Just a quick rambling observation...

Went outside a minute ago to smoke a butt and the neighbors are fighting again, as usual. Married couple, working class, typical arrangement: husband wakes up early and spends all day at job while wife stays home, pretends to take care of the kids, has her friends over to party a couple times a week... we all know the story.

They don't see me because its dark out here in farm country so they don't self-police their volumes like people do when they know somebody is watching.

Wife drags her husband outside for a "talk," immediately begins berating him. I told you the lawn needed to be mowed, you said you'd take care of the garden, etc, long list of accusations and complaints about all the things he didn't do in the hour or so between the time he got home and sunset. Husband stands there and takes it while she goes on and on, bitching loudly, uninterrupted, for minutes and minutes. And then he makes the mistake of trying to defend himself and she cuts him off so he tries to defend himself more loudly and she gets louder to talk over him, to force him to submit, and then bam! he fucks up and gets angry and yells and he's lost because now he's attacking her, he's given her the ammunition to play her trump card, the "abuse" card, the "you're yelling, you don't need to yell, if you can't have a conversation like a grown-up human being" etc, a shit-sundae of hen-pecking garnished with guilt-laden verbal abuse all topped with that beautiful hypocritical cherry "I'm not the one yelling, you're yelling," because even though it's her voice alone that rings through the night carrying each word clearly over a hundred yards, the fact that she's chosen a condescending tone rather than an angry one somehow means that the act itself isn't yelling, somehow it's a superior, more enlightened, feminine form of communication unassailable in its content and intention and conviction, absolute truth flowing up through her from goddess mother earth to his ears... and there's nothing he can do to counter it, there's nothing he can do that might persuade her that she might not always be right or could convince her that he deserves just a little time to himself after spending the vast majority of his waking hours providing for her, slaving to fulfill her every need, want, and whim...

And I get it, I get it, I've been there before, I've dated that girl and I've lived with that girl, but what I don't get is why anyone would sign up for that shit 'til death-do-us-part, why would anyone not only sign up for but actively pursue and pay for a life-long cruise through that kind of hell? And while a single instance does not a universal truth make, the neighbors living to the right of these sad souls have the same fights every week and the neighbors to the left of them have the same fights and all the married couples I know go through the same bullshit again and again and again, so I don't think I'm deluding myself through confirmation bias here when I say it's just not worth it... it's just not worth it. Why the fuck would anyone ever think that getting married is a good idea, that the institution of marriage is anything more than a lie, a naive fantasy, a fairy tale we only believe in because it's the happily-ever-after story we've been told over and over again from the minute we begin to understand words, an ideal that only exists in story books and parental expectations and gaudy magazines and shitty movies and even more shitty television shows...

And so I see it again but I'm so desensitized to it that I can't be mad about it, I can't be perplexed at the insanity of it, all I can do is wearily walk away musing about god bless the man who can come home at the end of the day and do whatever the fuck he wants without getting chewed out about it, but also wondering cynically if maybe some time to oneself isn't really such a big thing for anyone to have to ask for under any circumstances, married or not...

That's all...

EDIT: for grammar, etc.