I agree with your post, but are you roundly condemning the older saying that the younger will realise their mistake or the very notion? I have watched younger friends doing things that I used to do (and you hint at feeling the same in your post) so is this hypocrisy? That last bit’s come out a bit more accusatory than I’d have liked but I hope you get my meaning, or rather my confusion about the point you are making.

I realise that you want to talk about your views on marriage in a later post but just a couple of thoughts that it raises in my head: the tax benefits of marriage (I guess falling under positive discrimination) and the other legal rights of a spouse such as determining medical treatment and even being briefed on your medical condition having been legally defined as family. IT worries me that should the worst happen Claire could be legally and ethically left uninformed about your condition and treatment because she’s not (nor likely to be) legally your spouse.

With regards the religious objection, I like to remember the saying of Buddha: “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who said it, not even if I have said it unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”

Or to put it another way “What might be right for you / May not be right for some/ It takes, diff’rent strokes / it takes, diff’rent strokes / it takes diff’rent strokes to move the world!”

More on that later.