Last night, I went out partying with the girls of the Menagerie. It was good times – potlucking, byobing, party-gamesing, gossiping, drama-fying, dancing, bar-hopping, pool-sharking and bonding.

Anyhow, we started the evening with the potluck style house-party at one coworker’s house. And a pod of us had gone out front to cool off and chat. The topic at hand was somehow, peripherally related to men, but it wasn’t a catty conversation, as sometimes happens when the mix is just so. And I was forcibly struck by how nice it was to be among a group of women with a lot of positive sentiment about men in general, which was primarily owing to the fact that they all have husbands who are serious sweethearts.

And I said to them, “it is so cool to have a group of friends who have just really nice husbands, and who understand that marriages don’t have to follow the commonly understood stereotypes. Like… when my first marriage was imploding, and people would say to me, ‘well marriage is hard work,’ — ”

And at that point, they issued a collective, “what?? Not the right marriage.”

To which I replied, “exactly,” and “Damn right!”

These are seriously intelligent women too, and with marriage-spans ranging up to ten years.

The problem, I think, is that when happy connubiality eludes a person, it’s far less emotionally threatening to believe that marriage requires hard work. It lets you believe that misery is something that you can avoid with hard work and perseverance.

The alternative, of considering it a matter of choosing wisely and not settling, relies terrifyingly on random factors such as when or whether you will meet a person who doesn’t require hard work. And will you even recognize them, since everyone has rough spots and since even jerks try to be easy to get along with at first.

And, you know, I don’t have answers there. I’m just happy to have a posse of friends whose marriages provide more value than work.