It often amazes me when people get along better with their parents than with their spouses. This seems to be a common situation; Most people love their parents and maintain an ongoing close relationship until their parents die, even when these same people do not get along well with their husband or wife. This point was driven home to me when I heard a man say "My mother was the best girlfriend I ever had. She was always there for me, and never let me down." This same man has been married several times and has numerous children from different mothers. Unsurprisingly, he was rather soured on the idea of relationships with women; He did not want to get married again, but he still loved his mother, even though his love for several other women had faded. To me, this is rather strange, even though I have seen it several times before. A person is supposed to leave their parents and get married and settle down with their spouse. Perhaps the most obvious reason it puzzles me is that a person cannot choose their parents. You are born with the people who become your parents, and so it is understandably difficult to create a match between the parents and their children. Of course, the parents end up raising the children, and therefore the children often become like the parents, and so they get along exclusively for this reason. This is common, but if the children grow up different from the parents, then it is very difficult to create a match between them since neither side could choose the other. On the other hand, you have the sole choice over who is your spouse. This is why it seems to me that more relationships should work; You have all your life to decide if someone is the right person for you, and take action according to your decision. That is why it seems to me that people should love their spouses, but not necessarily their parents; You had no choice in choosing your parents, and so it is not necessarily your fault if you cannot get along with them, but you take full responsibility for your relationship with your spouse since you chose them, and if you cannot get along with them then it is because of your own choice. Maybe this is exactly why things are the way they are: People don't want to take responsibility for their own choices, and so they don't want to admit they made a mistake when they marry for the wrong reasons. Or perhaps it's because people don't actually bother to develop a relationship with the people they marry. Children grow up getting to know their parents, developing a bond with them, so that when they become adults their parents know them better than anyone else. On the other hand, most people still marry just for a feeling; They enjoy the feeling someone gives them, and they assume that this person will always give them the same feeling. When they get bored and stop getting that feeling, they realize that they have nothing in common with their spouse, and there is separation. Maybe if people, especially men, stopped regarding their spouses as sex objects and started regarding them as real people who they should bond with, their marriages would actually work. Your relationship with your spouse is even more important than your relationship with your parents; You won't live with your parents for the rest of your life, but you're supposed to live with your spouse for the rest of your life. When people take marriage seriously, and stop thinking of it as something trivial, the relationship will start to give people the satisfaction they desire from it.