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Now Blogging Afresh at Ad Orientem 西儒 - The Western Confucian



Wednesday, June 01, 2005

"Love Story" Was Wrong
From Secret of longest marriage is saying 'sorry':
    A British couple who hold the world record for the longest marriage said Wednesday their success was down to a glass of whisky, a glass of sherry and the word "sorry."

    Percy and Florence Arrowsmith married on June 1, 1925 and will celebrate their 80th anniversary Wednesday.
God bless the Arrowsmiths! Let us drink a toast to them. (Ah... that 安東燒酒 sure does go down nice.)

"Love means never having to say you're sorry"; I always thought this line from that movie, whether it was inspired by Al and Tipper Gore or not, was utter nonsense.

In fact, I touched on this theme earlier this evening in a TOEFL class. Tonight's Test of Written English (TWE) essay assignment was about whether marriage should be based primarily on love or on more practical concerns. I told my students that I thought one of the reasons for the scandalously high divorce rate in my homeland was that people viewed love purely as a matter of the heart (emotion), and not as an act of the will (intellect). It was the last two minutes of the last class of the semester, so I didn't have time to mention other causes of divorce, chief among them a society that emphasizes rights but not duties.