So my aunts and uncles bought me an Amazon Kindle for graduation. I haven’t put any books on it because I’m waiting to for my case to come in the mail before I take it anywhere with me. However, this doesn’t mean that I haven’t been looking at all of the books that I can download. I found out that there are a whole bunch of books (mostly classics) that I can get for free. While I was scanning the free books, I came across a book called Speed Dating with a picture of a bodice ripper of a hunk leaning against a NASCAR car.

*facepalm*

Apparently, there are NASCAR romance novels. Now, I’m not a normal purveyor of romance novels (my guilty pleasure reading is limited to mostly People magazine and chick lit), but as a casual observer of economics, if there weren’t  a market for books like this, they wouldn’t exist.

Really, it takes all kinds, no?

So yesterday, the news broke that Al and Tipper Gore are separating after 40 years of marriage. I’m not particularly an Al Gore fan but I’ve always been fascinated by their marriage. They had been dating since high school and they seemed to have a lot of passion and mutual respect for each other any time they were interviewed together. For an Inner Beltway couple, they seemed pretty down to earth and serious about making their relationship work.

I’m sure that there are probably a lot of mitigating factors that we don’t know. I think that there is a lot of strain put on couples in the public eye. I know that I, myself, probably would not be able to stand up to the limelight (I’m pretty private). There could have been information that isn’t publically known. Who knows?

As someone about to get married in a few months, it disheartens me a little bit. I will chalk some of this up to the fact that I am a very hopeless romantic (there is no saving me, dear). On the whole, I want relationships to work out for everyone. I think everyone deserves that happiness. I especially want long relationships to continue to last to eternity. I want people to grow intertwined. This is not to say that I wish for people to cast off any of their individualism to be part of a partnership (I actually don’t think that relationships work that well when two actually become one and lose their self-identity). I am completely naïve on this matter (and quite obviously okay to admit it).

Along with being a hopeless romantic, I am also extremely rational. As one would imagine, these two sentiments really do not jive all that well. I understand that people grow apart but I can’t help but feeling that after 40 years of marriage and spending about 2/3 of your life together, at least some of your identity comes from that relationship and that if you were to break that relationship, you’d feel as if you were missing something. In the Gores case, there was apparently no infidelity; they simply grew apart. I suppose it’s always possible to drift apart from each other even if you had been together for decades. I just didn’t see this one coming.

What do you think about this?