The Thinking Man's Guide to Marriage

Every Now and then, love gets so crazy that it has to be institutionalized. Marriage--that nutty dream of every mad lover from John Alden to John Hinckley--is the Swiss army knife of social conventions, one shiny package jammed full of useful features. It has, for instance, always been the therapeutic tool we use to calm one of our most irrational passions: If nothing else, marriage gets the mad dog of lust off the streets for a time and makes the world a little safer for our daughters. It provides respectability to many who could never hope to be respectable in any other pursuit, and it creates jobs for counselors and others who would otherwise never find employment. For many, marriage provides a swell sort of emotional Barcalounger, something remarkably comfortable, if somewhat unfashionable, to fall back on. For all of us, it's the next thing you do after your last date.

The essential benefits of marriage, especially monogamous marriage, are twofold. First, it keeps us from confusing sex-without-guilt with sex-without-responsibility. Second, it protects children and women--a notion that appeals to men's better selves. So marriage, for most of us, is a good idea.

When it's not a good idea, you find out right away.

There is a profound distinction between getting married and getting to a wedding. If you can read a map, you can get to a wedding. It's how you ended up married that's hard to figure.

Causality confuses us. From adolescence we have practiced the liturgy of lust, from a kiss to a feel to a touchdown. But we never quite saw where all that was leading until we found ourselves standing there promising away all of our life and half of our worldly goods.

How You Get Married

Usually, it works like this: A man meets a woman and, based almost solely on her appearance (augmented sometimes by a decent personality or other marginal factors such as intelligence), he pursues her. His objective is often quite limited. Maybe he just wants to know if she's a pleasant dinner companion, or maybe he's after uncomplicated sex. In any case, he doesn't see where a simple introduction might lead until the moment arrives when he realizes he can do nothing other than marry her.

A typical woman sees things much more clearly than does a typical man. Rather than looking at a relationship as a series of dates, she sees it as an elaborate syllogism in which certain hypotheses are proved by what has preceded them. A courtship proceeds down a figurative aisle, and each one of these encounters will lead to another, more complex encounter, until you are finally brought to the last date.

In handyman's terms: She asks you to make a series of objects--a bookshelf, a planter shaped like a goose, a table. Then one day she tells you that you have built a house and asks you to please shut the door because there's a draft.

Women's Work

Marriage is to women what work is to men. For men, work--a job, a career, a paycheck--is an elaborate construction designed to minimize meaninglessness in life and maximize rewards. Women see marriage (and a consequent family) the same way. The difference: Work really is meaningless.

Men Are Such....

Fifty years ago, if you became conversationally loose with a woman, she'd tell you about all the terrific suitors she had had and how she had dismissed them all with broken hearts. Today the granddaughter of that same woman is likely to tell you about the many, many suitors she's had who were not so terrific. Virtually every unmarried woman over the age of, say, 25 or 30 has a jam-packed gallery of rogues who trampled on her hopes and dreams: men who were married, men who drank, men who were closet hermits, men who killed her cats, men who wore her skirts. Unsuitable men. "Men are such jerks," she'll say at some point.

But that's her problem. Most women crave justification for ill-advised behavior, and those who choose a long sequence of lunatics and philanderers are on the run from responsibility and just don't want to feel bad about it. If you're a lunatic or a philanderer, you may wish to help them. If not, remember: Most women spend at least part of their postadolescence in this state, and if you happen along during this stage of her life and look for any reasonable long-term relationship, she'll boot you out of there, pronto. If a committed relationship is what she wanted, she would have one.

Most women decide on a mature marriage at a certain point--often in their late 20s or early 30s--and, armed with a crisp new realism, they marry the first eligible chap to come along after that decision has been made. Usually, the decision is made with what to us must seem an almost coldhearted deliberation. Smart women--the sort of women you want to marry--simply and wisely wish to be convinced of the aptness of their men. They make their choice almost without regard to what ever transpired in their premarital life. Suddenly, those nights with motorcycle gangs and guys with red rubber noses and water balloons are things of the past. For women, there's a big difference between getting down and getting down to business.

Why Women Marry

As H. L. Mencken pointed out in In Defense of Women, you may think you're a prize, but to your wife, you're second-rate at best.

