Evan Rachel Wood dumped fiancé Marilyn Manson (again), making them a couple fast joining the flip-flopping ranks of Pam and Tommy Lee, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Jude and Sienna.

Some might think such fickle romance is evidence of “passion” or intensity, but to me it’s juvenile. Either the parties are employing the middle-school tactic of gauging each other’s devotion with threats, or worse, they’re just sticking around for fear of being alone until something better comes along.

We’ve all seen it with our friends. They get back together with someone who less than a week prior they declared beneath them, not in anger but with solemnity. They opt to stay with someone with a documented history of cheating and other shenanigans. They overlook fundamental differences in the name of security — or maybe just distraction.

Please, spare us. We can only feign sympathy so many times before we just want to shake you and cry out, "Smack out of it!"

I suppose the “can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em” mentality can be construed as romantic, but what does that even mean? Actually, it means “fanciful; impractical; unrealistic.”

It’s impossible in practice. How do you spend your life with someone you can’t live with?

I totally relate to the abrupt clarity of realizing that you don’t actually like the person you’re dating. You like the way they treat you (or did), maybe the reflection of their admiration, but not them so much. Only I thought, in the simple way I once thought that the next step after “I love you” was engagement, that when you came to such a realization, you bailed. For good.

I read a quote once somewhere (mmkay let's be honest, it was, like, last week in my ritual perusal of the NYT wedding announcements) that marriage was “an ordeal.” I really, really like that.

The officiant at this wedding between two academics (of course) called it “a wonderful confinement” and “a big risk.”

“The risk is failure, the risk is limiting yourself to one relationship. But you’re also deepening yourself. Marriage is an ordeal. In ancient times, an ordeal was what you went through to develop your own authentic self.”

Bailing and then breaking down isn’t an ordeal any more than it’s a commitment. It’s impulsive and short-sighted in the worst way.

And I doubt the odds of developing an authentic self while you’re in the midst of denying or indulging it.

I’m going to my first friend-wedding this weekend (all my prior wedding experience has been for family and friends-of-family) and I, along with everyone else, am incredibly excited for our first bride to bite the dust.

Maybe that’s why I’m caught up in (perhaps over) analysis, or maybe it’s because I’m creeping into an age where it’s no longer appealing to dick around.

Whatever the cause, I’m wishing my friend and her husband a perfectly exquisite ordeal.