As females, we spend a lot of our earlier years wanting to share our lives with that special person and children, achieve it, then spend a lot of our remaining years, whingeing about how much they irritate us.  Why is that?  And marriage, what's that about really?  When the institution was invented, life expectancy was about 39, if you were lucky and don't think people spent that much time together.  And why marry at all?  Maybe the desire to have someone 'take care' of you is stronger than the urge to shag whoever you want, or maybe that just gets old.  Or we do.  Not jaded, just interested.  And when I say married, I include people living together.