A friend of mine recently wrote a post on her personal blog lamenting some article she read about the prevalence of women who are secretly unhappy in their marriages and who would get a divorce in a heartbeat if it wasn't for the financial issues involved.

Her take on the article was pretty smug...essentially she took the position that women who want to get divorced but don't are just a bunch of whiny women with too much time on their hands making them miserable.

Obviously I'm not her target audience for this particular post.

Her stance is basically one of, "Well, excuse me for actually being happy in a marriage. I guess I'm not cool like everyone else, blah blah blah."

Apparently — at least, according to her — being happy in a marriage is a choice that women can make and everyone who doesn't just doesn't try hard enough.

It blows my mind that people might actually think that I prefer to be unhappy in my marriage. I cannot fathom the thought that there are people out there who assume that I can turn on some mysterious Happy Switch and suddenly have the perfect marriage.

If there is such a switch, for God's sake someone please tell me where it is because I would have flipped the stupid thing years ago.

I'm glad there are people in this world who have fantastic marriages. Heck, I envy them to no end. I doubt, though, that the majority of them are happy simply because they "decided" to be happy. My guess is that there is some mutual love and respect in those marriages that pulls them through  rough times.

Being unhappy in my marriage is not a choice I've made. It's something I fight tooth and nail every stinking day. I can't simply pick up some "happy marriage" at the grocery store. Anyone who thinks I prefer to live this way is either naïve or is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, if you know what I mean.