Never mind the stuff life throws at when you choose to tie the knot. What about the stuff you wind up throwing at each other? Yes, you take on a lot when you promise to have and to hold. But as long as you have and hold each other, you can handle whatever marriage has in store?
Let me tell you what is less of a commitment than getting married: buying a house. I mean, what? That’s like 20 years of paying off a bond, or roughly a quarter of your life. (Okay, more like 12 solid years of paying off the interest of your home loan and then paying off brick by brick until yay, you finally own your lawn.)
You know what else is less of a commitment than marriage? Having a baby. Even if your darling ankle-biter turns into a 32-year-old, sweatpants-wearing XBox addict who still borrows your petrol card and dumps his dirty laundry at your feet on weekends, that’s still less of a commitment than marriage.
Why? Because when you walk down the aisle you are looking at 50 years of waking up next to the same person. Taking into the account the advancements of modern medicine, pitted against the advancements of fried foods and drive-thrus.
Fifty freaking years, people!
Here is the thing no one tells you about getting marriage: there is no way you can fully comprehend what you are signing up for when you say “to have and to hold forever and ever, until death do us part”. How? There is nothing you can compare it to, no life experience you can reference – you just hope you picked the right person, and together you leap off a cliff called Happily Ever After, into the great unknown.
Imagine wearing the same colour nail polish every day for five straight decades? I’m crazy about Essie’s Mojito Madness green, but I’m not sure I can pull that shade off in my Judi Dench years (but that silver fox can pull off anything, damn her).
So why do we do it? Any married couple will tell you that the chemistry and heady rush of hormones doesn’t last. And romance, well – the longer you are together, the harder you have to work at all that ‘flowers and date night’ stuff.
Why do we get married, not knowing what the future could hold?
In our case the future held a disabled child, and a black streak of unemployment woes – and we are just eight years in. I feel a bit hysterical when I ponder what the great roulette wheel of life still holds in store for us, as a couple, over the next 42 years.
Will we become victims of violent crime?
Will one of us get wiped out in a car accident?
Will there be a zombie apocalypse? (FYI: I hope I get ‘turned’ early on, so I can spend the rest of the end of the world feasting on brains – survival seems like too much effort for very little reward.)
Anyway, that is just the stuff that life could throw at us. Then there is the stuff that we will throw at each other. “It’s impossible to know what the inside of someone’s marriage looks like,” I like to preach to my friends, and it’s true. No matter what your marriage looks like on the outside, behind closed doors you could be throwing all kinds of curveballs and muttered curses and the occasional bit of crockery at each other. So…
Will we throw in the towel and get divorced?
I read something the other day called 7 Things About Marriage I Wish I’d Known As A Newlywed that put things into perspective for me, especially point number three: “The sooner you ditch the notion of fairness, the happier you’ll be.” This is solid advice.
The answer to my question is, of course: you don’t know.
Life happens. People change, relationships change, and here is the critical thing: marriages change. The couples that stay together are the ones that roll with the punches the best, not the ones who stick it out the longest.
What do you think?
* This piece was originally published on 12 December 2014.
Leave a Reply