The silly season is upon us again. They air is heavy with delusion. That’s right folks, it’s spring time, the season of love, peace and understanding. This, of course, is followed by a summer of doubt and then the autumn of hate, war and lawyers, completed by the winter of our discontent.
I’m speaking specifically to that contractual institution so pleasantly (or vulgarly, depending on whom you ask) known as marriage. Did you know that divorced couples all have one thing in common, without fail? They all got married. It is a well-known fact that if a person is single it is virtually impossible to get a divorce.
Most people don’t know what they are getting into when they slip on the golden leash and say “I do.”
Leash is so appropriate, too. I mean, come on, all newlyweds like to try out their new-found control. You have to test just how far you can push someone else.
Some might say this is the natural progression of a relationship. I am not so much concerned about the couples themselves, they will receive all that they so richly deserve in time. I am concerned about the not-quite-silent innocent victim of marriage, the friend.
Anyone who’s ever been married has seen this. First there were your friends and her friends. Then each of you had friends the other didn’t like. This is the first casualty. Then the leftovers become “our” friends, but you never really see them anyway, because you have either annoyed or ignored them to the point they really don’t want to be around anymore.
The few that do are those who manage to put up with the fact that both of you complain to them. I think you know what I mean. The “I am so mad at Joe/Jane right now, if they would only” complaints. This leaves the poor friends bewildered, as they have to pacify both parties in the interest of cranial integrity (it gives us headaches you see.)
Then, in the not quite inevitable ensuing divorce, just like everything else, the married couple divides up the friends. Sure, this happened a lot with that boyfriend/girlfriend stuff in high school, but this is permanent friend loss here. It involves money.
Therefore, marriage (and possibly divorce) leaves you with very few friends. Perhaps it would be better if we all just made babies, shook hands and agreed to keep our friends to ourselves.
Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe it’s worth what you give up, but so far I am not convinced. The fact is that so many of my friends are now getting married, and they don’t know what they are committing to.
If you believe that marriage is for the long haul, “for better for worse” like the preacher man says, don’t do it unless you are sure you want to spend the rest of your life with that person.
Imagine that person 50 years from now with no hair, bad eyes, on dialysis and constantly screaming for people who aren’t there. If you are ready for that, get married.
Imagine a life with someone you figure out you never loved in the first place, only it’s 20 years later and you have two kids, a house and a car which you can’t pay for, and if you got out now it would just be worse because, hey, you don’t have any friends because they all left when you decided as a couple (always as a couple) that, well, a few of your friends and a few of his/her friends should just not be invited to the backyard barbecue anymore.
Now “our friends” become “our weapons.” And what good friend hasn’t been around when a couple isn’t speaking to each other, and has been sent to give a message to the expletive down the hall?
This of course is always accompanied by that little catch phrase, “Well you’re still my friend, right?” Then the house of cards comes down with a match. Soon they both think that you aren’t a friend of either one and they make up and blame it on you, and all this just for being there when they needed you.
If you are a friend of a soon-to-be newlywed, thank them for the wonderful time you have had together, the joy, the pain, the beer; tell them you will cherish them always, then disappear and leave no forwarding address.
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