According to Mencken, a woman makes her first choice in a man while she's still quite young, and the object of her heart may not even be a real person: He may be a character in a movie or book. Or he might be a very distant ideal, maybe a singer or a TV personality. He's probably not a politician.

From that point onward, it's one compromise after another until she settles for you--perhaps her 50th choice.

But she never forgets one through 49. In fact, no one is more aware of a man's shortcomings than his wife. Not only is he a disappointment in comparison with all those idealized men who for years paraded through her imagination--or, maybe, her bedroom--but he reinforces her notions of his own dorkishness by gaining in incompetence what he loses in independence. Still, you must have had something going for you once--even if only momentarily and when very drunk. When she finally settled for you, she formulated a number of reasonable considerations:

• Security. When women get serious about marriage, they get serious men, since most women prefer not to help men find themselves, and most women prefer men who are able to do a man's work--namely, to support themselves and their families. This is true even if she has a career; in fact, a woman who already deals with workaday responsibilities is even more clear in her expectations, and she will have a well-informed appreciation of what it will take to get by if she decides to opt for full-time motherhood.

• Dad. According to a legion of shrinks, women marry as part of a reaction against their fathers. This is psychology, so it may be more a feeling than a truth.

• Mom. Same source: Some women get married in order to become their mothers. Some men love to be mothered. These two types get together and they're stuck for life.

• Respect. Never underestimate the importance of a woman's self-esteem--and the esteem of her friends and family--in making her choice. The best women marry men whose qualities match their own healthy self-esteem. On the other hand, insecure men frequently marry trophy wives--especially if their insecurity is caused by advancing age. So do women wed trophy husbands, but women are considerably more adroit in concealing their motives for marriage.

• Children. Most women earnestly desire to have children and, in cooperation with a responsible, sensible father (and, really, many desperate women even skip the sensible part), to be good mothers to the children they have.

What to look for in your basic wife

Men (and women, for that matter) spend most of their first two or three decades like teens in a premarital mall, hanging out, window-shopping, occasionally slipping something on but not really buying.

If you were one of the ones who left the mall married, then you know that what happened was psychedelic, man. Suddenly you started hallucinating signs that read Final days! Clearance sale! and you grabbed something--anything--on the way out.

When you get ready to close that deal, there are only a half dozen things you should consider. Six. That's not many. But skip just one, and you'll be doomed to repeat the other five--with a new woman.

(1) Marry the most beautiful woman you can find. Every woman has one good picture, one angle that makes her look just wonderful. It's the shot you see when you first fall in love with a woman. From that moment on, it's the only picture of her that exists for you. Women are far more realistic in these matters, and once they leave adolescence, they look for qualities in a man that often have little to do with his appearance, thank God. But men are browsers, so packaging makes the sale. If a woman has a dazzling personality or a spirituality that blinds you to her appearance, don't worry: You'll patch something together in your imagination that will keep her looking beautiful forever.

On the other hand, attractive women who use their looks as a replacement part for other important character qualities, such as wit or kindness or competence, make expensive but convenient Bic wives. They're disposable, but at least they know it. Like ball players, they have to get it while they can, because when the fat lady sings, it's over, especially if they've become the fat lady.

(2) Marry for laughs. Dull and stupid women, self-serious women, boring women all have no sense of humor, the one unfailing measure of intelligence. Find somebody who knows a joke when she tells it. (continued on page 140) Guide to Marriage(continued from page 86) (3) Marry a grown-up woman. While it's true that many men die of old age while in the throes of a mid-adolescent crisis, lots of girls will be girls until they finally decide to be postmenopausal women. For some girls postcollegiate life in the big city is just paid graduate work. Their lives take on the familiar simplicity of campus dwellers:

• The serious ones join the urban-professional equivalent of a sorority. They run the school newspaper and work on the campus radio station. They organize pep rallies and marches. They form odd cliques, travel in groups, go nuts for fads and play follow-the-leader.

• The not-so-serious ones cultivate their social standing in the cafeteria, go to lots of dances and still see drugs as a metaphor for the smartness of youth.

Both types mistake this extended adolescence for adulthood. Alas, they are often unhappy. Their unhappiness ultimately becomes an issue they explore in focus groups and seminar-type settings, until they have an epiphany: They decide the problem is the men in their life.

