why one man rather than another?

I share these 24 hours surrounding the anniversary of my birth with one of the most famous single women to put pen to paper, Simone de Beauvoir. Throughout her life as a prominent intellectual, de Beauvoir never married, instead preferring a (somewhat twisted) partnership with fellow philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre. In her honor, I quote some of her ideas on marriage:

"The curse which lies upon marriage is that too often the individuals are joined in their weakness rather than in their strength - each asking from the other instead of finding pleasure in giving. It is even more deceptive to dream of gaining through the child a plenitude, a warmth, a value, which one is unable to create for oneself; the child brings joy only to the woman who is capable of disinterestedly desiring the happiness of another, to one who without being wrapped up in self seeks to transcend her own existence.”

“On the day when it will be possible for woman to love not in her weakness but in strength, not to escape herself but to find herself, not to abase herself but to assert herself - on that day love will become for her, as for man, a source of life...”

“Why one man rather than another? It was odd. You find yourself involved with a fellow for life just because he was the one that you met when you were nineteen.”

"Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day.”

“To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job.”