You gotta be kidding! There is nothing sad about it at all, gnu. Maybe you are undervaluing life itself in some way? Is life not special? I think the greatest love of all is to love all of life. I haven't succeeded in doing that yet...but I see the possibility of doing it shining like snow on the distant mountaintop. That mountain is climbable. It just takes a lot of hard work and a lot of courage to get there.

It takes very little hard work (perhaps a little couraqe) to leap into yet one more romantic involvement...as evidenced by how very common they are, and by how many of them do not pan out as expected.

Regarding (legal) marriage: I've see how it can keep 2 people together who don't even like or respect each other anymore....I've seen a lot of that around me, and THAT is sad!....but I don't see that it is needed at all to keep 2 people together who do genuinely like and respect each other. They would stay together regardless, wouldn't they? They don't need the marriage contract to do that.

Therefore, it's an option. A culturally ritualized option. But it's not a necessary option, not for me.

I'd be old and bitter now if I had married any one of the handful of people I thought were "the one"...and I DID think so at the time...yessir, I sure did! ;-) But I did not marry any of them. And a damn good thing I didn't, because those marriage(s) would have failed. That is 100% certain. Hindsight doesn't suck, in my case, it gives me useful perspective on some major mistakes I managed to avoid making.