Unless you are also involved in putting together a back-to-school lifestyle, marrying an adolescent woman is a sure disaster, since she'll never grow up enough to have real-life competence.

(4) Marry for sex. Married life is rough; sex is the lubricant and leveler.

(5) Marry for money. No, not her money, knucklehead. Yours. A chap knows he's made a good marriage when he sees how much better he's doing as a consequence of marrying a smart woman than he was as a wasted bachelor. In their spare time, and without breaking a sweat, good wives help build great careers for their husbands. Women are practical and, as is well-noted, they are especially practical about husbands.

You can, of course, marry for her money, but trust us on this one: You'll earn every penny. Plus, you'll have lousy job security.

(6) Marry for kids. This is short, so read it twice: There are many women who do not wish to be involved mothers, who feel life without kids is plenty interesting enough and who find such satisfaction in other endeavors that they don't need whatever it is motherhood has to offer. These women make great dates, but you don't have to marry any of them, especially if at some time in your life you want to be somebody's dad. A good father will only marry a woman who wants to be a good mother.

Accessories and Options

While some women don't care to be discussed in other than literal terms, men live in a parallel universe filled with analogies that rattle around like loose lug nuts in a hubcap. So let's see what sort of mileage we can get out of a women-as-cars metaphor.

If you want a wife who's fully loaded, look for these little extras:

• In terms of design, get one that is functional, but avoid wagons and minivans.

• You'll eventually outgrow a convertible. Besides, it provides almost no creature comforts, and you can't drive it in bad weather.

• A coupe is a good bet, since a lithe, sleek look always suggests a sporty attitude, especially if you avoid the current affection for puffy, rounded edges. And while it isn't spacious, a coupe is usually sufficient to accommodate two small backseat passengers.

• Upholstery can be seductive. Rich, plush appointments often seem like a good idea, but you really should forget the velour and go for vinyl. Vinyl never ages. Look at Cher.

• A/C, P/S, P/B, A/T, cruise. Temperature control is good, of course. The other amenities make life on the road safer, less tiresome, easier to handle. But complicated options can mean high maintenance costs when the warranty runs out. Maybe you should plunk down for the extended-service plan.

• Get something with power. Occasionally, you just want to get out on the four-lane, blow out the carbon and remember what it was like the first time you did it.

• Visit the factory: Check out Mom and Dad. Any important body parts missing--such as brains or hearts, for instance? Her parents' home will haunt her forever, so give it a close once-over, since you'll soon be living in the figurative attic.

Bureau of Marital contracts, department of Bliss

Varieties of religious experience: There are two fundamentally different ways to look at a wedding. To some it's a church thing. To others it's a state affair.

So choose. A religious ceremony or a civil one? It's a mistake to confuse these two types of weddings, by the way. If you have even the slightest doubt that your marriage will survive every single one of life's obstacles, then don't take marriage vows in a church or synagogue, despite the fact that these buildings provide a nice, traditional backdrop. Get married at city hall or in front of a clerk at Sea World. Because on the off chance that there's something to this whole God question--and on the even more remote possibility that churches have something to do with it--it's a smarter gambit to lie to a bureaucrat than to a clergyman.

Discussing marriage ceremonies in conceptual terms is one thing, but once you decide to get married, it's all out of your hands anyway. While your bride and her family will be doing the important work of the ceremony and reception--hiring the caterer, finding a band, refinancing their house--you have to remember only three relatively minor things:

• Show up.

• Don't get in the way.

• Don't fall over.

The Laws of Marriage

Some things you can't help but notice:

• Marriage makes you stupid. Under the constant scrutiny of our wives, who are always wondering why they made the choices they did, men begin to glow with perspiration, because the inevitable result of this surveillance is an acute sensitivity to our inadequacies. Worried about meeting not only our responsibilities but also our wives' expectations, and aware of every minor failure, we begin to fear we are slowly becoming the idiots our wives already suspected we were.

• Your wife will pick a fight with you when you look your stupidest--e.g., half-shaved, in boxers or while flossing.

• Your wife will launch into a lengthy discourse at the exact moment you seek to excuse yourself to visit the toilet.

