8.8.08

Anyone getting married at 8 p.m. tonight?

Our company is filming a wedding today, some friends are getting married literally a mile from our house at a country wedding chapel, and an old acquaintance who dumped her first husband on a whim is trying to get us excited about her second wedding today in Vegas. I'm sure many of you have received word or invitations about a wedding today - a Friday, no less. 8.8.08. We only have 4 more of these oddities (9.9.09, 10.10.10, 11.11.11, and 12.12.12) until we have to wait another 100 years to do it all again.

Take it from someone in the wedding business - it would be a great thing if weddings were always spread out over the week. They'd be a lot less expensive that way (try creating a business that can only make money one day a week and you'll understand). And a lot of the pressure would be taken off the event, for the good of marriages everywhere. I'm convinced a lot of people have doubts about their impending marriage but, because the steam engine of the THE BIG DAY is on the move, they feel powerless to put on the brakes. (The brakes on those things are PAINFULLY LOUD.)

For example, weddings could become lunchtime affairs. The ceremony essentially happens at the reception, while everyone is chowing down, including your co-workers. Some might say this takes away from the religiosity of the occasion, and they would be right. But if the couple wants to commemorate their marriage in the church, they could do that on Sunday.

Most of the time, if someone calls off a wedding, there is lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth. "So much money down the drain! But your cousins already bought their plane tickets! What will people say?!" But in the above scheme, if someone calls off the wedding, all folks might say is: "Okay. Want to do Mexican instead?"

I'm not trying to trivialize marriage - because I don't have to. Divorce has already trivialized it. When we attend a wedding and all the "forever" language is used, everyone is taking part in one large suspension of disbelief.

Imagine if half of the rockets and shuttles that NASA sent up into space blew up. We'd re-examine our space program, wouldn't we? And we wouldn't go to lift-offs with rose-colored glasses. Maybe we should take a good, long look at marriage - as a church and as a society as well - and decide if it's really all it's cut out to be.

I haven't given this much thought, really, but I suspect having different levels of commitment would be a good thing. Someone might have a "forever marriage" in which they agree only to divorce in the case of abuse or cheating. It would resemble what we have now, only you'd have to get a lot of signatures from your friends and family in the way a politician needs signatures to get on a ballot. As forever marriages involve kids - and, therefore, lots of tax write-offs and other legal advantages - there's a lot at stake. Why should any bozo be able to qualify just by saying "I do"?

Some might have a "good-times marriage," which would be valid so long as both are having a good time. This is sort of a step up from dating, in that it involves vows of exclusivity. This marriage level would include a vow not to have children until the couple decided to take their marriage to the next level - and received enough signatures.

Of course, there would always be a Justice of the Peace option which, essentially, is a legal arrangement only and doesn't raise any expectations in the couple or anyone else.

Here's the inherent problem with vows these days: we recognize that people change, and that, even with the best of intentions, things don't turn out the way we'd always like. We hold marriage up on a pedestal until things fall apart, then we realize that our happiness, our souls, our selves, deserve more TLC than some nebulous virtue. And we realize that as half the relationship our happiness carries as much as weight as our partner's, even if it is tremendously selfish on our part to pull the rug out from under them.

I could have married any one of the really great women I dated before meeting Marian. But I held off until I found the really great woman who was just perfect for ME. I want to argue it was not random luck. By age 28 I feel I knew myself quite well - far better than many people who get married will EVER know themselves. That's an unprovable and somewhat arrogant assertion, but I'll say it anyway. I knew a good many of my faults in addition to strengths. And Marian had a self-knowledge that was in many ways much more profound and natural (especially to have that ability at age 20, when I met her. Dang, that was 10 years ago!) We both knew what we were getting into, and we've built on what we started. Life with her today is even better than it was 10 years ago. What a lady!

Knowing yourself. Meeting someone who also knows herself. Being attracted to that person. Having that person return the favor. Wanting a lot of the same things out of life. Sharing most of the same values. Making each other laugh. Doing the right things so that your relationship does not get stale. Not having an addiction or other destructive baggage. Can anyone else add a helpful requirement for a happy marriage?

A happy marriage depends on so many things that make marriage more than a gimmick, a party, a little girl's archetypal princess fantasy. Arranged marriages (tyrannical though they are) tend to work better than "love marriages" precisely because there is some THOUGHT put into them. Most relationships are based merely on romance, and romance (fun as it is, necessary as it is) is nothing but evolution in disguise. Evolution never relies on thought - only primeval urges and instinct - and its goal, to propagate the species - really doesn't take long-term happiness as we define it today into consideration. There have been studies that show that divorce in the Bible Belt is higher because people get married younger - and they get married younger because pre-marital sex is such a taboo. Evolution says our bodies are ready for sex at 11, 12, or 13 - it doesn't care about the Bible, or the law, or what constitutes healthy emotional growth. Evolution wants babies! And one day a woman wakes up at 2 a.m. with her third kid and thinks: "My husband is a lazy slob. I'm tired and miserable. How did this happen?" EVOLUTION happened, Sister, and you are its latest victim.

Until the church creates a narrative that incorporates this reality of evolution (in which our bodies are ready to reproduce in our early teens) and makes that narrative something a little more savvy than simply saying: "That's Sin!" we're going to have this weird mess on our hands that a friend of mine referred to as The Great American Disaster: Marriage.

I love a good wedding. When the couple seems so in love, so earnest, I actually tear up, whether I'm behind the camera or simply a guest. I know that THIS couple can beat the odds -- and many of them will. It's a beautiful story when it works, and when it doesn't - ouch. But it's wrong to be skeptical or cynical. A couple deserves the benefit of the doubt. But they also need a reality check. I can't give them that in a video -- but I can provide that here. This is my conscience talking. If you think this column would work on our wedding video website, let me know - but I suspect it would float like a lead balloon. It doesn't fit with the fantasy we all have when we're initially caught up - and enjoying - the train ride.