Love is a terrible reason to get married

Recently my husband and I celebrated one whole year of marital bliss. Reaching this rather tiny benchmark made me contemplate the reasons people get married and what it takes to make a marriage work. And last.

I think the worst reason people give for wanting to get married is that they love each other. Big effing deal. I love chicken nuggets. Alot.

Love is the most emotionally charged word in the English language, yet we make critical, life altering decisions based off of it. Doesn’t that seem irrational? That’s like shopping when you’re hungry, or killing someone when your blood sugar is low. Once the smoke clears, you can’t take that shit back.

Love isn’t even a good reason to do nice things, like save a baby from a run away train. Isn’t that just something you should do? DUH.

Besides that, ever heard the saying love hurts? That’s right. When I eat too many nuggets I experience this. People in love do shitty, terrible things to one another every day. Just watch 48 Hours. They have some real eye opening, romantic stories on that show, let me tell ya. Love doesn’t seem to prevent lying, cheating, deceiving, and worse…the purchases of rope and duct tape.

The sad reality is that people love each other until they don’t. Then they dismember your body with a wood chipper and leave town with their lover in their new Corvette. Brings a whole new meaning to “love you to pieces”.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my husband, even more than chicken nuggets, but that’s not the reason I married him. I thought long and hard about it, and for me, what it came down to was how much I liked him.

I really do. I like spending time with him and we have fun together. I want to leave work and hurry home so he can tell me about his craptastic day over beers. I think genuinely liking the person you’re with keeps you from wanting to do anything that would hurt them. Like stuffing them in a wood chipper.

If you’ve ever loved anybody, you know without a doubt that you don’t have to like a person to love them. You can indeed despise the shit out of someone you love, and that’s why no one should make any decisions based off that criteria alone. Once the initial shine wears off, and they start smacking their food and throwing clothes in the floor, there had damn sure better be something you like about them. Love won’t keep you from punching them in the face, but like will.

It always makes me nervous when I see young people getting married. Their deep feelings of love combined with oozing hormones mask the red flags that would be otherwise evident if they weren’t in an irrational, emotional fog. For instance, does she keep a wood chipper parked in the driveway? Does he shoot snot out of one nostril in parking lots? Love causes us to overlook these things, and that’s bad. Love is blind, after all, until you come out of the fog. It’s only then that you’re able to make an informed decision. You can see things clearly for the first time. Now, his jokes aren’t funny, and her laugh makes you want to impale yourself on a rusty spoon. It turns out he’s not very nice to animals and she chews like a rhinoceros. These things matter.

So today I celebrate the intense like I have for my wonderful husband and I look forward to many more years by his side. Not because I love him, but because I like being there.

And because he doesn’t own a wood chipper.

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4 thoughts on “Love is a terrible reason to get married”

  1. If I ever get divorced from chicken nuggets, Jill Y will have me on that altar faster than Usain Bolt after a Tetanus jab!

  2. Thank you for clarifying that for me. You have just explained to me why I’m divorced – twice. If ever I meet my next husband, I’ll hope to fall in like with him. Happy Anniversary!

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