Tom, I understand your point. For many characters this makes sense and is true. However, for Spider-Man in particular, his history and particular set of circumstances inform us he has failed unless his marriage is restored. OMD showed Peter lose his marital union with true love with Mephisto as the victor. He wanted their marriage and he got it. And Peter and MJ lost. Since then they have failed to recover from this. The narrative dictates that success is to get that back.

I don’t think that I can agree with that, especially after so much time has passed. You are invested in this situation and this relationship because you were there when Peter and MJ were married and when this split happened. But the readers who have come into the fold since then are not (and, in fact, these days many of them seem more interested in re-establishing the Peter/Gwen relationship, thanks to the last two Spidey movies.) The point being that most Spidey fans haven’t been standing around for the past 8 years or so unable to move forwards. Some have–and if you can’t deal with the situation in Spider-Man, if it’s not to your liking, it’s completely reasonable to walk away. But you’re talking about solving a problem here that isn’t truly a problem, to any but a shrinking few.