“In our society, of course, there is no need to become an adult. One may remain—one is exhorted daily to remain—a child forever.
“Marriage is pictured as a form of imprisonment, oppression, boredom, and chafing hindrance. Not all these accusations are wrong; but the superstition surrounding them is. Marriage is an assault upon the lonely, atomic ego. Marriage is a threat to the solitary individual. Marriage does impose grueling, humbling, baffling, and frustrating responsibilities. Yet if one supposes that precisely such things are the preconditions for all true liberation, marriage is not the enemy of moral development in adults. Quite the opposite.
“People say of marriage that it is boring, when what they mean is that it terrifies them: too many and too deep are its searing revelations, its angers, its rages, its hates, and its loves. They say of marriage that it is deadening, when what they mean is that it drives us beyond adolescent fantasies and romantic dreams. They say of children that they are piranhas, eels, brats, snots, when what they mean is that the importance of parents with respect to the future of their children is now known with greater clarity and exactitude than ever before.
“It is almost impossible to write honestly of marriage and family. Who would like the whole world to know the secret failures known to one’s spouse and one’s children?
“Being married and having children has impressed on my mind certain lessons, for whose learning I cannot help being grateful. Most are lessons of difficulty and duress. Most of what I am forced to learn about myself is not pleasant. The quantity of sheer impenetrable selfishness in the human breast (in my breast) is a never-failing source of wonderment. I do not want to be disturbed, challenged, troubled. Huge regions of myself belong only to me. Getting used to thinking of life as bicentered, even multi-centered, is a struggle of which I had no suspicion when I lived alone. Seeing myself through the unblinking eyes of an intimate, intelligent other, an honest spouse, is humiliating beyond anticipation. Maintaining a familial steadiness whatever the state of my own emotions is a standard by which I stand daily condemned. A rational man, acting as I act? To try to act fairly to children, each of whom is temperamentally different from myself and from each other, each of whom is at a different stage of perception and aspiration, is far more baffling than anything [years of college and graduate school] prepared me for.
“My dignity as a human being depends perhaps more on what sort of husband and parent I am than on any professional work I am called upon to do. My bonds to them hold me back (and my wife even more) from many sorts of opportunities. And yet these do not feel like bonds. They are, I know, my liberation. They force me to be a different sort of human being, in a way in which I want and need to be forced.”
— Michael Novak, from an article titled “Family Out of Favor,” which first appeared in the April 1976 issue of Harper’s Magazine, and also appears in Novak’s book “The Myth of Romantic Love and Other Essays“)
https://xomarriage.com/?s=Dave+Willis
What Is Real True Love? 
So much to chew on here, some of it uncomfortable. But very good stuff. Thanks John…haven’t seen a post from you in awhile!
Thank you, Jonathan. I’m going to try to blog a bit more frequently. Buen Camino on your travels!