Not if it works.

Not as much as a messy divorce or breakup between people who don't work at love :)

When I call them lies, I didn't mean to say they don't exist, or that two people can't be happy, in love and monogamous forever.

But we certainly misrepresent to children the prevalence of this sort of thing.

Look at fairy tales and movies. To a child, _all_ people grow up, meet their perfect true love, marry them and stay together forever. As for the damaging part of the lie, of course there's no need to work at a relationship because the match is just so perfect.

That's why I started out saying "working at love" - make sure to tell kids that things don't magically turn out happily ever after. Tell them that lots of marriages end because of things like money, selfishness, infidelity, and boredom.

There are a lot of things about my marriage that are worse than when I was single, but there are a lot of things that are a whole lot better. On balance I'm way ahead, but we both work at it every day. It's worth working at because of how great it is. And that's a truth worth telling.