Why DId I Get Married Too?

Today is my anniversary. I usually forget how many years we have been married. Don't know if that is a subconscious thing or if it is just the onset of aging. I usually have to count back from the year that the twins were born. So, today, I have been married for (gulp) 15 years. Wow, I have been married for almost a 1/3 of my life.

Perhaps it is something in the universe that moved Tyler Perry to open his film, "Why Did I Get Married Too?" the day after my anniversary.

I do not know one person, husband or wife, who has not asked themself that question - including me. It usually pops into my mind after watching a particularly intense Oprah episode or a half-hour of Divorce Court.

My kids are quick to point out that I am an aberration amongst my friends who are my age (or even for that matter, my friends who are older than me or young enough to be my own children). My friends who shop on the 3rd floor of Macy's are mostly divorced or separated while most of my friends who shop on the 2nd floor of Macy's (to clarify, who shop on the 2nd floor and are age-appropriate and not folks like me who wander down there seeking the elixir of youth through a t-shirt) are very happily unmarried. Interestingly, my friends who can no longer drive to Macy's, are pretty much all married but I cannot help but wonder if you gave them an out, whether they would head off to Cabo with the young guy who drives the handi-van?

So I guess the real questions is not "Why did I get married?" but "Why do I stay married?"

There is something about the whole husband-wife thing that is objectively nonsensical. You are bringing two people, often from two totally different worlds with many different values, and in 15 minutes they are cemented together for life by an officiant they may have only met 10 minutes before their bond of eternal devotion is made permanent. Decisions to get married are seemingly made with much less thought than buying a new car (heck, even than buying new seatcovers for your old car) and anyone who has been through a divorce knows, it is a whole lot more work and turmoil trying to free yourself from a marriage than the actual act of getting married (not the party and Bridezilla stuff but the real deal ceremony). Yet us straight folk continue to do it and gays continue to fight for the right to do it.

If you told me that I would end up with a husband like Oscar the Grouch back when I was a freshman in college, studing fine art, hoping to go to Japan to apprentice with a painter, sporting green spiked hair and wiggling on the ground everytime Fred Schneider shouted "Down, down" during Rock Lobster, I would have laughed hysterically. End up with a very conservative New York Jewish guy who thinks accounting is fun, popped the kids in front of the morning stock report on CNN when they were babies, and does not have a single drop of artsy creativity pulsing through his Reyn's aloha shirt covered body? As Whitney would say, "Hell to the No!" but there I went and here I stay.

There is just something that is there between the two of us. I can't put my finger on it but it is just something that brought us together and keeps us together. We have had really terrible, horrifying break ups resulting from really thoughtless actions but somehow, we always end up getting back together. We try to stay apart but within a few weeks, one of us would pick up a phone just to talk. Within a little while, we will get back together. I know it is probably fueled by mutual screwed up childhoods, lack of positive marital role-models and run of the mill co-dependence but it is the glue that holds our family together.

Once I watched a Dr. Phil episode where he said that you should pattern your marriage after a marriage that you admire. Basically, avoid Family Court by being a copycat. I thought long and hard about it and came up with several couples whose relationships I admire. The common factors amongst them were that one or both spouses were on their third marriage, they did not have kids or their kids were grown up and moved away, they spent the majority of their time travelling, or they spent the majority of their time apart from each other. Uh...yeah....

So, I guess what it comes down to is, the secret to staying married is to get married a lot, dump your kids, run away from the reality of your life, or dump your spouse without filing for divorce.

Hmm, wouldn't that make a good Tyler Perry movie?