Married Life

As an ex-confirmed bachelor who is now married with two stepchildren, I’d like to share some insights into married life that I hope will help those who are on the fence about starting or acquiring a family. Keep in mind, however, that I will present these anecdotes in a favorable light, inasmuch as my wife might read this someday.

When my bitter half and I were dating, I was your typical commitmentphobe. You see, I was always of the mind that marriage is nothing more than a legal contract in which the person of lesser means takes the person of greater means hostage. My fear was that ten minutes after the wedding ceremony, my new wife would tell me, “If we get divorced, we split everything, and guess who will make out better on the deal.” Guys, don’t worry. Most women wait at least until the honeymoon is over before they say that.

Our marriage was a foregone conclusion before I even considered proposing to her. I should have seen it coming, but I ignored the signs, such as her spending three hours a day watching the Wedding Channel.

We go through the stereotypical foibles of married life. For example, when she’s “ready” to go out, what that means is that all she has to do is get dressed, brush her hair, and bake a turkey. For some reason, I never learn. I always fall for her claim that she’s “ready”: I stand by the door with my jacket on and keys in hand, while she makes herself ready. As I wait for her, aging, I actually feel guilty about being impatient, as though I’m some sort of criminal. When I finally give up and turn on a ball game, she’ll come down the stairs and proclaim, “I thought you said you were ready.” At this point I begin to see some validity in how Taliban men keep their women in line. You will testify for me in court, right?

Many times she has asked me whether a particular piece of clothing makes her look fat. Well, I was already hip to that Catch-22 even before I met her, but every time I told her she looked great, she told me that I was just being nice and that I should be honest. Finally I fell for it. One time I said that perhaps there was the tiniest chance that she might have an extra lipid molecule on her.

Neighborhood birds stopped in mid-song.

She proceeded to vent her frustration about my flagrant, deliberate insult, and after seven minutes she had convinced me that I was responsible for everything that’s wrong in the world, including global warming.

Now before you men run off and become priests, there is a good side to women’s sensitivity. While they magnify our faults, they also magnify our good points. This makes it easy to be a hero, especially since in our modern world we no longer have to fend off Visigoth hordes. In my wife’s eyes I am Atlas merely because I opened her bottle of Diet Pepsi.

My wife has lots of plants in the house. How many? I once counted, so this is no exaggeration: 3,429. Okay, I might be off by a few thousand, but the point is that our home is the Little Shop of Horrors. But this is a good thing, because those creepy vines that grab me as I scurry past ensure that our house never runs out of oxygen. Or bugs.

She loves yard sales. She also loves dragging me along at 6 in the morning so we can enjoy “togetherness” and I can share in the ecstatic pleasure of paying only $2 for a garden hoe. It’s so much better than, say, sleeping in, or breakfast in bed. But at least when she’s shopping at a yard sale, it means that she’s not shopping at a department store, where she has had many out-of-money experiences. The biggest yard sale in our area is held twice a year at the local church. There are always five times more people at this event than normally attend worship services, which just goes to show what consumers we Americans are: we would rather acquire old clothes and dishware than be saved from Hell.

Being married has made me a better person. I am not bragging when I say this, because it has all been against my will. If it were up to me I would still be a selfish bachelor who has deprived some deserving woman of a divorce. Being stuck -- I mean, involved -- in a marriage has forced me to be patient with my partner when she maxes out a credit card, or her period causes her to retain more water than Lake Michigan.

My wife, like all other women, is capable of seeing colors outside the humanly visible spectrum. These colors have mutant names like chartreuse and mauve. I thought mauve was a sitcom starring Bea Arthur. Anyway, when we painted our sunroom, she insisted that the French doors be painted Swiss coffee and the walls be painted Georgia peach. Or was it the other way around? Well, it doesn’t matter because they’re both white. To me, anyway. My wife swears that there’s a difference, but I think this is just a ruse to get even with me for calling her robin’s egg skirt “blue”. Anyway, one time the wall got scratched, so I grabbed a random can of paint and touched it up. This home improvement project made me feel manly and productive. That is, until she came home.

“What happened here?” she queried indignantly. Being the completely honest person that I am, I told her the whole story. In Farsi. No, really, this is exactly how our conversation went:

Me: “I touched up a scratch.”
She: “This is supposed to be Georgia peach. You used Swiss coffee, didn’t you?”
Me: “No.”
She: “Oh really? Which color did you use?”
Me: “Uh ... white.”