "his mother," she is set for life -- in theory, assuming they don't get divorced at which point she may have the very shocking realization that her career as a wife doesn't do much for her resume and she's probably most highly qualified to clean toilets for a living no matter how well she lived BEFORE she stupidly got replaced by someone younger and prettier.
The movie Sweet Home Alabama is a notable exception. She gives up her opportunity to "marry well" in exchange for staying with her high school sweetheart whom she married because he got her knocked up and then she lost the baby and left to go pursue a career elsewhere.
If you marry young when you both have nothing, you BOTH help make the career that HE has that pays the bills and at one time when we didn't have reliable birth control and yadda, that made sense for the human race as the best way to handle our icky desire to bump uglies excessively often no matter how much other people annoy us.
No, that's NOT just me being cynical. In The Naked Ape, primatologist Desmond Morris makes a compelling argument that humans are hypersexual and fuck all the time for stupid reasons like emotional bonding when MOST species mostly have sex primarily when the female is "in heat" because she's capable of conceiving.
But if you are contemplating remarrying when you are older, you are facing a situation where HE likely has an established career and YOU likely do NOT and if you marry him you may NEVER make substantial income of your own and it's been clear in my mind for a long time that every man who was offering to marry me was offering to make me chattel property in a way that would make my first marriage look like True Love done right in every imaginable detail.
During my divorce, I got a corporate job and while I had that job, dreams about my ex-husband were USUALLY dreams about my JOB.
I was working for The Man. My husband no longer paid my bills. My job did.
I traded being a homemaker for being a working stiff and in my mind, my job was The Man in my life and I was married to my job because I was quite ill and had no time or energy for ANYTHING but my job.
For a man, being successful at work and making good money is deemed to be the price you pay to qualify for a wife and kids at all. And women get asked to CHOOSE: A family or a career. Pick one.
And with our entire economic structure rooted in the assumption that "serious jobs" -- career type jobs with good pay and good benefits -- will be held by married men with a wife and kids to support, it's quite hard to escape this paradigm that a woman can EITHER be serious about her career OR be devoted to her family.
The reality is a lot of women do what it takes to make the marriage work because she's financially dependent upon him. And if a woman makes good money herself, many such women can't seem to keep a man around long term (though there are exceptions -- Dolly Parton comes to mind).
I know I have no plans to take the deal and marry for money to solve my financial problems even though they seem completely unsolvable ANY other way. And I wonder why the hell I would put up with a man if I ever DO manage to figure out how to pay my bills and support myself comfortably.
My mother worked for an heiress and he ran through her money, divorced her and she had to get a job and support herself.
The heiress Barbara Hutton was married seven times. I have read that one of her husbands asked her on their wedding night how much of an ALLOWANCE he could expect to receive.
A childhood friend of mine who made good money at her job was married and divorced five times last I heard. Women who make good money or have enough money do NOT have to do what MOST women do and MAKE the marriage work from their end even if he's kind of an ass and not interested in changing.
I mean there's sex and companionship but honestly what seems to make MANY women hot and bothered is some guy buys them presents. AKA he SPENDS MONEY ON THEM.
And most men seem to NOT be talented at holding a conversation, baring their soul, working with a woman to MAKE their lives work and etc. and if I can pay my own bills comfortably, why would I do all the accommodating? Why not act like a man and expect HIM to be MY bitch instead of me being HIS bitch?
At the age of 58, I have no clue what the word love is even supposed to MEAN. And it's not for lack of TRYING to figure this out.
And I don't think I'm the only woman wrestling with such questions. The evidence suggests that most women try to keep their man IF they need him to pay her bills and if not, most relationships don't survive long if she is capable of adequately supporting herself.