> It’s hard to accept the possibility that Judy may have completely forgotten about me, but a lifetime of living with disability has shown me how delicate human bodies and minds can be, how little it can take to dramatically, traumatically alter—or end—lives. Two rogue bones in my neck. Plaque on my beloved’s brain. Great love stories begin with such heady promise and end with such sadness and grief—but, at least in my case, also with memories of immense joy throughout a muscular marriage of two strong, supportive partners with challenges aplenty.
So poignantly expressed. I am usually skeptical of 'true love', but these kind of stories remind me I could be so utterly wrong. It is rare to find people as committed to each other as Judy & Steve.
True love is something that takes work. Sure some people mesh better than others, and if you picked your mate mostly on aesthetics you may realize that having someone you like to look at is not the way to sustain a multi decade relationship. I think when it comes to a partner, you have to just decide that you are always willing to meet them where they are. Its not always where you want them to be either. The flipside of course is that your partner should feel the same way and be willing to endure your ups and downs
> you have to just decide that you are always willing to meet them where they are. Its not always where you want them to be
Wise, thanks. That very concisely captures what I've been coming around to understanding about having relationships with anyone. I've had it easy with best friends that were so similar (because we grew up together), but life is long(ish) and people change and grow apart. Even if you have a a relationship that is on easy-mode, it will change for a sufficiently long time-horizon (marriage).
The Christian theologian Stanley Hauerwas put it this way:
When couples come to ministers to talk about their marriage ceremonies, ministers think it’s interesting to ask if they love one another. What a stupid question! How would they know? A Christian marriage isn’t about whether you’re in love. Christian marriage is giving you the practice of fidelity over a lifetime in which you can look back upon the marriage and call it love. It is a hard discipline over many years.
I had a girlfriend in high school/college for four years; I’ve been with my wife for over 15. Looking back on my high school relationship I can say I was in love, if I know anything about love from my marriage. The same feelings of interdependency and shared identity. It’s popular to look at young people and think they can’t know love but my experience says that’s not true.
I had a friend in high school whose romantic feelings were just absurdly powerful. Romeo never pined for Juliet the way my buddy Michael felt for his girlfriend. But at the risk of sounding trite, hormones =/= sacrifice, which is the real, meaningful expression of love. I don't want to lessen the importance of your earlier relationship, but puppy dog love is the easiest and most short-lived of affections.
I love my wife a lot. She's like my shadow, evidence that the sun is in the sky.
If she got really sick I would stay with her and care for her. A huge chunk of that is because I'm attached to her, the little human pattern that the universe mumbles out. The other mind that looks at me and convinces me I actually exist.
I personally think it's irresponsible to set up these weird transcendental expectations. If anyone reading this has yet to fall in love or be in a long term relationship, it's all flowery and cute and lovey at first and then one day you fart for the first time in front of her. There's like, non-subjectively evident demands that you agree to impose on yourself when becoming a union. Physical. Social. Emotional.
I would not leave my wife if her mind was gone. Besides my irrational human attachment, I can't imagine putting my family, her family, our friends, through the experience of seeing her be abandoned by her life partner. Of having them experience evil unmask itself through the act of relegating her to a meat body, which we all are.
I don't know why I felt such a strong urge to express my cynicism. I don't believe in souls, I guess is part of it. I also don't like when people get hyped into expecting the universe from others. My wife loves me deeply, I feel it when she randomly puts her head on my shoulder or I catch her staring at me. She would also yell at me in embarrassment if I farted loudly next to her at the grocery store.
My wife was diagnosed with lymphoma and brain cancer last December and passed this October. I watched her weaken, spring back when a therapy worked, descend into near death when a therapy failed and eventually see her mind and body destroyed by cancer. I hated the illness, the workload, the stress and then unending anxiety of knowing there was little chance of a recovery.
I never thought of leaving or not caring for her, just as I am sure she would have never left me if I was in the same situation. Was this because of a deep love, a result of thirty years spent building a life and habits together, civic and marital duty or some combination of all of these? The thought of not caring for someone in her situation so close to me is anathema.
Concerning diseases that reduce ones mental acuity; every time she would lose the ability to speak or understand, it was crushing. She would often regain some functionality, but each time something was lost. In her final days, she would sometimes regain consciousness and speak to me, but couldn't understand what she was saying. This is/was one of the most distressing things for me to experience. I often sit and wonder what it was she wanted to tell me and how I will never know.
