Love the One You are With...

So lately I have been doing a lot of reading. Granted, it's not like I am choosing award winning works or even anything that I expect to be life changing however recently I have been frustrated with what I am coming up with. I love chick-lit...works written by women, about women, and for women. I love character driven stories that I feel I can relate to on some level. Last week I picked up this choice by Emily Griffin and to be fair I have read other novels recently that I would lump together with this particular selection but I wanted to throw it across the room with the turn of every chapter...why did I finish it then? Because a small sliver of me wanted to believe it would get better. It didn't.
This book is about woman who has a "perfect marriage"... now we all know this doesn't exist in the real world but in the book she really has this phenomenal guy who is good looking, wealthy, family-oriented lawyer, drives a BMW, wants kids, and says some incredibly romantic things. Who wouldn't wan this???
This woman runs into an old flame on the street in NYC and ends up having coffee with him. Over the course of events they begin to talk more and more and she even plans a trip to NYC after she has moved to Atlanta so she can go and "work on a project" with him.
This is all this book is about! Her thoughts and feelings that lead up to an "almost physical affair" are outrageous. She rationalizes their communication and becomes bitter with new life in Atlanta because she doesn't have to work, she has a beautiful house and all she has to do all day is go to the gym, shop, clean the house etc. Boo hoo! She begins to resent this life because it is not the passionate, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants life that she had with this old flame! I was disgusted with this character and her choices. In the end of the book she ends up kissing the old flame and strictly because of a phone call from her sister she goes back to her husband. She claims she HAD to kiss him to understand that love is a choice. Lame.
I am so frustrated with males and females treating marriage with such flippancy and especially with all of these chick-lit authors writing this crap that we are supposed to "relate to" and I can't. I hope that most people can't. I realize that without being married I may be missing something that only comes with experience but I have loved strongly. I have also had similar feelings of being "trapped" that this character expresses. I have not however, ever had a fleeting thought to kiss someone else or even communicate with a man while involved with another. I definately have never felt it was a NEED like this character in order to "find myself". Married, single, divorced and widowed people all probably experience boredom or lack of excitement in their lives at some point. We live in a society that requires some level of monotony ie going to work everyday or caring for your children all the time but my thoughts are why can't one just find a frickin hobby!