What was a strong marriage? What was a good marriage? She knew terrible people who had wonderful marriages, glued together somehow in their terribleness. And she knew fine, fine people who'd stood before God and all their friends to profess their undying love to each other only to toss that love on a slag heap a few years later. In the end, no matter how good they were--or thought they were--usually all that remained of the love they'd so publicly professed was vitriol, regret, and a kind of awed dismay at how dark the roads they'd ventured down became by the end.