A Most Untimely Valentine's Day Post

Is it really worth looking like this for just one day . . . 

                                                             I do not own this photo.

in order to wind up with THIS a few years later?

In fairness to the bride pictured above, to the best of my knowledge she hasn't spawned as much as a single crib lizard yet in the four-or-so years since she's been hitched, and even had she done so, her situation wouldn't be accurately portrayed in the chaos pictured immediately above. Her presence here is rhetorical and because she's beautiful.

A friend of mine recently called my attention to a country song, "Merry Go Round," recorded by artist  Kacey Musgroves.  The video was nicely done, and the point of the whole thing seemed to be that too many [particularly young] people are rushing off into marriage and reproduction, only to find themselves miserable.  One only has to take a brief walk through one of the housing developments in which married BYU students live to see the wisdom in what the song is trying to convey.

Yet I'm uncertain that marriage or even marriage with children inherently must be a state of gloom, despair, and agony (to borrow a term from Hee Haw).  I think my parents are happy in their marriage. One never knows these things for sure, but I've been aware of very few serious arguments between them. They've suffered through their share of adversity, with losing twins at twenty-three weeks, with my mom having gone through Graves' Disease and the ophthalmological complications, with my dad nearly losing my mom to leukemia, with having to experience being related to my father's family, and, quite frankly, with having to raise me. I wasn't, as one might have imagined, the female reincarnation of the Christ Child in my younger years. Serious trials in marriage, I've been told, either draw a couple closer or tear them apart. Adversity appears to have bound my parents more solidly than they otherwise might have been.  Then again, what the fuck do I know? Perhaps they're  preparing to submit divorce papers as I type.

Largely, my family on both sides comes down heavily on the side of "until death do you part." That doesn't mean they're any happier than any other couples, married or divorced.  It's just that a combination of religious practices, of not wanting to be the one who breaks the mold, and the old idea that what is available on the market probably isn't all that much better than the spouse with whom one is already stuck keeps most of them together. In at least some cases, though. I assume they're well-matched, have  perfected the art of compromise, and are genuinely happy most of the time. No one is happy all the time.

I have one first cousin on each side of the family who has permanently split from his or her spouse. In one case, it was actually annulled. In the divorce that happened on my mom's side of the family,  if the groom's parents have any idea what came between the couple, they've not shared the information with the rest of us. The situation is such that the former couple is no longer comfortable being in the presence of one another. The groom's family, while presumably recognizing that blood is thicker than water, try to be there for their former daughter-in-law just as they are for their son. Her parents are no longer on the planet.  If it's the former daughter-in-law's turn to have Christmas with the children, the grandparents celebrate with them as well. The son goes to the house of one of his siblings for the holidays. The reverse happens if it's the son's turn for Christmas with the kids. (The ex-wife has no siblings.)  It's far from ideal, but is probably making the best of a bad situation.

My aunt's and uncle's son's annulment after three weeks, on the other hand, was Utah's version of the war between the Hatfields and the McCoys. The wedding never should have taken place, or at least not when it did. The groom's sole employment at the time (and to the present, to the best of myknowledge) was as a newspaper deliverer, and he demonstrated no particular ambition to upgrade his employment status.  With his parents' assistance and without the knowledge of his former bride's parents, he snuck her out of her parents home on the morning of her eighteenth birthday (the bride shares complicity in this situation as well; no evidence of a gun having been pointed at her head was ever introduced) and spirited her off to the Manti Temple for the wedding. The former bride's parents, temple-recommend-holding Mormons, were not even told of or invited to their daughter's wedding.  Initial arguments over how to properly hang toilet paper morphed into fights of greater significance, the most compelling, which resulted in domestic violence on the part of the former groom, having been over whether the couple could afford expanded cable service on her salary at an entry-level job as a bank teller and his earnings as a paper carrier. The couple had been living in a small apartment above the bride's parents' garage. The groom was evicted, an order of protection was served, and annulment proceedings were set into order. The marriage for time and all eternity was, in short order, for neither..

These are extreme examples in my own family. Every family, as does mine, has both their extreme examples of marriages that should never have been, marriages that somehow survived despite no particular happiness on anyone's part, and marriages that might have been ordained in heaven. In all probability, most of us will fall somewhere in the middle when our time comes. It's probably important to remember that those who authored the Bible were not God or Jesus themselves.  Perhaps I'm in for a big surprise when my mortality ends and I approach the pearly gates, only to be allowed through or to be turned away, but I seriously doubt that anyone's divorce itself will play much of a factor in what happens in anyone's afterlife. (How one treated a spouse either during the marriage or during the divorce might be another matter entirely, though. Be kind and do unto others as you would have them do unto you.) Life is really not long enough to waste a huge portion of it on it in a marriage that seems like what hell might be like. This is not to say that one shouldn't try to work out problems in a marriage, but when a relationship is kaput, it's probably time to pull the plug.

Then again, who in hell am I to tell anyone how to live their lives or to conduct their marriages? I'm not yet twenty-three years old (I'll be there in less than one month, though!), I've never been married, I've been in three actual relationships, and it would probably be more than a stretch to say that any of them could be considered serious. I'm like the marriage counselor at BYU who has never been married, or the sex therapist who is a virgin in every sense of the word (except that I'm not necessarily claiming to be a virgin).  If your relationship is suffering from serious issues, seek the advice of a professional. Don't pay any attention to me.

As to the person who directed me to the "Merry Go Round" song, I sometimes wonder about him. He's been married for decades and has adult offspring.  He's told me it's unwise to remain in a marriage in which either party is unhappy to the point that the happiness cannot be repaired.  I don't talk with him about his own marriage because it's none of my damned business.  I assume he and his wife are still in love even if not in the way they were when their relationship began.  He's spoken without being specific of all the things a person will eventually tolerate in a spouse throughout the course if a marriage. He's spoken, again without being specific, of heated exchanges in which both parties say things that would have been better left unsaid,  He said you apologize and get over it. Still, with the advice he has given me personally,  my assumption is that he never would have remained in a loveless marriage.

Perhaps that's the way life is with any marriage,  You argue and say things in the heat of the moment that, even if you really do mean them as you say them, you know you should have kept the thoughts  to yourself. If your relationship is strong enough, it survives. If not, divorce is an option.  (Note to Scott Peterson: murder is not an option.)  I've heard of couples who have been married for up to seventy years who insist they have never had as much as an argument. I call bullshit on that. If they haven't had an argument, and it's a very big IF, it's only because one spouse or the other automatically accedes to the other's wishes.  As little as I know about marriage in general and happy marriages in particular, this seems to be no way to live.  If there cannot be give and take in any relationship, it's not really a relationship, or at least not one worth having.

I don't own this video. I thank the rightful owner for allowing me to borrow it for the time it remains here.