Member-only story
Exploring The Unspoken Expiration Date Of Marriage Before “Till Death Do Us Part”
Forever cannot coexist with love that was secured under temporary circumstances.
The small, unspoken caveat about conditional love is that it was never designed to last forever. So no, the happily ever after tall tale that Disney has hammered into our psyches since girlhood cannot be found in this conditional love we are supposed to earn from men, with the condition being that we should be youthful, beautiful and fertile to earn their loyalty through marriage. In fact, conditional love has a much earlier expiration date than happily ever after, or till death do us part.
The expiration date arrives once you can no longer be used for the same conditions your husband claimed to love you for, which is usually your youth, beauty, fertility, and possibly any other assets that he can vampire from you in a limited window of time. You know, your “prime years.”
Men typically view women are useless and valueless once they have no more youth, beauty and fertility to give the opposite sex, which is why they place divorced women in the same boat as single mothers and single, childless women. As long as a woman is older and she has been involved with a man or multiple men she apparently holds no value, because men are the main vampires of said value to begin with!
