Marriage.......

Today, class, we shall discuss the institution of marriage.  It really is a deep and fascinating subject.  No, this blog post will not attempt to go deeper than the surface, but that should be more than enough to get a response or three.  I mean, everyone has an opinion on the topic!

Cindy and Me at the Local Courthouse Eight Years Ago.  The Judge Just Married Us.  The Picture Quality is Poor, But We Didn't Care.

My experience with marriage has taught me this:  You had better really know what you want in a mate, and you had better REALLY KNOW HIM/HER before you get to the "I do" stage.

Ah---to quote Shakespeare---there's the rub.  What seems like a slam-dunk decision can be deceptive.  You meet someone and they are intelligent, handsome, fastidious, educated, funny, able to hold down a good job, can make decisions, and make your hormones flow.  On the surface, after a few dates, this individual appears to be a possible catch.

I have learned that decisions based on a high hormone level are not usually very good.  No, I have found that TIME is the most important ally in decision making. 

In the case of Cindy and me, we wanted at all costs to be able to say we really knew each other before we married.  Now, the only way we knew to really do that was to live together for a while and see first hand how we responded over time.

We decided to give it a year, and then make our decision.  This approach worked very well for us, although we knew it was not approved by our religion.

After about nine months of living together and seeing each other in all types of situations, we made commitments to each other.  It was the perfect way for us to know what we were getting into. 

The next decision, which we had, of course, been talking about, was WHERE and HOW to get hitched.  We discussed our church, of course---that was an obvious consideration; but there was a problem of who to invite and the distinct possibility that we would be pressured to do things and invite certain folks we did not want present.

So then, we discussed Las Vegas.  If we had our wedding there, we could be pretty much assured that we could control who attended and we could have a memorable time as well.  But, Vegas involved spending more time and money than we wanted to spend.

We discussed other possibilities, also.  In the end, however, we decided all that was important to either of us was being married to each other.

Cindy Today

On a memorable Friday afternoon in late June, Cindy donned a nice dress and I put on a suit, and we went to the county courthouse.  We were married by a judge in a private ceremony in one of the courtrooms.  It cost $25.  We were elated.

Me Today

On the way home, we made phone calls to our mothers and other relatives announcing the joyous news.  Our ceremonial meal was a stop at a Mexican restaurant where we made goo-goo eyes at each other over chile rellenos and tacos.  Now, that's a marriage worth having!