My first wife died as a result of Early-Onset Alzheimer's Disease. From diagnoses till death was 12 years. A much slower process than yours, I realize, which gave me much more time to adapt to it and deal with it.
Before she stopped talking at all, she also had a period that she spook gibberish. I learned to just pretend to understand her, assuming that she meant something positive with her attempt to say something. I learned to read her face instead of her words.
In the last year her eyes would usually be dull and only now and then there would be a spark of light in her eyes that would not last longer than a second. I never wondered whether she still recognized me. I assumed that the concept of husband did not mean anything to her anymore. I am happy that I still recognized her till the end, because I know that some people with Alzheimer's Disease will change so much in their behavior that relatives do no longer recognize them.
We will never know what your wife wanted to say. Maybe the words that came out of her mouth were not even the words she wanted to say. Maybe you should take the fact that she attempted to talk to you as a sign that she was happy that you were with her at that moment.
Thanks for the insight. I am sorry you had to endure such a long goodbye period. It was agony for me not to be able to talk with her at the end, but I do appreciate she tried to say something, and I am grateful for that.
Thank you for giving us your thoughts. I hope to live up to the standard you set with the clearly towering love you shared with your wife. I'm dumb, young, unwise so I'll dare to presume: I am certain she would have told you how important you are to her, how much she loves you and how thankful she was that you shared your life with her.
Sorry, I try not to be emotional. Especially on a forum like HN where rationality and clarity of thought seem to be the M.O. Its impossible to imagine what you've gone through and what you're going through. I send you a huge, digital, hairy man hug my dude.
Very well put. My remark about 'true love' was this exact cynicism. And like you, I mirror the exact same feelings for my wife. The Mills & Boone type of romances do not exist in real life. Deep love is crafted incrementally each day of being together, like an old oak tree sinking its roots ever deeper.
It is perhaps the gravitas and wordsmanship which makes the author's story remarkable. It exposed us to his thought process, and the minutaé of his feelings. As a thinking species, we perhaps appreciate this expressivity. These adversities are more common than depicted & many couples with disabilities do share meaningful time together.
Yes for sure. I hope I did not diminish those experiences. It is really awesome to be in love. I understand its sway.
I appreciate how we almost reflexively communicate about those emotions in bits of poetry. They splay out in so many directions, it's like we're picking fruits from an orchard and showing each other what we discover. It's really nice to get to be in the orchard.
My 1st girlfriend's mom told me "never marry someone you can't fart in front of". My sister easily farts (and laughs) in front of her husband. In fact for Christmas he was given a plaque that says "I didn't fart, my ass blew you a kiss"
I do not believe it is rare. I think that it is the same with bad news and tragedy, the news reports only those.
Behind all the sad stories, the frustrated stories, and everything else that is loud, there is a quiet passion that supports the world. It quietly goes on, without disturbing the neighbors, or making headlines.
It's not easy, it's not painful, but it perseveres. All around you. In the background.
I have heard about a man who remained unmarried his whole life, and when he was dying, ninety years old, somebody asked him, “You have remained unmarried your whole life, but you have never said what the reason was. Now you are dying, at least quench our curiosity. If there is any secret, now you can tell it, because you are dying; you will be gone. Even if the secret is known, it can’t harm you.”
The man said, “Yes, there is a secret. It is not that I am against marriage, but I was searching for a perfect woman. I searched and searched, and my whole life slipped by.”
The inquirer asked, “But upon this big earth, so many millions of people, half of them women, couldn’t you find one perfect woman?”
A tear rolled down from the eye of the dying man. He said, “Yes, I did find one.”
The inquirer was absolutely shocked. He said, “Then what happened? Why didn’t you get married?”
And the old man said, “But the woman was searching for a perfect husband.”
Osho is just relating a fable here, but I love that guy's way with words. No surprise that his cult community (Rajneeshpuram) was a massive (albeit short-lived) success in my home state, he's just so fascinating to listen to. If anyone is curious, there are a lot of videos of him on Youtube.
From Wiki:
> Ultimately though, as an explicitly "self-parodying" guru, Rajneesh even deconstructed his own authority, declaring his teaching to be nothing more than a "game" or a joke.
Perhaps that's why, as an atheist, I find him so fascinating - he covers a lot of genuinely useful and interesting ground (meditation, philosophy) while never seeming to take it too seriously.