• During the evening newscast, your wife will remain silent during commercials and talk through the news.

• The longer you wait to catch a baseball score, the more likely it is that your wife will ask you an idle question the moment the score is reported.

• Your wife will break wind within five seconds of your decision to initiate romance.

• The later it is, the more tired you are, the more important the breakfast meeting the next morning, the more likely your wife is to attempt to seduce you.

• A marriage that lasts eight years will last a lifetime.

(It should be noted that this hopeful marital law is widely reported using different numbers, ranging from three to 15.)

• You meet more attractive, available women during the first year of your marriage than you did in all the years preceding your marriage.

Marital Mojo

You meet a woman and fall in love and she's not safe with you in the same room. You can't keep your hands off her, you devise new sexual positions and play out fantasies with her like the despicable pervert you have become. You rut and when she's not around, you're a one-armed fool with nothing but her on your mind. You're a monogamous sex fiend.

Then you get married and you start to lose things. Like your sex drive. Where the hell did that thing go? you wonder. It was here a second ago.

• Don't look for what isn't missing. Don't mistake passion's pubescent fervor for sex. Sex is like soybeans. It's the miracle filler found in almost every aspect of married life. You can hide it under a layer of affectionate sentimentality or serve it up naked as passion.

• Passion isn't the normal symptom of sex. The sexual marathon that often precedes infatuation's grand finale is not a static condition of life with women. If it were, nobody would be able to work. Or walk. So long as there is a sexual context to your marriage--that is, so long as you see your marital partner as a sexual being at least part of the time--then passion will take care of itself. Remember how, in the throes of lust, it seemed as if your dick lived a secret life all its own? So does passion. Passion keeps its own calendar and comes out to celebrate its own private holidays. You'll be the first to know.

• Make room for sex. Nothing fills up a house like a marriage. Two people can live together in relative sexual bliss for years. You add a marriage contract and suddenly there's no room for anything. The place is packed; you can't turn around.

By the way, if you think it's crowded with two married people in one house, remember this: Children are on constant guard against sex. If the border patrol did for borders what kids do for sex, the only illegal aliens in America would be those from Mars.

• Think dirty thoughts. Don't let your love object cease to be a sex object. Experiment. Watch an erotic film, invite the Sharon Stone of your mind to join you for a threesome, sit around naked with antlers on your head, or talk cheap, carny trash to each other. Among married people, anything goes that works.

• Remain on intimate terms. The relationship that you enjoy with your wife should always be intimate. The best way to do this is to allow her some privacy, maintain your own and foster a sense of differentiation.

Another surefire way to keep a certain level of intimacy: Protect the secrets you share with your wife. Never let your sex life become the common currency of your conversation.

• Miss her. The only suggestion that Mencken had for achieving this was to take separate vacations. If you were married to Mencken, of course, that would be perfect, but for most people it isn't a practical solution, or even a helpful one. The abstract idea is good, though: Too much oneness can make coupling a little problematic.

• Don't panic. Sometimes sex takes a separate vacation and leaves one or both of you behind. If your wife suddenly seems preoccupied or otherwise distracted from sex, don't make a fuss. Marriage requires infinite flexibility. Before insisting that she always operate at your level of sexual activity, try to understand her need for a little physical withdrawal from time to time. Of course, some guys use this situation as an opportunity to grab a ukulele, slip into a polyester Hawaiian something, douse themselves with English Leather and sing My Baby Don't Give Me Good Lovin' at the top of their lungs beneath some sympathetic single woman's window. The potted plant that inevitably clocks them on the head comes courtesy of their wives' lawyers.

• Don't take your sexual relationship for granted. As in other aspects of life with women, you just have to pay attention sometimes.

Loose Shoes

Look, no hard feelings here, but the best women aren't terribly sentimental about this marriage business. When a woman decides to marry, either she's been removed to a state of irrationality and will therefore marry the wrong man and so be made to suffer much distress, or she has already lived through the crazy parts of a love life and now browses for a husband with all the wild abandon of a spinster buying sensible shoes. If you want a good wife, be a wing tip, not a loafer.

Remember that, lads: A wing tip. Not a loafer.

"You can, of course, marry for her money, but trust us on this one: You'll earn every penny."