Aside from Urchling's inability to spot a late 1990s banger, she's got the measure of this one. I suspect life experience may throw her a curve ball or two when her limbic system interferes with her cortex and she falls for someone, she will and it takes what seem like simple binary choices and places them in a maelstrom of whirling hormones, shifting psychologies, childhood fears and social pressure. The theory of why a relationship should be severed is much clearer than the practice. Not just for marriages but for all relationships. You can't really factor in 'life experience' in anything other than actuality. You can learn the lessons of others by reading and talking, but whether you can apply those lessons in practice is a whole other thing - and i don't mean that in my usual glib way. The difference between a battle plan on paper with cute arrows, and having a machine gun fired at you is an apt metaphor. You cannot decide what you will do until you do it. Whether or not you reach your objective is part preparation, part discipline and part sheer-fucking-luck. Life is messy.

But this is Feminism the way I like it. Empowerment. The husband in this story was inattentive for twenty years. He may not have been socialised to give attention or provide reciprocity of feelings, but twenty-years is enough time to work that shit out. I'm delighted she found her own happiness and went and did her own thing and maybe he can learn from it, maybe he can't. I don't necessarily think it's a gendered thing, I think it's a people thing - and I've advised several friends of both sexes to leave their partners when they do not feel things are ever going to work and all hope is lost. I can say that, because I was in a relationship with a Penguin for five years when we should've called it quits after three. That's 700 days or so I was more miserable than I should've been and I will never get back. I was young. I learned. Relationships only work when two whole people spend time together. If you're half of a couple, you've missed the point.

That said. It's different when it's you. That's why love songs (including Cher) are so universally revered in culture. They speak to most of us about our own fears and stupidity. :o)