The Wisdom of a Marriage Expert
Something happens to the staffers at Barstool Sports World Headquarters this time of year. It seems like every late September/ early October we push aside the stuff that usually occupies our minds… football, celebrity asses, gambling, postseason baseball, and female body parts… and turn our thoughts to things like love and commitment. It’s hard to believe, I know. But there’s a pattern here.
Unless you’ve been in Gitmo for the last year, you must know that El Presidente gets married this week. And the effervescent Kati Cawley just celebrated her first anniversary. My own Irish Rose and I just had, incredibly, our 16th anniversary. That’s four presidential terms in office. Or to put it differently, if our marriage was a girl, we’d have it on MTV right now, throwing it a garish, elaborate, wretchedly excessive party and spoiling it rotten to the point you just want to slap the tiara off its bratty little head. Because it’s our little marriage and we want it to feel special and nothing is too good for it.
Needless to say, I’m stoked El Pres and Kati have decided to jump the broom when they have. First of all because I know both of their spouses and they’re both really nice people. Impossible not to like. But also because EP and Kati both marriage noobies and my business card says “Happily Breeding in Captivity Since 1993” which makes this is one area (the only one, by the way) where I’ve got experience, wisdom and expertise over my co-workers.
And make no mistake, I AM an expert on marriage. Which is not to say I’m a great husband. I’m not. In fact, I think as husband’s go I probably suck, but more on that later. And it’s not a contradiction to say I’m a lousy husband, but an expert on marriage. It’s common for people to be expert at teaching that which they themselves cannot do. Take Bill Belichick. Hell, take his entire coaching staff. With the exception of Pepper Johnson, there’s not a guy on the Pats sidelines who played football beyond intramural touch games in prep school. Whereas all time greats like Wayne Gretzky and Michael Jordan were abysmal failures as coaches. It’s counter-intuitive but true. Who would you rather have as a golf instructor? Dave Peltz who never did anything on tour, or Tiger Woods who’d just say “If I were you I’d wrap a 2-iron around this tree and knock it to within 3 feet” which wouldn’t help you one damn bit. And this goes beyond sports. Dr. Phil is America’s most influential advice guru, and he’s a dildo. Dr. Spock was the 20th century’s top child raising expert and his grandson jumped off the roof of the Children’s Museum. (I think because was sick of his grandpa spending all his time warping around the galaxy fighting Klingons, I’m not sure.) It’s the old “Guidance Counselor Paradox,” which states that the people in charge of helping you make career decisions made awful career decisions for themselves.
But my shortcomings aside, 16 years of marital bliss is all the curriculum vitae I need to being declared an expert witness on marriage in any court of law. Now if you’re saying to yourself “When does he get to the part where he starts saying how marriage sucks and his wife is a soul-crushing succubus?” then you’ve come to the wrong place and I suggest you flip to the model interview or the Ms. Barstool competition right now. By the same token if you’re expecting syrupy love sonnets about how wonderful the Lovely Mrs. Thornton is, email me and I’ll tell you in person. But this is a smutty sports paper, not the Harlequin Romance rack at Walmart, and there’s no room for that here. But I will make this public confession right now.
I like being married. That might be shocking and you don’t hear people say it much, but it’s true. I like it even more than I thought I would. More than anyone told me I would. When a couple is getting ready to strap on the old double yoke, advice comes from every direction about hard marriage is, the challenges, the difficulties, how much work it is. There are approximately 2,000 old Irish ballads using metaphors about boats and troubled waters and the like and I heard them all. But no one ever tells you that it’s actually fun. That having a wife is a hundred times more fun than having roommates, living alone or God forbid living in your parents’ house.
I’ll admit that it’s not the case with everyone. The world is full of gawdawful marriages and I lucked out. Believe me I made a series of bad decisions in my life starting with wearing a Devo t-shirt and ending with putting everything I had on the A’s to win the 1990 World Series (Reds sweep) and picking the right woman to marry broke that long losing streak. Proof positive that even a blind squirrel can stumble onto an acorn once in a while instead of always winding up a street pizza.
But I admit that the reason I outpunted my coverage in the wife department has way more to do with luck than anything. Like I said, I’m not much of a catch. I don’t make enough money. In the looks department, I’m no oil painting. I have no discernable skill or work ethic. I spend more on beer in a given night out with friends than my annual flower allotment. I spent more time watching NFL Network yesterday than I will on chick flicks all year. The extent of my emotional support is letting her watch “Biggest Loser” without mocking her while the sob stories of the big, sloppy contestants make her cry. For large portions of each week I’m sedentary on the couch writing Barstool blogs about football and celebrity asses. And in return she gives me happiness and fulfillment. Go figure.
I’m not claiming that marriage is all sunshine, happiness and rainbows, because it isn’t. Nothing in this life is. Not even sunshine, happiness and rainbows which can give you skin cancer, be a sign of drug abuse and mean your cold cuts are rancid, in that order. Show me a married person who never complains and I’ll show you someone who’s lying through his teeth. I have one buddy who couldn’t stop talking about how great life with his wife was. “Isn’t she great? Doesn’t she look great? How do you like our house? We have such a great time all the time. Isn’t our cat awesome?” until we all just learned to tell him to STFU. Within 6 months of the last time I listened to him prattle on like this, he left her for another woman and I realized that the voice inside his head the whole time was a primal scream begging to be let out.
I’ve got other buddies whose marriages have broken up. Good guys who from the outside looking in were doing all the right things and seemed to have good marriages but for whatever reason their wives dumped them. Granted I’m not married to these guys (nor would I) so it might not be fair of me, but in every case I’m blaming the wife. Because that’s what you do in those cases. You stick by your friends and take their side and just feel bad for them that they made a bad choice and it cost them a lot more than the 1990 A’s cost me.
Which brings me to my unassailable wisdom and incontrovertible life advice that will bring a lifetime of love and fidelity to all my newlywed friends. Something you won’t get from Dr. Phil or the best man’s toast or from any priest or justice of the peace. Four simple words that will be the key to happy marriages for all.
Don’t be a douche. That’s it. The mantra of my core belief system. Don’t. Be. A. Douche. Whatever you regard douchiness as being, don’t be that. You know what I’m talking about and it goes for husband and wife both. When you first started going out, you were on your best behavior. Stay with that, or as close to it as you can. Every marriage that goes south does so with one or the other turning into something they weren’t when they started dating. The wife tries to change him. The guy stops listening to her. She stops taking care of herself. He cheats. She doesn’t want him hanging out with the guys that were his friends 15 years before she met him. He doesn’t help with the kids. And before you know it, they’re involved in and endless cycle of douche-on-douche crime.
It’s really no more complicated than that. You got married because you liked each other and you had fun. So remain likable and keep having fun. Like I said earlier, I like being married and there’s the reason why. Because I like her and it’s still fun. I like waking up next to her and coming home and sitting at the dinner table tooling on all the ridiculous silly bastards we deal with every day then going to bed at night. Lather, rinse repeat. We do our own things and occasionally we get to go out together, but the it’s this business of just being around each other on a day-to-day basis that I enjoy more than I thought possible when I went ring shopping 17 years ago. Not because I’m any prize, but because marriage in general, if you do it right, is great. Plus, I should mention it involves female body parts, which is nice.
El Pres, Kati, check back with me in 16 years and tell me I was right. Congrats.