"...love or marriage!!???? Choose wisely, you may not get both!!!!!!"

Wise words indeed from Wonderbug. It's got me thinking this Wednesday evening.

Well, whatever happened to 'Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage'? Manu is right when he says the two need not always be exclusive, but somehow it doesn't appear to be the case in lots of relationships these days.

They say both love and marriage will happen when they have to happen - that is if it's destined. And if they don’t, then sorry buddy - you've just got shit luck ...go get drunk or something!

So why then do you have people wanting to fall in love or trying so desperately to get married when they're of age?

In our family (and our family is very large) we have great 'made for each other' marriages; not so great 'just put up with the bitch/SOB till she/he dies' marriages; and, disastrous 'how much does a contract killer cost?' marriages. And with those in the latter 2 categories, it began with what they thought was 'made for each other' and later deteriorated downwards. The reason is simple I think - somewhere along the way love fell by the roadside. And they never turned back to look for it, pick it up again.

It also makes me wonder whether they were ever in love in the first place. Perhaps it was all done just to get the satisfaction of knowing that they've proved to themselves and society that they've complied with the norms that have been laid down with respect to these matters. To put it differently - to have shown everyone that you're not a damn misfit who's not capable of falling in love and/or getting married.

Dr. Daniel Goleman in his book 'Vital Lies Simple Truths' talks about the power of self-deception that our minds have acquired through the process of evolution and which is used as a tool to take an unhappy/undesirable situation and turn it around - something similar to thinking of the glass as being half full instead of half empty.

We deceive ourselves all the time, and it happens without us even realising or knowing it. If it didn't, most of us would now be in various stages of depression or suffering from other mental illnesses.

But does our mind do the same thing with love? Do we fall in love with, or get married to the wrong person because we want to, or because everybody else wants us to, simply because that is what we believe to be the right thing to happen at a certain time and age?

I guess many of us do. And when that happens, we find that sooner or later the engines start to fail and the occupants decide to bail out. After that, all that’s left is for the marriage to come crashing to the ground and go up in flames.

It is my belief that we as human beings have evolved, or rather our mental capacities have developed so much, that we often cannot tell the difference between the real, and the games of deception being played in our heads.

And in many cases, we don’t even want to know. Perhaps its better that way.