LONG MARRIAGE, WITH AGREEMENT DEALS

If you are in a marriage, long or short, bride or groom, and it’s your first one, you are aware of certain deals, made aware of certain deals, from the start.

They begin with to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.

I’m finally getting it, I think I get it. Taking it from the top with a question popped.

You said let’s get married, they said let’s get married, someone said you sound married.

Somehow it came up at the right time and you both agreed to get married.

The agreement came with unspoken visions of the future in each partner.

Fact check me on this, ask your significant spouse, but both people see themselves as being the better one who is also richer, healthier, and lovable with a long lifespan ahead of them.

Am I wrong?

Two of the best people decide to share their lives together and grow richer, healthier, and more lovable together every year.

That’s the plan. I started with my wardrobe for the big day: a white shirt.

I needed more than a white shirt? Okay, a white shirt and a jean jacket. No? I’ll borrow a leather jacket from Glenn.

One thing led to another and the best of us agreed I’d wear the same morning coat Prince Charles wore in his wedding to Diana.

It had an eerie resemblance to the rig I wore to the high school prom, or maybe it was just me. Either way, I didn’t bring it up.

What else didn’t come up? A letter from a former flame who said they’d be in town over the same weekend.

Would I like to get together?

 

The Situation

If you intend to be better, richer, healthier, and lovable, getting together with a former flame before your wedding is a bad idea.

If you were raised in a culture of poorer, sicker, and despicable, where marriage was a revolving door, where being a side-chick, where having a side-chick, was the standard because who wants to get stuck and have to consider feelings when you’ve got someone in waiting as icy as the South Pole, sex with a former flame is an easy call.

But let’s take a closer look. First the former flame.

She knows you’re getting married and wants to remind you of what you’ll be missing?

That’s what she’s thinking: one, more, chance?

A clear minded man would see this and remember why she’s a former flame, why you moved on.

A sensitive man would also understand that their flame had not gone out, and remember the advice given during that break-up.

“If you don’t have a bad break-up they’ll always think they have another chance. You don’t want that.”

Does that sound right? I’m thinking of the multiple divorced women whose best friends are her ex-husbands, which sounds right for them.

I’m a fan of marriage, of a wife, of an open phone to never check, an open browser to never check, of no quiet phone calls, or sweet perfumed envelopes in the mail.

Call me old fashioned. Besides, aren’t most writers carousing drunks with girlfriends and mistresses and a closet with a big lock on the door.

Aren’t they?

 

One Long Term Marriage Challenge

Me: What happens when you turn on a water faucet?

Wife: Here we go. Water comes out. And you want to track it back to its origins.

Me: We already did that.

Wife: Yes, we did. Now you want to track it down the drain?

Me: Can you?

Wife: Water goes down the drain and out to a waste water pipe. It might be a sewer pipe eventually, but not yet. Then it drains into a larger pipe connected to the water treatment pipe. The water get pumped around and until it’s cleaned enough to drain into Fanno Creek with leads to the Tualatin River that drains into Oswego Lake, then the Willamette River, the Columbia River, and out to the Pacific Ocean. Did I miss anything.

Me: You make me so proud.

You’ve heard divorced people talk about growing apart?

“We grew apart.”

People do grow apart, that’s not the issue. How does it happen?

Maybe one of the couple tires of the ‘where does water go’ kind of talk.

You’ve worn them down with topics of conversation off the usual subjects of health, fitness, weight loss, cooking, money, housing, food, high costs, travel, style, topiary, you know, the usual.

They’re tired of talking about books and movies and art and poetry and buildings and soil and flowers.

If that’s not you, it’s the other person, then you need to act fast.

 

PS:

(In Elmer Fudd voice) Be very, very, careful with what you say.

I’ll help.

 

PSS:

Me: I’ve got a new one to try.

Wife: Not now.

Me: Oh, come on.

Wife: What?

Me: Where does the power come from when you turn on a light.

Wife: OMG.

Me: Well?

Wife: This isn’t what we need to talk about.

Me: But it’s fun.

Wife: Kind of.

Me: Then we’re having fun?

Wife: I guess.

Me: I’m writing this down. On this date we had fun.

Wife: It comes from a switch hooked to a wire attached by electrical nuts in a junction box wired to the breaker box with a big power line hooked to the underground lines going out to a sub-station, then a bigger power station with lines to the turbines on the dams spinning electricity.

Me: When you say it, it sounds like music. A good beat, easy to dance to.

Wife: Okay Dick Clark, get over here. See that table? Where does the wood come from.

Me: