Marriage Quote by Judith Viorst

Marriage gets pitched as the triumph of feeling; Judith Viorst treats it as a scaffold for when feelings fail. The line lands because it refuses the modern romance script that love is a constant, renewable resource and that authenticity requires immediate action the moment your heart changes. Instead, she smuggles in a bracingly unsexy premise: affection is cyclical, and commitment is a kind of emotional shock absorber.

The slyness is in the phrase "one advantage" - as if marriage were a consumer product with features, not a sacred vow. That framing strips the institution of its sentimental aura and replaces it with practicality: marriage is valuable precisely when it is least Instagrammable. "It keeps you together" sounds almost mechanical, like a seatbelt or a locked door. The subtext is that permanence isn't always romantic; sometimes it's protective. It blocks the impulsive exit ramp that contemporary culture often celebrates as self-care or self-actualization.

Viorst also equalizes the risk: "you... or he..". acknowledges the mutual, alternating nature of disillusionment. Love isn't a moral badge one partner wears correctly. It's weather, with fronts moving through. The real provocation is her implied critique of the soul-mate fantasy: if you expect uninterrupted passion, you'll treat normal turbulence as proof of failure. Her marriage, by contrast, is built to survive the ordinary: boredom, resentment, exhaustion, the slow drift of attention.

It's funny because it’s true in a slightly bleak way: the "advantage" is not bliss, but time - time long enough for tenderness to return.