HitchDied

What’s the Greek for “Foolhardy”?

| 11 Comments

So there’s been all these awesome posts about the role of love in marriage.1 I’m very impressed with everyone’s relationship wisdom.

I am also sort of intimidated.  I have no Greek vocabulary to explain my relationship with Collin. I have no philosophical tenets to assure me that we’ll have a strong marriage.  I’m pretty much running on faith here.

Well, faith as to the love.

I still have an educated guess that Collin and I will have a good marriage, otherwise I probably wouldn’t be engaged.  But this guess comes from terribly non-romantic assessments.

Here are some reasons I want to marry Collin:

1. He’s great with money.

2. We are in agreement regarding speculative children. (As in, let’s have some. Let’s have some in five-ish years.  Let’s do our best to work lives flexible enough to allow us both to have significant time home with them.)

3. I love his family.

4. He takes really good care of his body.

5. He has good genes.

Can you tell that I am the bad guy in a dystopian sci-fi movie yet?  I want to marry Collin to breed a master race of curly-haired spawn who fill their Roth IRAs every year!  That has nothing to do with LOVE of any flavor.

I am tarnishing the institution of marriage! Or maybe I upholding the evil patriarchal underpinnings of marriage as an economic arrangement! Either way, I am clearly sinister, and also my marriage is doomed.

I was just about to type something along the lines of, “I’d still marry Collin if all the things above weren’t true”  But I think that was a lie.  Because some of my love for Collin derives from those practical “reasons” to marry him.  Like, I’m so impressed with his responsibility re: money and his health.  Both have fueled into my respect for and admiration of Collin, which fueled my love for him.  And his amazing family so clearly shaped the person he is, it doesn’t make sense to imagine what my relationship with Collin would be like if he didn’t have a wonderful family.

But I do think I can truthfully say that I would still want to be with Collin if any of the practical reasons were lost.  God forbid St. Louis drops into a sinkhole, I still want to be with Collin.  If we find out we can’t have kids, I still want to marry Collin.

The economy collapses for real for real and all of Collin’s investments go POOF? I want to eat cabbage soup with Collin.

A shark bites off Collin’s legs and he never trains for another marathon again?  I want to buy him rims for his wheelchair as an anniversary present.

Does this mean our marriage is going to work?  I have no idea, dudes.  But I want to marry Collin anyway.

1That linkage is woefully incomplete. I would be very grateful to those who link to any parts of the ongoing cross-blog conversation I missed in the comments. Thanks!

11 Comments

  1. ….and here are some reasons that I (even though what “I” think should NOT even enter the equation….but I know my Collin….so well….) think you should marry Collin:

    1. You GET him…Collin is the most spectacularly amazingly fun, crazy, insainely witty, intense ADD personality of a person…ever….and you get him

    2. you have the patience of a saint

    3. you are brilliant

    4.you GET Collin

    5.you are incredibly sweet, kind and loving

    6. you are wise,understanding, strong and very courageous ( although I am not sure that you always believe this in yourself)

    and I think the two of you will have a GREAT marriage because it already has a strong foundation:

    1. you two COMMUNICATE with each other…you talk, share feelings..

    2. you have mutual respect for each others differences

    3. you “listen to each other”

    4. you bring out the ” BEST” in each other

    5. you ADORE each other…..
    I could really go on and on Robin……….

    Life is Good………..

  2. Well, I was going to say: (1) Do you like to jump his bones now? (3) Does he make you laugh so hard soda comes out your nose or people in the car next to you turn to look? (4) Is he the first person you want to see/talk to when something bad happens? (5) When you fight are you still respectful of one another’s feelings? (6) Will you still want to jump his bones when he is old, fat and bald?

    But since your MIL (Hi Vicki!) is reading, I’ll leave the first and last questions off the list…

  3. Παράτολμος

  4. Robin, your MIL is fab. I’m kinda jealous :)

  5. So, hi. This is my situation, too.

    A couple of years ago, when we’d reached a point in our relationship where I was trying to gauge how serious this thing was gonna get, I was talking to a friend about how it is you’re supposed to know that someone is right for you. “Well, what do you like about him?” she asked. I racked my brain for a few moments, and here’s the list I came up with:
    1) He’s mellow and calm.
    2) He’s responsible.
    3) He has blue eyes!
    4) He drives his parents’ old Subaru!

    Yes, the Subaru! OF COURSE THE SUBARU. My friend kind of gave me that nose-scrunched-up look, and I realized that that was the most boring list of reasons EVAR to want to settle down with a person forever. Also, common sense tells me that eye color (I HAVE BLUE EYES TOO! WE COULD START A BLUE-EYED RACE OF PEOPLE) and make of car driven (SO PRACTICAL!!! HOW CUTE IS THAT??) are horrible, horrible reasons for marriage.

    So. Will it work? I guess we’ll find out.

  6. I have to say, “I love his family” is a much more important consideration than people give it credit for. Awesome families can say a lot about awesome kids (this is not a rule, but I like seeing when awesomeness is rooted in a long family line of support and love.)

    The family, the sense of responsibility, the work ethic, the hazel eyes and the height were all wildly important to me. DEAR GOODNESS THE HEIGHT. I am an exceedingly tall, exceedingly pale Jew, and I have found the one other of my kind in the entire darn world. I swear, that’s how I knew it was right. (I’m only kinda joking.)

  7. Pingback: Love is Not the Answer « A Marriage of Convenience

Leave a Reply to Angie Cancel reply

Required fields are marked *.


Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting.