What Does The Death Of Love Look Like?

Just in time for winter, when the streets empty, people start whining about seasonal affective disorder, and icy hand of the season pushes people together for warmth, science has figured out the exact moment that love dies in a marriage. And by "science" I mean "some poll of obviously bitter married people quoted in The Daily Mail, Britain's most reliable newspaper."

Two years, six months and 25 days: The length of time it takes before romance is dead. The honeymoon period is officially over two years, six months and 25 days into wedlock, according to new research. This is the point in the average marriage where both partners take each other, and their relationship, completely for granted.

After the second wedding anniversary couples are far more likely to scatter socks and pants around the house, leave the toilet seat up, hog the remote control and go without make-up.

Some would see all of those things not as the "death of romance," but as two people naturally growing more comfortable with each other with the passage of time. Not the Daily Mail, however. They're clearly angry that married people would just let the roaring fire of their romance cool down to a few glowing embers. Although judging by the stock photo they chose to illustrate this story, it's obvious that the Daily Mail has a very unique, highly specific standard for what romance is:

Ah, romance. Weird, stiff romance.

Don't we all want what this couple has been photo-shopped into? Wouldn't we all like to go back to the days when our love for each other was new, and passion meant sitting next to our spouse in what looks like an electronics funeral parlor, watching the 24-hour slow-motion-stallions-running-in-the-surf marathon on the Romance Channel? Unfortunately though life isn't a furniture show room. We're not perfect stock photo models who are easily entertained by romantic horses, no matter how much The Daily Mail wants us to be.

Unless of course this picture is meant to depict the exact moment when love dies, in which case, good job, Daily Mail!