COUPLES

BY JIM ROWLEY

Conrad and Louise Gonzales were married in 1974, and when their 42nd anniversary approached, they decided to recreate their original wedding photos. With the help of Buzzfeed, the Gonzales’s recalled their entire relationship: meeting in a Pasadena accounting class, their wedding day, and some relationship hurdles.

“It also reminds me how blessed I am that after 42 years I’m still with my wife,” Conrad said after seeing the photos side-by-side. “I thank God that he allowed me to find this woman and enjoy a lifetime together.”

Conrad Gonzales

Check out this site. Called Awkward Family Photos. It’s filled with photos of married people. Happy normal people living their married lives.

I don’t understand any of this

“Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.”

Abraham Lincoln

I understand why people get married. I don’t understand why anybody wants to stay married.

I hated being married.

I always had to explain to people…I’m married. I didn’t wear a wedding ring. I stopped wearing my ring after she stopped wearing her ring.

I’d come home and she’d be there. At first it was great. But after a couple years I’d be filled with a gnawing dread.

After three years I despised her.

It was the same with the other women I’ve lived with. A few months, a year or so, and I’m gone.

Yet so many people marry and stay married their entire lives.

Does love have something to do with it?

Could be Normality has something to do with it. This is what normal healthy people do. They get married and stay married.

If that’s the case, I’m a flawed item.

Could be I’m not terribly flawed.

If that’s the case, something else is going on.

I don’t understand.

I gotta think it out….

It’s all about the Family

I don’t usually talk to the Smelly Irish Dude but he’s sitting there. Staring at his tablet. So I put it to him.

“Well,” he says. “It’s all about the family.”

“You and your wife raised a family?”

“Naww…the lass and Me was never married. I was always at Sea you see.”

“You were a sailor?”

“Naww…I went to sea a lot.”

“Okay.”

“But I’ll tell you this. A man and woman wed and raise a family…they stay together for the kids.”

“Okay.”

“And money helps. You got little or no money…you’re fucked…she won’t hang around with a bum, you see.”

“I see. That happened to you?”

“Nawww….I was always at sea you see.”

“Alright, well…nice talking to you.”

“Not a problem, mate.”

A perfect Marriage

The Lobotomy Dude says he knows the secret to a perfect marriage.

“No shit. You had a perfect marriage?”

“I’m not saying I had a perfect marriage. I’m saying I know the secret to a perfect marriage.”

“Okay. So tell me. What’s the secret?”

“If I told you it wouldn’t be a secret.”

“Shit.”

“There are terrible secrets and there are Damning secrets. But the secret to a perfect marriage is neither Terrible nor Damning…”

“Okay.”

He’s staring at me.

“Well?”

He’s gone. Zoning out like he does. Staring into space.

His mother will be here soon.

She knows how to handle these episodes.

I figure I already know the secret

The secret to a good marriage, that is.

You meet somebody you get along with. They like you. You like them. You share common goals. You have children, further cementing your bond. You work and bring in a nice income. Maybe you both work, meaning you got two incomes. So money aint a problem. You build a mutual trust based on shared goals and interests and a deep and abiding faith in each other. What else? You truly enjoy each other’s company. Need I say more?

Emotional stability helps.

What I’m describing is a good marriage.

Plenty of unhealthy marriages last a lifetime. These are the ones I’m trying to figure out.

What makes the marrying kind suffer a bad marriage through thick and thin?

I don’t know.

Ask Tolstoy

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”

Anna Kerenina

Tolstoy wrote an entire book about a bad marriage.

I keep thinking something is wrong with me. As if Marriage, good or bad, is expected of a normal Person. Meaning I’m not normal. People like me are freaks. Anomalies. Examples of a pathology.

Even terrible people are successful with marriage.

Albert Anastasia, known as the lord high executioner, mastermind of Murder Incorporated, the dreaded boss of the Gambino Crime Family…he had a great marriage. Adored by his wife. Loved by his children…

Go figure.

Maybe I’m just not the marrying kind

Maybe there’s a lot of us out there.

People who’re just not suited to Marrage.

Doesn’t mean we’re bad people.

Nothing seriously wrong with us.

We just don’t fit the Marrying Kind mold.

Doesn’t mean we’re unhealthy.

I think I’ll go with that….for the time being.