As someone who, for the first time, is imagining spending the rest of my life with someone, and knowing that it can last, I bring you the best argument I’ve ever read for sticking it out:
“When they were first married they used to fight. Say the most insane things. Afterwards, sometimes, there would be tears. Tears in bed? And then they would—Molly pressing her her wet face against his hot wet face. They were sorry, they were saying with their bodies, they were accepting each other back, and that feeling, that feeling of being accepted back again and again, of someone’s affection for you expanding to encompass whatever new flawed thing had just manifested in you, that was the deepest, dearest thing he’d ever—”
I just finished reading George Saunders’ “Tenth of December,” which I found…I don’t know, difficult I guess, at times, but also profoundly moving. I think he so perfectly captures the voice a deeply flawed people (Americans) who love deeply and want to do right, even when the world works against them. So unlike anyone else I’ve ever read—I’m pretty much in awe.