My husband and I had another wedding anniversary yesterday – 27 years of martial bliss. I mean marital bliss.
By now you all know how romantic we’re not. I wrote a blog post about how we don’t buy each other stuff for Valentine’s Day. The same goes for our anniversary. I’m currently out of town and I left him a $2.99 card on the credenza before I left. I even remembered to tell him it was there.
We are doubly perfect for each other in this respect: No one should be subjected to being married to either of us. And ironically, no one deserves either of us.
If you’re one of those people who thinks that there’s a perfect soul mate for each of us out there somewhere and with a combination of hard work, luck, frequent flier miles and the magic of the Internet, you might just find each other, I have news for you: I think I probably stumbled on my soul mate, all luck and none of the other stuff.
When I met my husband, neither one of us was looking for a spouse. We were too young (especially him) and we both had hopes and dreams that did not involve being parents or having two car payments. He told his family he wasn’t getting married until he was in his 30s.
And yet, at 22-years-old and after dating for about 10 months, he proposed to me after a Pizza Hut dinner out. Then he bought me a ring, which I wore as if I was balancing an open vial of hydrofluoric acid on my third finger. (Honestly, I was so afraid I’d break it or lose it, I wouldn’t even put my arm out the car window. Like it might blow right off my hand into a cornfield or something.)
When we announced our engagement to our families, my mom said the same thing she said to my sisters and anyone else she knew who was getting married: “Are you sure?”
Yeah, sure, I think so. . . . I’m pretty sure. . . . I think. . . . Yes, I’m definitely sure.
What did I know? I was 24. My biggest act of commitment up to that point was buying leg-warmers for an aerobics class, because I thought I wouldn’t quit if I had a piece of clothing that was only good for exercising. I didn’t properly get the concept of a 50% divorce rate. I didn’t think about dueling religions. We never discussed whether we wanted to have kids or what they might look like if we did.
But as it turns out, I think stumbling into the perfect marriage is the way to go. For one thing, the divorce rate statistics get increasingly more dire, the more marriages you have. It’s 50% for the first marriage, 65% for the second marriage and almost 75% for the third. Your chances of staying married to the first guy are better, despite the fact that you’re young and stupid when you tie the first knot.
Secondly and most importantly, getting married for all the right reasons doesn’t mean that those reasons will still be true after 10, 20 or 30 years. A marriage is a living, breathing thing, complete with bad odors and worse moods. People change, make more money, make less money; things happen to them, they react badly or well; they get old, fat, cranky; and the little quirks that were once so cute are enough to make you want to hire a hit man.
I know I could never be married to anyone else. And my husband has said that if anything ever happened to me, he might consider becoming a priest. I can’t say I’d be a nun, but I would definitely stop shaving my legs.
And as far as divorce goes, I honestly think neither one of us is prone to doing anything bad enough to warrant that. Plus we’re both pretty lazy and might not want to pack up and leave. Moving is hard.
What did I tell you? The perfect match.