Looks around room at 120ish-year-old desk, hundreds of books with an average age of probably 30 years with some as old as 160 years, 50-year-old record player and receiver, 60-year-old lamp, 20+ year old guitars that will likely last decades more with minimal maintenance, wood floors that should last literally a lifetime, and decade-old shoes that I expect to still be wearing in 20 years
I mean... kinda? The ones that don't involve microelectronics and aren't mostly fabric, yeah, lots of them may as well last forever, from the perspective of a human lifetime.
Well, I'm not doing that, though, so... bad on me, I guess?
But I have LEGOs that are probably way, way older than the average length of a romantic relationship. Hell, they're probably quite a bit older than the average length of a marriage. That's just true. My kids have some metal trucks made a decade before I was born and with hundreds of hours of kid-play-time on them, that they still play with. And those are just kids' toys, not things made for use by adults who will be careful with them! Lots of stuff does last a really long time.
Quite a bit of stuff does indeed get a ton closer to lasting "forever" (say, an entire human lifespan) than most serious relationships do. Normal consumer shit, too, not, like, gothic cathedrals or something.
Treating things as less-disposable than a serious partner is probably not a great idea, but, in actual fact, they... kinda are.
A sufficient quantity of money, invested judiciously, can, yes. And that money can buy experiences as much as it can material objects. Deep companionship is something I’ve experienced both as a poor person and as a wealthy one. It’s not as durable as the wealth.