There is no doubt that bad marriages are common. That doesn't mean that true love is rare though. The question of how many of the marriages that do stay together are good marriages is somewhat separate.
It's a lovely story, but quite honestly, Alzheimer's/dementia is a shitshow. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy and there are many people I despise. There is nothing crueler than dementia.
My mom is suffering through dementia right now. We did something similar. We made photo albums, and went through them every day, until my mom stopped responding to them. Within a couple of years, she forgot who we were, or she would mix up my sister for her sister.
After 7 years from her diagnosis, she no longer talks and she no longer responds to me. My sister is taking full time care of her, and she is cleaning her several times a day because she's incontinent. My mom recently has stopped swallowing. She also seems to have contracted a mild case of COVID, and my sister has been self-flagellating herself because she felt guilty about it. I of course told my sister there's no reason to feel guilty, everyone is getting it and it's something everyone will deal with, especially my mom. I secretly wish it would take my mom's life to end her misery.
The worst part in the first few years were her lucid moments. During one of those moments she wrote a letter to God, asking to die, because she knew something was wrong but she didn't know what. We found the letter hidden in her dresser. Every time I think about it, I burst out in tears, even now. It's disgustingly cruel for someone who spend her entire life sacrificing her life for her kids and family, and asking nothing else.
So when articles like this come out, it is extremely difficult to contain my contempt at any stories that don't paint the picture exactly how it is: a complete and utter shitshow. It's unfair for the victim and it's unfair for the caretakers. And it's extremely expensive and almost impossible to keep your loved one living in a modicum of dignity.
I lost a loved one to dementia, and articles like this one make me want to scream.
Every experience is different. But most people think "oh, they just start getting forgetful", but as the mind decays, everything, everything, goes. Imagine your parent screaming at you in rage because they are hungry, but they've also decided that they hate every food you put in front of them, and they have refused to eat for two days. They are quite literally starving. "What do you want, I'll literally make you anything!", and they scream back "JUST BRING ME SOME FOOD!" Your life is falling apart trying to take care of them. And your parent tells you they hate you, and that you must hate them, since you aren't helping them. They can't shower, they can't brush their teeth, they can't use the bathroom without help. You start to need to take care of them like they are a baby, but babies are tiny and weak, your parent is large and while they're not "strong" anymore, they're still able to fight you in a way a baby cannot. They're in constant physical pain, but they can't describe where, and they lash out both physically and verbally.
They'll forget how to speak, or maybe they just stop trying. Then, they'll forget how to chew, and then once you move to a liquid diet, they'll eventually forget how to swallow.
Hopping I won't offend anyone here. There's a history of alzheimer in my family and I actually know a number of families that had to deal with the third generation going cuckoo. I've always thought that, if it would happen to me, or to one of my parents, perhaps the only sane solution would be to kill them. I'm wondering if I'm the only one thinking this. It seems like most of today's culture is about keeping people alive as long as possible, even if they're not themselves anymore, even if they're suffering.
My mother went through the same, and my feelings echo your own.
There is absolutely nothing good about losing a loved one to dementia. It is constant pain, for years.
I still remember the first time my Mom flinched in fear as I went to give her a hug, as she didn't recognize me. Her greatest fear was losing her mind, and it happened, and there was nothing any of us could do about it. It was a mercy when her body passed, as everything she was had died, inch by inevitable inch, years before. It was cruel, horrible, everything.
Same with my dad after a hemorrhagic stroke and he was on warfarin blood thinners. It basically felt like dementia, couldn’t remember a thing and couldn’t use half his body, confined to a wheelchair. I still mourn the loss of my former dad who is a shell of a once great man.
Irrespective of whether you think the most of the years of her being in a nursing home are a waste, the entirety of it is a touching story to me. Society has prescribed keeping her alive by tending to the extensive requirements in order for her to stay alive (such as helping her swallow and sit up and get around), and the author and his daughter are making the best of it. Reading the book and telling his story are not keeping her alive and making her suffer longer, being in the nursing home likely is. So IMO it can only help, not hurt. He isn't putting forth the argument that his love poem practice has helped her up to this day, but that it at least helped her early on in the progression of Alzheimer's, and I think it did help her early on in Alzheimer's because I think she still had capacity to experience life for some time after her diagnosis. I also think it is a good father-daughter experience, given the circumstances. I think he leaves it an open question as to whether it was helping her in the later stages of it, or if Alzheimer's is nothing but an utter shitshow at this point, so while I see how the article pours salt on wounds, I'm not going to fault the author for it.
