Thirty Years

Married like that.

We met in 1988.

The first rule of marriage: There is marriage and everything else, and everything else doesn’t count. I’m talking about ‘relationships’, which are basically transitory adventures into self-indulgence or usury depending upon who has the upper hand. But I don’t want to talk about relationships other than marriage other than as bad examples, or things that, depending upon your ultimate needs could destroy some fraction of your married life. That is true even if you’re not yet even married.

You see the difficulty in dealing with jumping over that hurdle and getting married is that most Americans today think that they can survive its dissolution. So when I talk about marriage, the first thing I had to reflect on my thinking about marriage. I asked myself what’s the worst thing that could happen. So pretend I’m giving you advice - with the understanding that I don’t think any woman has ever asked me for marriage advice.

On background, I got married when I was 33 years old. I would guess that between the ages of 16 and 33, what 17 years? I had at least 17 girlfriends. So let that be the unofficial number - and by girlfriends I mean women that I have known intimately in that old Biblical sense. Seventeen Girlfriends is another book. The point is I didn’t marry my highschool sweetheart. I had most every opportunity to be wild and when I turned 30 I was beginning to get bored with breaking hearts, especially my own.

When guys ask me, I tell them to think of the top three characteristics they want in a woman. Presuming they are mature enough to know themselves, they can readily identify these things. And quite frankly I think every man knows ‘their type’. That kind of counts. My type is a look. The look is Zoe Saldana in Lioness. For me ‘my type’ was syrup on the banana split, not the banana or the ice cream. I wanted suave elegance. I wanted smarts. I wanted independent mindedness. So I would say that if you get one out of three, toss her back. That would be a fishing metaphor. If you get three out of three, beware you might be in over your head. That’s a Moby Dick metaphor. Two out of three ain’t bad. Work with it.

You don’t want to be the guy who is always saying “I’m the luckiest guy in the world.” because you managed to get three for three. You want to be the guy who says “We are an effective team.” But I’m getting ahead of myself. When you’ve got two or three out of three the next step is to go through this mental exercise which is via negativa. And I think it’s the more important question that clarifies what one, two, or three out of three means. Think of everything you know about her, especially the negative things. Now imagine the thing you fear most about her. What can you imagine her actually doing that would absolutely devastate you seven years into your marriage? Be honest. You come home and there is that awful, unbearable thing right in your face. Would you still marry her today? Would it be worth it?

See? If you get three out of three, you’d probably be extra vulnerable and then you would be extra destroyed. You’d go psychotic, or maybe - yeah well I never really deserved her anyway. “I should have known.” One out of three, and you would also be saying “I should have known.” Like when the wheel falls off your beater. Yeah whatever. So two out of three is the happiest medium. It worked for me, anyway.

Rule number one in marriage. Don’t question the marriage. This is an ironclad rule. You have to be in it for life. You have to get to the point at which you realize with some finality that you never want to be married with anybody else, ever. Not for the kids’ sake. Not for your family’s sake. For your own sake. For her sake. In other words what you want is not her so much as you want to be married to her. You want to be subservient to the marriage. Questioning the marriage is like making bomb jokes at the airport in Tel Aviv. It’s like climbing outside the balcony railing on the 23rd floor. It’s playing Russian roulette with your own sanity. Don’t question the marriage. Remember you said it would be worth it even if she did that thing.