I saw a most fulfilling thiry seconds of some movie with Matthew Broderick in it. Some romantic comedy. Maybe I should have stuck around for the remaining 5,700 seconds, but I got sidetracked by a thought: It's most likely social orientation that plays the determining role in the success or failure of marriages. The attraction is, for the romantic, disguised as physical or spiritual, or even psychological, but those are nebulous qualities, and a person's feeling about them doesn't alter much with time. Social attributes, though easy to categorize, are often hard to evaluate when found, yet cannot be worked around. Most importantly, a person's feeling about them does alter, perhaps though experience. Dating, or marriage, is a social action, and there the decisive thing is one's relation to the group. No one feels comfortable saying this, however, so they have trouble believing it.

But people date much as they shop. They may be in the habit of buying small or big, economical or lavish, and that's ultimately the difference between life and death for them. But unless they are aware of this, they're always buying and selling without knowing it, and it will make them unhappy.