In approximately one hour and forty-five minutes, I will sit before the Blessed Sacrament and contemplate, meditate, and pray. I will pray for a dear friend for whom I ask of God inner tranquility, happiness, and love.

I think our ideas of love are rather small, tumescence, moisture, tactile response, to fabricate a drama between our ears. Sometimes we attempt from the act of coitus to construct a bond lasting 50 or 75 years, until death takes a partner away. The realists, of course, know better. From what, or where, do they derive their wisdom?

We pledge before God our fealty to this bond. At the same time, our little minds are thinking of a way to opt out. Our infidelity, our partner’s infidelity, our alcoholism, their alcoholism, our mutual alcoholism all offer compelling reasons.

There are the damaged innocents, children whose scars are sometimes deep, always painful.

Tomorrow, I shall meet my divorced niece’s boyfriend. Or if I go to the family gathering tomorrow, I shall meet him. But the truth is I don’t want to go. Much as I love my family, this is too painful. The broken marriages, my own, my son’s and my brother’s, hurt too much.

I have been married to my current wife for twenty two years . We last had sex, maybe, twenty years ago. Must I relive this dream that always seems to morph into a nightmare?

The honeymoon is always way too short.