Mathoms, etc.

Remember this exchange between Aragorn and Eowyn in The Two Towers?
Aragorn: What do you fear, my lady?
Eowyn: A cage. To stay behind bars until use and old age accept them and all chance of valor has gone beyond recall or desire.
Aragorn: You are a daughter of kings, a shield maiden of Rohan. I do not think that will be your fate.

It is interesting how many women are obsessed with finding true love and getting married. It is equally, if not more, fascinating, how disillusioned women get after many years of marriage. Especially if they're staying in the relationship only because their own feelings about propriety or the sanctity of marriage won't allow them to leave an unhappy situation. They come to realize at some point that Mr. Right is Mr. Wrong, and yet they stay for various reasons. This is so disheartening and probably one of the saddest things I can ever hear. I keep hearing women say they wish they never got married, or that they love their kids, but wish they never had them.

I know marriage is probably one of the hardest things people will ever do in their lives, and you do see couples who are genuinely happy. Good for them if they actually find true love or even better, true friendship in their spouses. But when their partners are so undeserving, unappreciative and uncaring, why spend the rest of your life like that? Women get so boxed in by what society dictates, or expects of them. They define themselves as mothers, wives, homemakers, forgetting that they are persons, individuals who need to, as Oprah says, live their best lives.

Here's Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.