What If Friendship, Not Marriage, Was at the Center of Life?

Only a couple of times per week? I found this statement kind of funny. Now that I'm married with kids, and my best friends have kids, im lucky if I see them once every few months! Right now I spend more time with my kids' friends families than I do my personal friends.

That doesn't always happen though. I feel the most lonely when I'm alone with my wife. We can only have a back and forth conversation on topics that interest her, or the day to day of the house/kids, anything outside those things is just never discussed or is a one-way conversation that just dies.

I was friendless and grew up with the same 15 boys until the end of highschool, never fit in. Married the first girl who showed me attention, because whatever she had going on was better than the nothing social life I had. Breaking up with her would put me back being the lonely awkward kid at my parents house.

So now two kids and a mortgage later... realizing that being married to a 2/10 friend is very lonely. The Venn diagram of what I like to think and talk about covers what she likes to think and talk about, but we never talk about or do almost anything in my section of the diagram.

Apparently this problem has been happening since time immemorial - from a This is Love podcast...

Phoebe Judge: Many people say the first ever advice column started in the 1690s in England in a publication called The Athenian Mercury. People wrote in with very big questions like, is there a large part of the world still left to discover? The answer was just one word — yes. Someone wrote, “Who are wisest, those who marry for love or for convenience?” The answer was:

There is no degree of wisdom in either, but they're both fools if they marry for one without the other. Love without the necessary conveniences of life will soon wear threadbare. And conveniences without love are no better than being chained to a post for the sake of a little meat, drink, and clothing. But if we compare the small degrees of each together, much love and moderate convenience is far better than the most plentiful estate with little or no love.

Communicate? Yes. Socialize? No.

It's easier to socialize when you are physically beside someone.

There are less kids playing in the street. They are no arcades.

As a parent you must bring your child to other children. You must encourage or mandate extracurricular activities.

We are not a society where children are naturally surrounded by other children in their 0-4 years.

We are not a society where adults are naturally surrounded by similiar adults outside of the in office work space.

Its a matter of proximity and what is the default state.

I'm an atheist, but this is an honest question: does it?

My understanding of catholic doctrine is that Jesus was part of the holy Trinity and knew it before he sacrificed himself.

Therefore when he sacrificed himself for humanity he wasn't in the sort of personal danger or at risk of eternal damnation that a mere mortal in his shoes would be.

I've always understood that as God making a grand gesture of some sort, not that Jesus was in personal danger comparable to that of a mortal in his shoes.

Of course being tortured for days before being guaranteed a seat by God's side in heaven upon death would royally suck in the short term.

But I'd think an internally cotsisconsistent interpretation of doctrine would call for a personal sacrifice short of that of Jesus in his last days from a mere mortal, the odds being stacked in the deity's favor. No?