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"Reader Karla made me smile last week when she commented about my entry on kids and their impact on marriage. I mentioned Peter&amp;#039;s best friend, and how he put his young daughter&amp;#039;s happiness before his own on an outing, and Karla hazarded a guess (very wisely, I might add) that the best friend and his wife were still married. As a matter of fact, they are. They were married almost a year to the day after we were, and if you&amp;#039;d asked me then if they would make it this long, I would have been doubtful. They&amp;#039;re very mis-matched people, and I always felt like she wanted to be married a lot more than he did. I was wrong about them, and I&amp;#039;m glad I was. Then there&amp;#039;s my old friend from high school \u2013 pregnant unexpectedly in our senior year, married one day before her eighteenth birthday. She and her husband have been husband and wife more than a quarter century now and recently became grandparents. They&amp;#039;re still together, and Peter and I aren&amp;#039;t. I can think back on a good half-dozen people I&amp;#039;ve known across my life that I was sure would be on the losing side of that &amp;quot;50% of all marriages fail&amp;quot; statistic. On my wedding day, and for a good long time after, I never would have put us in that category. Yet here we are, and some days, I still can&amp;#039;t believe it. I know why we&amp;#039;re here. I even understand that we have to be here. I just still can&amp;#039;t believe that we are here. Does it ever seem surreal to you? Like you got plopped down in the middle of someone else&amp;#039;s life? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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