Comment by mrkeen

> What’s the referent of “my spouse” if I’m unmarried?

* It's the same referent as all the other things you don't have. Your struct has a Spouse, why does it not also have a RivieraChateau, a SantaClaus, BankAccountInSwissFrancs. If you can answer why you left those out, you know why to leave out Spouse.

* Why stick to 0-1 Spouses. As soon as you do that you're gonna need n Spouses, where some of them will have an ex- flag set, married from&to timestamps.

> Is your point here that every pointer type for which this can be the case should include an explicitly typed null value?

* It shouldn't make a difference whether it's a pointer or a reference or a value or a class. If you believe null is one of the Integers, you should also believe that null is one of the ints. Why should your domain change to accommodate C idioms.