Thanks for this. I had the same series of thoughts after reading the article, and struggled to feel more charitable about it. "Shitshow" is a kind description.
On my father's increasingly rare good days, I often think of Stanislaw Lem's "Solaris" — "I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past."
Your contempt is absolutely justified. I went through something similar myself. These people, who have absolutely no voice, are the victims of the virtue signaling, moral crusading army of idiots who are very happy to tell people like us that it’s wrong to want to die or to help someone to die. They sell today for tomorrow. They trade in the suffering of thousands so that they don’t have to confront reality or say something unbecoming. It’s truly infuriating because this results in real and profound suffering. When someone is in need of death, and is writing letters to god for a merciful death, what societal/cultural mechanisms are there to fall on? None! It’s a fucking disgrace and a stain on the human race that such conditions are allowed to go on. Truly on a stain on us.
It just boggles my mind that the moral crusaders scream endlessly about ending the suffering of these people or those people… and yet they do nothing to end the suffering of millions who are right in their back yard and who’s suffering can be ended relatively quickly and easily through very simple legislation, awareness and education. It’s the lowest hanging fruit and yet it goes unpicked.
And there is a large skilled nursing industry that is very happy to profit from it all…
For those of you who are younger and perhaps haven't experienced it, forget the movie version of true love. This story is a much better example - it's imperfect, illogical, sometimes downright gritty and yet it persists (with bouquets of flowers spread throughout).
Dementia is in the future for many of us. If not you then your parents or children, or friends, colleagues, whatever. You'll see someone with it, one day, and it's truly horrible.
Donate to your nation's dementia or Alzheimer's research foundations.
I am recently divorced from my wife of 30 years. I have a girlfriend now, but I am not sure if I'll have sufficient time to develop such stories. It's something that I think about.
My wife of 11 years left me this year (I still don't know why). I think about the same thing... I still (probably) have time to find out what it's like to be married 30 years, but I (probably) no longer have the time to experience a 60-year marriage. And that was, honestly, the only serious goal I had for my life, so that sucks.
But, you know, once upon a time a girlfriend of 7 years left me, and I was sad that I'd have to start again. But my mom told me, and she was right, that when the next go-round happened, it's not really like starting again in many ways. Much of the maturation that happens in a relationship is actually carried within to the next relationship. So, although I still envy those who get to stay married, and those who are still married and so might yet stay married, maybe I don't need to believe that my dream is completely dead. If it's not too pretentious, maybe I can hope that I can make kintsugi of myself.
I started this message hoping to commiserate and perhaps encourage, but actually I guess I'm just wallowing. Dealing with grief is still tough, what a surprise.
My wife also left without reason. But if you think about it, it's probably common that this happens without any one standout reason.
My point is that I'll never develop the depth of stories that I had with my ex-wife. Fortunately she and I are still friends (strange after trying to destroy each other for several years), so we get to keep our stories alive.
This may be a good place to mention that a huge study [0] conducted over 6 years with tens of thousands of US Veterans Administration patients found that having a recent Tdap vaccination predicted a 40% lower incidence of dementia. This was confirmed with an independent cohort.
You hardly need any reason to go get your Tdap booster. Any faint possibility that it might stave off dementia ought to be enough by itself. Get your shingles vaccine, too, while you're there. And, get prescribed some valacyclovir: studies in Asia have shown that had a desirable effect, with no risk.
Some internet service providers, particularly in UK, fail to provide service where Sci-hub is involved. You may need a VPN. Or, contact someone at a university (library staff are usually eager to help) and get them to retrieve the article by the usual means. Or, a regular internet search on the DOI gets you to the regular publisher, who will be little help, but e-mailing an author identified there will likely get you a PDF.
Academic journal publishers are the scum of the earth.
Related to this topic (spouse with Alzheimer), there is a touching story by Alice Munro: "The Bear Came Over the Mountain", the closing story of the book "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage".
When I visited him for the last time he knew who I was.
But he clearly repeated very similar behavior patterns.
He also showed clear signs of not remembering 'state'. Like time or location.
It was very hard for me because that gave me the feeling that he as a person was gone.
I cried after that for a while and it was basically me saying good bye
.
