Love Ever After?

After God created the world, He made man and woman.  Then, to keep the whole thing from collapsing, He invented humor.  

~Bill Kelly, "Mordillo"

It's a funny thing that which we call marriage.  It is such an absurd idea, living with one person for the majority of your life.  Yet we all want it deep down.   We want someone who will make us laugh, and cry, and support us through every day.  I can barely live with myself every day.  Who thought it was a good idea to add one more person to the mixture?  We love our kids to death, and even they only live with us for the first twenty years!  

I love being married.  It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.  

~Rita Rudner

One of two very handsome brothers.

Well this post is going to be filled with quotes that I found funny and true.  This quote was profound to me because of it's truth!  I do love being married!  I love it, and I hate it.  But I so enjoy annoying my husband.  I love hearing him laugh!  I don't know if this is true for anybody else, but I find my husband to be absolutely hysterical when he is annoyed.  I don't know what it is, maybe his smile or the frustration that confuses his facial muscles which are so used to being calm and collected all the time.  When he's annoyed, he smiles and giggles.  Some of my fondest memories.

Chains do not hold a marriage together.  It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years.  

~Simone Signoret

This is very interesting.  The tiny threads.  Well, this was easy to see in the marriage of my parents.  You see, those tiny threads are everywhere!  It is the reason that divorce is so much more than it seems.  Divorce from an outside perspective would seem so simple.  So cut and dry!  Why not just get divorced?!  It's because those tiny threads are each so colorful and fantastic.  Each one of those tiny threads was so carefully crafted and connected to one another.  And of course, you will never be able to get rid of every thread.  You will always have some hanging off of you, severed from your other half.  Thats painful and frustrating.  No one likes the tiny threads you find everyday hanging off your clothes.  So, those tiny threads filled with secrets containing stories of triumph, tragedy, and so many others are what hold us together of course.

More marriages might survive if the partners realized that sometimes the better comes after the worse.  

~Doug Larson

Oh the frustrating amount of truth in that one sentence.  If only.  I recently had a conversation with someone who was giving me all the reasons that he didn't want to get married.  He believes that telling his girlfriend that he will love her forever was more profound then a marriage could ever be.  He said "I don't need a contract or license saying that I will love her forever, I know that in my heart!".  He didn't see a point in "the absurdity".  "The government makes money off of it!  It's just another consumer based politic!".  Well, although I respect his decision, I know why people get married.  At least, I know why I got married.  Here are my reasons for not only saying "I will love you forever" but also having a ceremony, and a state license.  First of all, the truth is, I won't love my husband forever.  Any married person you meet will tell you that you will fall in and out of love throughout your entire marriage.  And no matter what he says, if I wasn't legally bound to my husband during the hard times, I would definitely have just skipped town.  Nothing holding me back!  With a marriage, you have a wedding, honeymoon, and friends and family who were there and witnessed your legal bind to one another.  Now the reason that is so important is that it holds you together long enough to fall back in love with your spouse.  And that, is one of the few but heavy reasons we get married.  The other, is the tax benefits!  

Success in marriage does not come merely through finding the right mate, but through being the right mate.  

~Barnett R. Brickner

Last but certainly not least, it takes two to get married, and it takes two to divorce.  It is extraordinarily easy to blame everything on your spouse.  Anyone can rationalize divorcing their spouse.  Who couldn't?  You know their deepest darkest habits and secrets.  You know the things their good at and bad.  You know if they commit fraud or evade taxes.  Of course you have reason to divorce them!  But the truth is that a marriage is based on selflessness.  You have to be committed to making a marriage work.  And you have to work really hard at it.  Marriage isn't a vacation from the real world.  It is the hardest commitment you'll ever make.  But it can also be the most rewarding.  Now I'm not saying that every couple has to be together.  There are extenuating circumstances in which it is not appropriate to stay with your spouse.  But, all in all, what are you looking for?  I mean if it's another husband, trust me when I say you'll regret leaving the first.  All you'll find is you'll be looking for a better version of your husband.  Husband 2.0 doesn't exist.  Not for me at least.  Like I said, it's a case by case basis.  But I know that if I left my husband, the guy I would be looking for certainly does not exist.  There is no such thing as the perfect human male.  Not on this planet at least.  No matter how perfect they are, they all come with some strange and sometimes annoying habits.   So, I guess my point for the evening is that, no matter how much you may want to stay or leave, remember, the grass is always greener on the other side!