When Swingers Marry & Monogamists Cheat

To Marry or not to marry, that is the question.

You’ve been with your partner for a few years, you’re living together, love, roses, midnight dances and evening glances over candlelit dinners. You’re in love and now you wonder – marriage? Yes? No? Maybe? Is it the right time? Is it the right person?

Hollywood never tires of providing abject lessons for us about the highs and woes of love and marriage. It seems like Tiger is more of a Tiger then we realized. And Vince Vaughn, settling down with a real estate agent from Calgary and not some international supermodel or Hollywood sex symbol, is a bit of a shocker too. Will Vince do better than Tiger? Why?

Maybe some people are better marriage material. I think there are people who are not marriage material when they’re younger, but might be better suited to family and monogamy when they are older. Then there is the great X-factor of choosing the right special someone to settle down with. Maybe Tiger just chose the wrong one. Elin is beautiful, exotic, but maybe the magic left them after just a short time. How do you decide? When’s the right time to say “I do”?

Susan Sarandon split from Tim Robbins, her partner of 30 odd years, and has lately been seen going around with a 31 year old ping-pong player. How does that make sense? Should we all just avoid marriage because the statistics are not favorable? (49.3% in 2007 according to the National Vital Statistics Report, but that’s not including California. So I figure the real number’s got to be a little higher than that.)

What would you tell Tiger if you got stuck in an elevator with him in a hotel in New York and he confided to you that he was thinking about marrying Rachel Uchitel and asked for your advice? What would you tell your best friend who wasn’t sure about taking the next step?

I say the hell with it. 50% of marriages end in divorce out and you’ve got to figure that at least half of marriages are unhappy even if they don’t end in official separation. So that’s like a 25% chance of success. Not too encouraging. What do you say? Can the jaded 21st century tweeting, Facebooking, text messaging single still believe in happily ever after?