My sister didn't see it like that. She didn't mind doing a sleepover and having her daughter with her. My mother also glanced over that. My other sister agreed on my thoughts.
I liked that she didn't see it like that and spend time with him but I could not do that.
Of course I might be wrong. I don't assume I know how he thought but what else to assume?
I don't think I could do that if my wife started to show similar pattern.
Well, you only feel in the present, so he did feel things even though he may not have been who he used to be. We all are shifting and changing anyway, and our memories give us a sense of coherency, but the present is who we are most readily.
And, it can be terrifying to not know where you are or who you are for some people in those moments. So maybe he found some comfort in those moments with that one sister. That's how I think about it.
I've found that when I'm honest about my feelings, even the messy ones, honest about my thoughts, even if they don't paint me in a good light, my spouse hears me and eventually, accepts me. And it makes me fall in love all over again.
It frees up my consciousness. I don't have to do the mental dance of "oh, you can say this, but don't say that. Say it this way, not that way. Don't mention this."
And I have to do my best to afford her the same.
You have the choice of either a 10 minute, awkward conversation, putting everything in on the table. But having your conscious cleared. Zero parallel threads running in the back of your mind. :)
Or keep these thoughts in the back of your head for months/years, where you expend mental energy suppressing them, sacrificing your creativity, closeness, and vitality. You'll find yourself getting mad at seemingly superficial stuff when the honest truth is because you're seething or ashamed or afraid, with so much to say.
Your choice. Choose the courageous path. Surrender the outcome.
Hear, hear. I've found the same. Love, like any sort of relationship, takes work and compromise, but when you do it with honesty and candidly, it grows far more easily.
“When a person realizes they have been deeply heard, their eyes moisten. I think in some real sense they are weeping for joy. It is as though they were saying, "Thank God, somebody heard me. Someone knows what it's like to be me.”
I first encountered this idea from the Conscious Leadership Group (Gay Hendricks works with them), and now I can't help but notice that it seems to apply to HN comments (and the result of a given thread), as choices in the words and grammar of each statement.
But what you describe is rare like the OP points out. For two people to be so honest and open and direct with each other requires large amounts of maturity and mutual respect and selflessness. Which, to be honest, is rare enough in a single human these days, let alone two that manage to find themselves together. If you have that, I’m truly envious.
Right. The comment implies that this kind of emotional commitment used to be the norm, which is very much a [citation needed] kind of claim.
A bit of family lore had it that when some distant ancestors of mine no longer could live independently in old age, one child took in the husband to live with them, and another child, quite distant from the first one, the wife. My mother, upon learning of that arrangement, exclaimed how hard it must have been for that couple to be separated in their final years, only to hear "Quite the opposite! They couldn't stand each other for the longest time."
> Having such a marriage in this day and age is truly a luxury, reserved only for the deepest of lovers.
> Having such a marriage is truly a luxury, reserved only for the deepest of lovers.
One contains a positive claim that something is worse now than it was before, which I think invites dispute and is entirely unnecessary anyway. It's a fine sentiment without the judgement.
This particular claim is just ludicrous, though. The idea that marriage is primarily about love and emotional companionship is an extremely modern idea. See Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage.
> I always find "this day and age" kind of sentiments extremely eye-rolly, like things were better in some mythic past.
I've encountered this sentiment, several times, lately. In my experience, any mention of a time before now, especially, when they find out that I am "chronologically-challenged," is met by a "Don't tell me about the 'good old days,' Grandpa!".
This day and age, seems to have established a culture of real, nasty, institutionalized, anger at previous generations. It is unlike what I experienced. Younger folks have railed against their seniors for all of human history, but now, it's personal.
I think I understand where a lot of the anger comes from. My generation has caused a lot of damage, and has exhibited almost awe-inspiring levels of selfishness. I'm pretty pissed, and I'm one of them.
But that ain't me. I have lived a long-ish life, and have developed a lot of experience and PoV, as a result. I'm a kind, unselfish person, looking forward to the future, and making the world a better place, for my having lived in it. Not all that is old, is bad. Much is not directly applicable to today's world, but should not be discarded, wholesale. In many cases, only minor adjustments need to be done, in order to make a viewpoint, technique, or philosophy applicable to today's world.
