Betrothed! Part 1: Did I just do that?
Yes, I guess I did.I got engaged.
I was always one of those guys who figured he'd never get married. Actually, I thought every guy was one of those guys who figured he'd never get married. As I get older, I encounter more and more men willing to admit that they always wanted to get married, or always figured they'd get married whether they really wanted to or not.
There are a lot of socially acceptable "good" reasons to not get married. You can think it's anachronistic custom no longer suited to contemporary culture. You can refuse to do it in a show of solidarity with those who are not yet legally allowed to be wed. You can wonder what the point is, if you don't ever want children. You can say you're so aware of your own asinine nature that you would never subject another human being to close proximity with you for the rest of their lifetime, and wonder if such a marvelous line might actually get you laid.
I have occasionally used all of the above excuses when asked why I didn't think I would ever get married, but none of them really applies to my situation. My situation is this: I fuck up perfectly good relationships. Which is maybe not so bad when you're 27 and both of you know somewhere inside that it probably wasn't going anywhere anyway, but is horrible when you're 32 and you're very aware that pretty much everyone you hook up with is pretty sick of guys like the guy you think you must be every time you do something shitty.
And that's the worst part: The reason I never wanted to get married was less that I didn't want to hurt somebody else that badly, than that I didn't want to be the guy who might do it.
See, it was really all about me. Tacky, and selfish, and true.
But, you know, people still fall in love. And despite the wealth of hearsay to the contrary, people can change. You get older, you see more, you feel more, and, if you let it, it changes you.
Which is an extremely roundabout way of saying that I never thought I'd get married, because I never thought I'd be mature enough to handle my end. And I don't think that about myself anymore.
There are plenty of other avenues of my life in which to be even more immature, and compensate for not fucking up a perfectly good relationship. Like farting. Farting is awesome.
I have occasionally used all of the above excuses when asked why I didn't think I would ever get married, but none of them really applies to my situation. My situation is this: I fuck up perfectly good relationships. Which is maybe not so bad when you're 27 and both of you know somewhere inside that it probably wasn't going anywhere anyway, but is horrible when you're 32 and you're very aware that pretty much everyone you hook up with is pretty sick of guys like the guy you think you must be every time you do something shitty.
And that's the worst part: The reason I never wanted to get married was less that I didn't want to hurt somebody else that badly, than that I didn't want to be the guy who might do it.
See, it was really all about me. Tacky, and selfish, and true.
But, you know, people still fall in love. And despite the wealth of hearsay to the contrary, people can change. You get older, you see more, you feel more, and, if you let it, it changes you.
Which is an extremely roundabout way of saying that I never thought I'd get married, because I never thought I'd be mature enough to handle my end. And I don't think that about myself anymore.
There are plenty of other avenues of my life in which to be even more immature, and compensate for not fucking up a perfectly good relationship. Like farting. Farting is awesome.
Leave a comment