Yes, money, or the lack of it, can be the cause of many marriage difficulties and can provide a rude awakening to the oft peddled dream of constant marital bliss, but at least the author took the time to thoughtfully consider her responsibility in the union. It takes 2 people to make a marriage work. I've had a marriage fail due to money problems. But I'm not going to berate the author because she had her moments of weakness, she stayed and worked for the marriage. Nor am I cynical about relationships and money. But then again, it may be because I've already seen karma working in regards to my ex. I'm in good financial shape right now while she's in divorce proceedings to end her 3rd marriage due to...you guessed it, financial problems.

....and it's a farce. The level of immaturity it takes for a person to physically rehearse a speech to her parents about blowing their wedding money by getting a divorce because you are not satisfied exemplifies the narcissism of 'modern marriage' (an oxymoron anyway). And yet I'm supposed to be happy and impressed that some self-absorbed person did not go through with what she publicly wrote about, considered, and rehearsed? No thanks.

I'm relieved to see that so many of the previous commenters got it. I don't know how old the author was when she got married, but it sounds indeed as though she and her husband went through a difficult phase of poverty, which so many of us go through, and grew up.

I don't know if I ever thought my husband should take care of me, but I remember how panic set in, a week after our wedding, when i was in a cockroach-ridden studio with him a thousand miles from home, in the godforsaken wasteland of a frozen Rust Belt city, and he told me I needed to get a job quick, because he didn't think he'd make it through his difficult graduate program in the physical sciences. (He did, with flying colors. It was just first-year jitters talking.)

I don't think I ever thought of leaving him...maybe, partly, because I didn't know where I would go. But this is something that happens in many marriages during hard times. It's not that you stop loving your spouse--it's just that love gets buried under stress and anxiety.

It wasn't the only time the prospect of financial stability stressed our marriage--there were times when I was ashamed of not handling things well, and he forgave me, but even now I still feel terrible about it. The important thing is that we stayed together and carried each other through. We loved each other.

In sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, still holds. It's just that it's not always a walk in the park. Love isn't perfect; it needs refining. It sounds like the bitter, misogynistic commenters on the first couple pages haven't quite grasped this.

Dear KB4Hire.

Your post has touched me because I have been in the same situation as yours. After 6 years of relationship, my girlfriend (I though she was the love of my life) dumped me 6 months before the wedding, and I haven't known about her since then. 2 years afterwards I was still a basket case about it.

Only a person who has been there knows how you feel. There are no words to express the pain. NO WORDS. I was about to commit suicide. The pain was unbearable for two years.

But, one year later, I can tell you that pain recedes bit by bit, so slowly that you can't even notice. It's three years and I can see life with optimism again. Not that I don't have the occasional hellish pain, but it is less and less frequent.

So I want you to tell you that there is an end and a healing to this suffering. If you are a believer (like me), trust God. If not, trust the fact that life has a lot of things for you.

Please see soyouvebeendumped.com. The discussion groups know how to help you and can hear you and give you useful advice.

Peace.

It's realistic and life learning lessons filled with emotions and real life parameters......

Keep up Writing....

Writers will not be paid anything anymore. There is no way corporations or publishers can afford to pay writers. Anything that's published (and it won't be on paper, but electronic) will be like this. And you don't think I get paid anything by Salon, do you? That will be the fate of anyone who writes.

Its not the fault of her, I appreciate her for coming out of natural human insticts.....

Good points. I differ from you in that I have had to struggle to block this out, mostly in reference to my own desirability as a partner. Plus, not everyone knows this is bullshit, as evinced by the overwhelming expectations most young people have of their partners. When I pointed this out to Mom, she suggested that people might have to "settle," but to me, realizing that your partner is an actual human being is hardly that. In the meantime, I'm happily married, not to a rich man. And he's happily married to a woman who cleans up OK but who shows clear signs of both middle age and of having endured two difficult pregnancies. We do OK.

Diocletian--I won't deny this article is shallow, but it is a two-page blurb. Joan Didion could get philosophical about marriage in a single sentence, though. I put this article up against "In the Islands" any day.

Wow, bigguns, what are you trying to say: "At your age, Ms. Walsh..." Um, I guess I'm kinda old, in Internet years...but hell, I'm not dead! Of course none of us can judge anyone's life until it's over, but the arc she described is promising and kinda sweet. Why are people so punishing?

To Marisa, her supporters, and her critics: Good luck with all of your relationships, whatever they are. From my aged vantage point, according to bigguns anyway, I can say: Love is the answer.