A Treatise on Marriage: Part II: Not Screwing Up the Most Important Decision of Your Life

  
I think there are very few people out there that are equipped to be single. By "equipped" I mean that these people would be perfectly content without being married and would feel no sense of incompleteness or longing. The rest of us want to be married, admit it or not, and that's just fine because that's the way our Creator intended it to be. If you haven't taken the big leap yet, you are either wanting to and are waiting, or you don't want to and are hoping that you can glean the fringe benefits of marriage without the commitment. For those in that latter group, I regret to inform you that things won't go well for you that way and that you'll just be creating wreckage in your life and in the lives of those with whom you connect. I'll call this latter group "marriage hackers", as they are trying to circumvent the author's designs and safeguards to get what they want without cost.

 

Those in the former group--the wanting-and-waiting group--will either end up waiting long enough and will find a nice, compatible spouse or will jump the gun and make a choice that will lead down a harder, more difficult road, not necessarily destined for failure, but far bumpier than necessary.  I think the ultimate problems the gun-jumpers in the w&w group have will center around either impatience or a lack of due diligence.

 

Impatience is poisonous in everyday life, and when you're looking for Mr. or Mrs. Right, you can't be swilling poison like it's a Dr. Pepper^®. So you want to get married: are you willing to wait for the best, or will you be satisfied with simply good enough? The best is very seldom the first one through the door. Sometimes it can be, but more often it is not. In time, the "good" in "good enough" may fade and disappear, leaving you with just "enough". Waiting can be the hardest thing in the world when you want something badly, but we need to realize that not waiting seldom yields the best results, and waiting will only yield the best results if we exercise due diligence.

 

Due diligence is primarily a legal or business term which means that you properly investigate another business or person before signing a contract with that person. This in no way is meant to suggest that you hire a private investigator to delve into the lives of your marital prospects. That would probably communicate the wrong message and at best would be off-putting, if not thoroughly offensive and a deal-breaker. What I'm suggesting is that as you are getting to know one another, you are asking questions that will illuminate areas of conflict and compatibility. Of all things, this seems the biggest no-brainer, but many people think that just getting along in a dating relationship is all it takes to prove that a marriage will work. If it were only that simple...

 

You need to know about those areas you don't experience until you are married. This includes the big, more critical areas of a marriage relationship, such as faith, children, finances, and general expectations concerning the gender roles in married life. If you are extra-thrifty, will someone with a history of maxing out credit cards bring you happiness or grief? If a traditional wife-at-home marriage is what you want, do you think it's wise to consider that your girlfriend, a law student, is a good prospect?  In some ways, opposites compliment each other and make a couple more well-rounded. In other ways, it creates conflict which can make a 25-to-Life sentence for murder seem like a bargain. Rejecting prospects with whom you differ greatly in the critical areas will ultimately prove wise. This being true, lingering in a pre-marital relationship where these differences exist seems counter-productive.

 

So if you find yourself in that conflict-ridden class of people--Those Not Yet Married Who Want to Be--please be content to wait for a decent prospect. They're out there, doing the same thing you're doing. You just have to be willing to wait long enough for your paths to cross. When you think your paths have crossed, make sure you're asking the right questions. It pays to know all of these things in advance. After all, 25-to-Life is a long time.

 

I'll leave you with this: advice I received in my pre-marital existence which proved to be good and solid. "God gives his best to those who leave the choice to Him." Ask Him, every day,  to provide the person that He would have you marry, then be content to wait for that to happen.  His choice for you won't be disappointing. Unfortunately, He doesn't work on our timetable, but the best is worth the wait.

Trust me.

---

Stay tuned for Part III: The Glue

How a Man Smells

I love Old Spice. I've been a fan since my late teen years, those strange times when you think that an unnatural scent is all it will take to make you irresistible to the opposite sex. Here, some years removed from that embarrassing era, I've retained my fondness for the simplicity of Old Spice. I'm not a big user of after shaves or colognes, but I am a faithful user of Old Spice deodorants, and their after shave is top in my rotation.

I also love their commercials.

A Treatise on Marriage: Part I: "To Marry or Not to Marry: That is the Question"

 Up front, let me offer a few givens that you will need in understanding my opinions.

1. I am a Christian and everything I offer will be from that perspective.
2. In light of #1, same-sex unions are deviant and fall far outside of my discussion.
3. I believe that since the institution of marriage was designed by God, anything that falls outside this original design can succeed, but shouldn't be expected to.
4. Even the best of Christian marriages consist of two sinners, both possessing the ability to lie to and deceive the other. There is always a chance of failure, even when everything is done right from the beginning. The idea is to make your chance of failure so minimal that it would be more likely that you'll be struck by lightning or sucked into a vortex and deposited on Mars.

 

That said, let's move on...

---

Marriage is a good thing. After all, it was created by God, and everything He made is good. He said so, after all, and God is the only being for whom a self-compliment is not a vain and selfish thing. It is mankind that mucked things up, and he didn't wait long to start doing that either.

Just because marriage--the art of getting along with one person exclusively for a majority of your days here on earth--is a difficult process, doesn't mean that it should be a process to be avoided. It is, as ministers of old have said, "an honorable estate." It is designed as a remedy to loneliness, a way to respectfully perpetuate the species, and the only legitimate outlet for one of the strongest drives a man can experience (more in Part III). It gives you someone to keep you warm at night, a partner in the Struggle of Life, a best friend, a confidante, a teammate. It gives you the opportunity to create something that is a part of the both of you, and have this thing endure and become a person that would never have existed had you not loved one another and both loved that child. These are some really cool fringe benefits.

Of course, some will only see the negative aspects of being married. I choose not to address any negative aspects of being married because I don't think there are any. There are negative aspects to living. Remember: we mucked things up in the beginning and we've continued to do so. Any negative aspects that a person attributes to marriage are really just negative aspects that reflect on the individual, not marriage itself.

Self-interest is what motivated that first couple, in the midst of their marital bliss, to screw it up for the rest of us. We've continued the family tradition of selfishness, from generation to generation, with even the best of people passing on a degree of it down the line. Some capitalize on it a good deal heavier than others, but it's always there. Knowing this would happen, the Creator designed two relationships that would force us to act unselfishly toward others, at least on a limited scale, or utterly fail at human relations. One is marriage. The second is parenthood.

So, marriage is good. It's good for you, and when you are committed to making it work properly, it's good for mankind. It's better than recycling, saving the rain forests or baby seals, and it's a lot better for the planet than limiting your carbon footprint. The destruction of mankind will have nothing to do with carbon and everything to do with the curse of selfishness.

So, I ask you: are you up to the challenge of saving the planet?

---

Stay tuned for Part II: Not Screwing Up the Most Important Decision of Your Life

 

Appreciation

It's nice to be appreciated.

It's nice to have someone compliment your work, especially your customers.

It's nice to receive unanticipated encouragement.

It's nice to not go unnoticed.

It's nice to know that if you were gone, someone would miss you.

It's nice to have others appreciate your creative passions, be it music, photography, painting, or a well-polished xanga post.

It's nice to have at least one person love you unconditionally. That's really all you need. One person.

It's nice to have someone listen and to know they're listening.

It's nice to have someone come up and put their arm around you when you are down.

It's nice to be any of this for someone else.