<strong><em>"We're all strangers, but after a while you get used to it. You become deeper strangers. That's a sort of love."</em></strong>

[caption id="attachment_1576" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Richard Castellano in &quot;Lovers and Other Strangers&quot;"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Richard-S.-Castellano-Lovers-and-Strangers.png"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1576" title="Richard S. Castellano Lovers and Strangers" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Richard-S.-Castellano-Lovers-and-Strangers-300x230.png" alt="" width="300" height="230" /></a>[/caption]

When I first saw<a title="Lovers and Other Strangers" href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066016/"> "Lovers and Other Strangers"</a> in 1970, I viewed the character played by Richard Castellano as the comic relief in the movie. His most frequent line was, "So what's the story, Richie?" as he tried to find out why the older of his two sons was getting a divorce.

The last few times I've watched the movie -- of course I have the DVD -- I have actually come to realize that his character, Frank Vecchio, whose younger son is the groom in the movie that is the movie's centerpiece, is actually the most important character of all.

He's the one who speaks the lines at the beginning of this piece, lines that say an awful lot about what marriage in America was once -- two people who shared enough and had enough in common that they could live together in relative happiness and raise a family.

My grandparents were married for nearly 65 years -- from 1920 until my grandfather died in 1985 -- and I can't remember ever seeing them hug or kiss or share any other sort of physical affection. I never heard them say they loved each other, but they stayed together and I never saw any sign that they <em>didn't</em> love or at least respect each other.

They stayed together.

So did most of the people I knew in my parents' generation. Things like no-fault divorce were much more rare in those days. Indeed, in some states the <em>only</em> grounds for divorce was adultery. That's the generation that Castellano's and Bea Arthur's characters in "Lovers and Other Strangers" inhabited. When Frank explains to his son Richie what people could share other than sex -- a love for good food, for example -- it sounded hilarious to those of us who were 20 years old in 1970.

But they made a commitment and they kept it. Unlike my generation; too many of us took the attitude not of "till death do us part" but instead "stay with it till it's no fun, then split."

That was why my first marriage essentially lasted a little less than four years and left me on my own again before I was 30 years old.

But if you hang in there, good things happen. This November, Nicole and I will celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary, and while I have no chance to live long enough for 65 years together and only a slim chance for 50, I know I went to spend the rest of my life with her.

Yes, in some ways we are strangers. I don't presume to understand her, although I try.

But we are deeper strangers, and that's a sort of love.

It really is.