Support system -- too much of a good thing?

I’m finally meeting one of my best friends from college – and she lives just two streets away. Not quite sure why I didn’t rush to meet her; might have just been general lethargy, or is it subaltern for running away from my past? I’ll never know, because I finally got my ass up and had dinner with her.
After hurriedly getting her 2-year-old daughter some chocolates (which her husband, also a close friend ate with great gusto – turns out she doesn’t like chocolate all that much), I landed at her place. Her daughter apparently did not like me too much, and she has NO stranger anxiety, it seems! After meeting her husband, we bid goodbye to get on our journey, in the bike that must have seen a million potholes.
My friend, whom we’ll call S., has put on quite a bit of weight. Motherhood, I guess.
In any case, we go over a few more potholes, and wait at the gas station petrol bunk for two litres of petrol. Shouldn’t the reading be 2.02 at the pump? I guess not. Seems like the guy is doing some fraud, and I try to be the Jhansi Rani of Chennai, but the kids brush me off like I was crazy. Maybe I am.
In any case, two of us helmeted ladies reach Duchess Restaurant, and S. walks in with a defiant look on her face – like she’s going in for battle. On the way, of course, I’ve heard her tell me she’s hungry (really hungry, dead hungry, will-die-in-two-seconds-if-I-don’t-eat-right-now hungry) about a zillion times. It’s not like I can fly on my bike, but anyways.
So we walk in, and she practically orders for me, and seemed really desolate that I had decided to order vegetarian food. Something about the place made me want to stick on to my roots, or did it? Was it her? Is it India? I had not really eaten any (substantial) non-vegetarian food in Chennai since we arrived.
Anyways, what I got from the conversation was that all around her, relationships were breaking up. People were getting divorced, or sleeping with other people, or generally unhappy with their current lives.
True words. With increased financial independence and that “archenemy” of contentment, choices, women (and men) no longer think of relationships, and marriage, as being something “permanent.” They are, at best, the result of what was the best-case scenario at the time of the wedding.
Like an electron in its ground state (new information I gathered from one of our e-learning courses- hehe), people are constantly looking for ways to make that jump to the excited state. If an outside gamma ray comes and hits them, their bond to the nucleus is broken quite easily.
The concept of the existence something better out there that might not require this much work is ever-present in the minds of some of these high-tech DINK couples. Even DISK couples.
Working on a relationship might be really difficult for them, then. For people like me.
What makes it extra difficult in India is the fact that you have a support system that’s crazy, and will hold you no matter what.
Whenever V. and I fought in the U.S., sheer boredom would drive us back together. Desperate to talk and make up, we would. But here, I noticed (of course we’ve already fought), I don’t have a need to speak with him. I have my parents-in-law, work, friends, hundreds of books, cooking, and lots of other things to keep me busy. And it’s the same with V. – he has regular bridge games, doing little chores around the house, this and that. Actually, come to think of it, it does seem like he has less to do overall here!
So the support system that is looked at wistfully from shores beyond is working in devious ways within the country. Friends speak with each other, get drunk, and communication between partners is not exactly essential for either party’s survival.
I am independent and so are you, so let's all quit getting sentimental!
I‘ll stop my verbal diarrhea now; got to go.
But you get the point.