Just One Joey: HOw Have My Views On Marriage Changed In My Life?

There are only two views to have on marriage: they are great or they suck.

You can have the same view your whole life, or it can evolve over time.

My bet would be that more views change from great to sucks, than sucks to great.

I am the former.

Great To Sucks

How could this happen? So sad. *sniff

I will tell you exactly, people story tell.

They story tell about their romance, their heartwarming tale of boy meets girl. They take what they want marriage and relationships to be and they project them on to their actual relationship. Love at first sight, high school sweethearts, good girl meets bad boy, etc. And they commit. Hell, they over commit. By the time they realize their relationship is poop it is too late and there is a ring on it, babies involved, the whole nine yards.

“You changed!”

“Where is the man/woman I married?”

“Waaa!”

They were never there.

You didn’t marry Noah (The Notebook)

You didn’t marry Jack (Titanic)

*for guys

You didn’t marry (fill in porn star name here, I don’t know any *wink *wink)

You filled in their gaps, their holes, with your story. What they were actually missing, you gave them. Why? Because it allowed you to have the fairytale you wanted. You had the perfect partner. You were going to beat the odds. They were going to write stories about your love. The problem is, they already wrote them, and you plagiarized your life with them.

Oopsie daisy.

Once it hits you, it hurts, bad. Along with the crumbling of your marriage comes the crumbling of your views on marriage. Marriage sucks. Boo matrimony.

Sucks To Sucks

Because you don’t have a very positive outlook on marriage, you don’t look for the perfect partner, you look for the okayest (made that word up, but it fits perfectly). You look for someone who you can tolerate, or fills out your checklist, has a good job, or whatever else is a mediocre measure to finding a partner. You half ass it going in, which leads to a half ass marriage, and it’s an “I told you so” for the rest of your life. You created a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nice work Casanova. “You can call me Nova.” — name that movie!

They look at the stats, and they look at how many marriages fail. They look at all the shitty relationships around them and go, “see!!”

They marry someone they don’t think is that great, or someone that they don’t feel they can be themselves around, or someone they need to hide things from.

They listened to the people, to the majority.

The problem is, most people are stupid. I am sorry if I offended you (but then why do you think you’re stupid?) We are at the bottom of education, we are the fattest, just look at this election? Holy moly! You think with this many idiots around you are going to get a good view of what marriage can really be?

“Come on man!!” — Chris Carter

If you are siding on the dumb-dumb majority, guess what? You’re a dumb-dumb!

Let that sink in, then read how it can be, how it should be.

Sucks To Great

This is me!! Tada!! This is how my view have changed!

I thought marriage was finding the person you tolerated the best. I am such a romantic.

Don’t fight much, nice person, would be a solid partner, mother (for my kids, not me. I have a mom), etc. I wasn’t looking for a best friend, I had enough guy friends. I wasn’t looking for soulmate, that’s a bunch of hooey. Nothing like that was real, it was just Hollywood, tricking us in to looking for bullshit, leading us down a path of misery and chasing a fantasy. I was WAY jaded.

I had great relationships to look to for inspiration.

But I listened to the dummies.

“That’s rare.”

“That’s a unicorn.”

“I’ll pick her, she’s perfect(ly just okay)!”

Then I met my wife.

And everything changed.

I loved being around her. We could hang out all day every day and I never got sick of her. I missed her when she was gone. She could hang with my friends. When I did something cool I wish she was there too, like something was missing without her. She was the first person I actually wanted to have a baby with (and thank God I didn’t have any babies with the “okay” ones). I could be myself (which then lead to me needing to figure out just who the hell I was. I will save that for another time). She was perfect. She was my best friend.

And it finally hit me.

This is what it is supposed to be like. That 1 out of 10 was what you were going for.

Tim Ferriss quotes Mark Twain all the time, “When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.”

I was focused on the 9, not the 1.

I looked at it even worse than that. It was roulette. It was a crapshoot. No one could figure out which marriages work and which ones don’t.

But we do. F’ing Hollywood was right!

Damn you Noah and Allie!!!

- Marry your best friend.

- Marry the one you don’t get sick of.

- Marry the one you miss when they are gone.

- Marry the one you can be yourself around.

- Marry the one that makes you feel like forever isn’t long enough.