Marriage Quote by Robert Anderson

A week into marriage, the romance has already taken its first hard collision with logistics: whose mess is whose, whose silence means what, whose childhood baggage now lives in the bedroom. Robert Anderson’s line works because it refuses the sentimental lie that a good marriage is one that never generates a case for leaving. He treats “grounds for divorce” as inevitable, not scandalous - a standing inventory of irritations, betrayals-in-miniature, and slow disappointments that accumulate simply because two people keep showing up as themselves.

The punch is the pivot: “The trick is to find, and continue to find, grounds for marriage.” Not “a reason,” as if there’s one grand justification you locate and then coast on. “Grounds” suggests evidence, a legal standard, something you have to keep assembling as new facts arrive. The repetition (“find, and continue to find”) frames marriage less as a vow you make once than a practice you renew under changing conditions.

Anderson’s soldierly background sharpens the subtext. Soldiers understand endurance, not as stoic suffering, but as active maintenance: discipline, recalibration, choosing the mission again after it’s gotten muddy. The quote turns commitment into a form of vigilance. Divorce isn’t presented as taboo; it’s presented as always available. The culture war here is subtle: against the fairy tale of effortless compatibility, and against the modern fantasy that leaving is the only honest response to friction. Anderson’s wager is that staying can be just as lucid - if you keep earning it.