The story is a heart-wrenching one. I have many peers, experiencing a lot of these types of things (One of the things that happens, as we age). Not all of them are handling it as well as the author.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but all of us are destined to become "boomers." Every. Single. One. Of. Us. No exceptions. The alternative kind of sucks. One day, we will all be where I am. That is what makes ageism so crazy.
I have been around long enough to watch some folks hoist by their own petard (a classic saying, BTW). They established a corporate culture, that eventually excluded them.
> In my experience, any mention of a time before now, especially, when they find out that I am "chronologically-challenged," is met by a "Don't tell me about the 'good old days,' Grandpa!".
> My generation has caused a lot of damage, and has exhibited almost awe-inspiring levels of selfishness.
With respect, I think some self-reflection may be in order.
I don't really want to turn the comments section of this lovely article into rancor, but yeah, I'm really tired of hearing about the "good old days" from those who gave us the current day; from those who refuse to cede power to us who will actually be here when shxt hits the fan so we can start the long, heavy work of fixing the problems that were created to give you those "good old days"; we who are trying to make-do in a world where those who enjoyed those "good old days" are hoarding every last resource; so those who loved those "good old days" can then come in here and tell us our love isn't even good enough? Come on, man. Your "good old days" came at the cost we're paying now. Give us a break and let us at least try to enjoy what you've left us rather than rub our noses in how good you had it.
Gah.
I apologize for this dumb thing aimed at you. I know it's not your fault. But I think this is what you're coming up against when people tell you not to tell them about the good old days.
I agree. I really understand this. I even mentioned it in my comment. I have a rather ... out-of-band ... life story for this venue. I didn't dance to this age. I was dragged, kicking and screaming, and holding onto the door jams. Frankly, I'm amazed that I'm here, every day.
My past is not really something I want to go back to, thank you very much. I prefer looking forward.
I also don't want it to be rancor. If you look at my commenting history, here, you will find very, very little, and what you do find, will be fairly mild. I'm a reformed troll, and feel that I must atone for being an arsehole of the first water, for many years. I know that I come across as "stuffy," but believe me, when I tell you, that the alternative is not pleasant.
But it is also important to understand that every person is an individual. This is something that I have to struggle with, every single day. It's very easy for me to be intellectually lazy, and dismiss whole swaths of people, simply because they tick one box of many.
I have fast friends, that I would never have had, if I had insisted that they meet my litmus tests. I won't engage them on certain topics, but I know that we have a great deal of mutual respect.
I participate in a community, that is ... eclectic. Its members are quite varied, and we have learned to put aside our differences in pursuit of a common goal. I really wish that the world ran this way, but it's difficult work. Really humbling, but also extremely rewarding. A central tenet is to be of Service. I like to think that I've done OK, here.
The article was written by an old dude that has been dragged through hell, but has also managed to do well for himself and his wife.
Believe it or not, I hear stories like this almost daily. Very few ever make it into the mainstream, and I am a truly privileged person to hear them.
Not all that is old is bad. Not all that is new, is good. The world has been damaged for a long time, and no one of us can fix it all, so we do our part to police our area.
> The world has been damaged for a long time, and no one of us can fix it all
I'm reminded of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" lyrics. I believe he's trying to say that his generation (Boomers) did not start the shit show. It's always been there, with different details.
Life is complicated with many facets, a charitable interpretation is that they are comparing one facet from the past with the present and have found it lacking.
It’s entirely possible that some facets of the past were much better, e.g. today almost half of the US is obese, that certainly is a large change in 50 years…
To be fair, it is a bit of a privilege. Like most things, it requires a lot of work too, but people learn humility and kindness from each other. Those who grow up with loving parents are a lot more likely to become loving parents.
Bitter divorcees probably. Having a marriage like that is a luxury though. Let's be honest: marriage is not the same as it was 40-80 years ago, and that's because society is not the same it was. Long term commitment to your spouse seems to be an idea left to the past now.
OP's economic argument is pretty sound. 40-50 years ago you could buy a new house, get a solid blue collar job with a pension, and watch your house 5x in value over the next 50 years. Makes it very, very easy to settle down with someone and start a family.
In today's economy, even for the relatively well-off, home ownership is essentially a pipe-dream and it is much harder to put down roots of any kind.
The second the marriage becomes hard, it's a lot easier to break a lease than it is to break a mortgage.
So poignantly expressed. I am usually skeptical of 'true love', but these kind of stories remind me I could be so utterly wrong. It is rare to find people as committed to each other as Judy & Steve.