Idealistically speaking, we marry for love. Why shouldn’t we? I mean, marriage is /supposed/ to be forever. It is a binding act that should be cut only during death. So we expect to literally grow old with the person we chose to marry.

But what if the couple fall out of love with each other? And they start to bicker and fight every single day; in front of their children too.

What’s better for the family then? What should they do?

I guess the couple could go through marriage counseling, but what if the couple started out marriage not truly in love with each other? What I mean by this is that what if they were forced to marry because the woman got pregnant? And what if they have different religions so that they did not have a Church wedding? And what if they both despise their in-laws and wouldn’t even try to get along with them? Then add the fact that one of them fell in love with another person whom the in-laws like…

All in all, the family the couple is trying to build has a none-too strong foundation.

Now, I’ve been wondering, because of recent revelations, what is best to do in this case. Fine, as I said, there is marriage counseling. But that doesn’t always work. What then?

Should the couple stick it out and maybe, just maybe, they could go past all these problems and still live together? All for the sake of their children; so that the kids could have both their parents as they grow. Bickering, non-too-loving-each-other parents, but both parents nonetheless.

Or…

Should the couple separate? At least then, they wouldn’t be forced to live with a person they are daily learning to hate. And in this particular case, since their child is still /very/ young, wouldn’t it be better for said child to grow up in a loving environment? The child wouldn’t have both his parents, true. But the child’s still too young to even understand. All the child sees daily are his parents fighting, and I doubt that would be good for the child.

My personal point of view in this, since I’m not married and am still quite idealistic, is that I’d rather choose the second option. But the thing is, I’m not the one who has to go through this. It’s someone I know and I’ve been asked by both sides for what I think I would do were I in their situation.

Which makes me remember what I said to /him/ << another guy I know… when he and I were talking about roughly the same situation. I did tell him that I wouldn’t marry him in the first place because I simply did not love him. Well, I loved him as a friend, but that’s just that. Not enough. He asked that what if we had a child, and he told me that he’d want to have a say in that child’s future simply because it’s his. I told him that he could have a say but that does not necessarily mean that I would marry him for the child’s sake.

Now all of this was just for argument’s sake. Because we probably had run out of things to talk about for that time, but now that I’m faced with another friend’s plight which is similar to what I’ve been arguing about with my other friend… now I don’t exactly know what to say.