WARNING: The following blog is about being married. If you're an old grizzled veteran of marriage and you're not interested in hearing what some greenhorn has to say, I suggest you quit reading now. On the other hand, you can just think of this as a war movie. I'm one of the new recruits whose uniform is clean, has every possible piece of gear in his pack and wants to see what war is really like. You're the two tour vet who laughs at me while smoking a cigarette, shaking your head and while thinking "This kid has no idea what he's in for."
As we were driving to the resort for our honeymoon a thought came to my mind. As is usually the case, I ran this idea by the Mrs. to see what she thought. "You know that we're never really going to say good bye to each other again? All the trips, the visits to Connecticut or Long Island, Mets games there was always a formal ending to the time we would spend with each other before we would go our separate ways. Now we're stuck with each other." She laughed, agreed and maybe had a passing doubt about why she married someone who would come to such a childish conclusion. However, I now realize that driving in that car that day (one of the best unnecessary spendings EVER, I highly recommend renting a convertible at least once) I came to my first realization of what marriage is: never saying goodbye.
I understand this isn't exactly a groundbreaking idea but on the surface it can be quite intimidating. I'm going to spend EVERY day with the same person for the rest of my life? What if we fight? More importantly, what if we run out of things to talk about??? GASP! I knew I should of thought of these things before I proposed! (Actually I always thought the latter should be one of the factors when deciding if you should stay with someone long term. It's one of my favorite parts of my relationship with the Mrs. We have great conversations and she listens to most of the stupid things I say.) Issues will definitely arise but I suppose that most of the time how you handle these issues will prove to be more important than the issue itself, especially because of the never saying goodbye thing. Arguments, disagreements, etc, must be met head on because that person isn't going anywhere. Once you say "I do" -which now that I think about it you don't actually say- you've locked yourself in for eternity and I say eternity because divorce isn't much of an option. In fact, we have an informal agreement that we'll just be miserable together instead of the whole divorce thing; it really is the Irish-Catholic thing to do.
Anyway I can honestly say that things aren't all that different then they were before other than the fact that we live with each other (for those of you who don't know three people made sure that I didn't live with the Mrs. before we got married 1)Jesus 2)the Holy Father and 3)my mother and those are in reverse order) When people have asked me how married life is, I usually answer "So far so good." This answer is usually reserved for questions such as "How is that book you're reading?" or "Enjoying the play Mr. Lincoln?" but it summarizes my married life to this point; everything is good. Will this be different one day, week, month or year down the road? In many ways I'm sure it will be but in the important ways I know it won't.
So these are some of the things I've learned about being married. I must admit that I've thought about these ideas before, now I'm just getting the chance to practice them. I must also admit that I've never felt like a bigger ass then I do now, blogging about relationships while drinking an iced caramel macchiato at Starbucks. I bet that five years ago I would have bookended that statement with "If you ever see me......I give you permission to shoot me" yet here I am typing away. The difference? Maybe my wife and this marriage thing.
