But I am a huge believer in the institution of marriage. And, for all my faults, I'm a happily married man. going on nineteen years now. And I do have a few opinions (just opinions, not facts, relax) on why Michelle and I have been able to hold it together through thick or thin all these years.
First of all, I never counted on her to make me happy. She never saw me as her source of happiness. We love each other, we thoroughly enjoy each other's company, but nobody can make someone else happy. It's an unrealistic expectation to think that they can. Laying that on someone else is a doomsday sentence.
Secondly, I don't believe love has anything to do with emotion. I think it's a commitment. We not only said our marriage vows, we meant them. Have we come up short from time to time? Certainly. We're humans. But we are both committed to living our lives together in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer (in our case, pretty much for poorer), in good times and bad, until death do us part. Yeah, we vowed to death. Again, I don't believe love has anything to do with emotions, which means it isn't a feeling, which means it isn't fleeting, which means it doesn't pass, which means (I believe - strictly an opinion) it makes no sense to vow "as long as love shall last". To me, that's vowing to be committed as long as I remain committed, which would be meaningless (to me).
Thirdly, I like my wife, a lot. We don't do separate vacations. I don't do boys nights out. She doesn't do girls nights out. We let go of everything that was integral to our single lives. We have one married life - together. I'd rather be with her than anyone I know. It sounds like a cliche, but my wife is my best friend. I trust her implicitly, and I love being around her.
You know that giddy feeling all of us thought was love in our teenage years, that feeling so many of us think is love even as we grow up. I got that feeling about almost ever girlfriend I ever had. 'Thought I was in love. I've come to realize what that feeling is, and it isn't love. It's new car smell. New girl, exciting change, everything's different, all giddy. New car smell. Until the first ding shows up on the driver's side door. No more new car smell. No more "love". It took me a long time to realize it's hard to find what you're looking for when you don't even know what to look for.Not to mention how up and down anything based on emotions are. I always love Michelle. Even when I'm mad at her. Even when I'm mumbling under my breath about her, down in the basement,
while she's upstairs, temporarily forgetting about her "super hearing" (I swear, she can hear me mumble about her from three states away). But that's how emotions are, and anything that inconsistent is nothing to base anything important on. Yoda was dead wrong on that one - Think, don't feel - that's what he should've told the Jedis. (Then again, Yoda ended up getting almost all the Jedi wiped out, so take his wisdom for what it's worth. Listening to Yoda will get you killed.)I'm a much better husband than I was eighteen years ago. I've steadily improved. In fact, as I see it, I've reached the point of downright mediocrity. So I have a long way to go. Trust me, I'm not bragging about how perfect I am or have been. 'Far from it. But I've come along way. And I've got a best friend that I get to spend the rest of my life with while I work the rest of it out.
(The happy couple, & the lucky guy!)
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