So You Married A Hot Girl In Yoga Pants

So you married a hot girl in yoga pants who you met three years ago outside a gym in the East Village. She was just leaving a ‘bums and tums’ class. You were on your way to buy coffee after a meeting with your PhD supervisor.

(You are writing a dissertation on ‘echoes of the modern’ in Kerouac’s prose).

You were both in your late twenties when you met and it was good (she was hot, and she sure looked good in those yoga pants). Now you are in your early thirties and it’s still good (and those yoga pants are the gift that keeps giving.)

Fine. That’s great. I’m very happy for you.

But don’t think it gives you the right to lecture me (and others) on the ‘wonders’ of marriage.

I don’t want to rain on your parade. But has it ever occurred to you that the length of time you are basing your conclusions on is, well, somewhat lacking?

Three years is not a long time, my friend. Of course things are still good after three years. If they weren’t then I’d be really worried for you.

But forget about three years. Try three decades. Four decades. Five, even.

How is monogamy working out for you now?

There are three issues I have with the proponents of the “do the ‘mature’ thing, stop messing around being a player and ‘settle down’ instead” crew).

1. They have made an emotional decision and then backwards-rationalised it intellectually so they can argue that it is the ‘right’ thing to do. And anyone who disagrees is ‘immature’ or ’emotionally damaged’.
2. They have usually not been married long enough to speak with authority. Also, they have (in many cases) been privileged to have come from stable family backgrounds, and as such have not seen the huge damage that monogamy-gone-sour can wreak on couples and children. 
3. They are usually sanctimonious dullards. 

So you married a hot girl in yoga pants. Well, that’s great for you. I have dated many hot girls in yoga pants and I’ve avoided marrying any of them.

Why?

A couple of reasons. Because I have seen far too many examples in my own life of long-term relationships and marriages that have foundered and then been smashed on the rocks. And because, anyway, marriage and ‘responsibility’ are not things I particularly aspire to.

You will accuse me of pessimism, or (once again) of immaturity.

(Of course, the latter is a ‘shaming’ technique, seeing as none of us here are snowflakes we’ll ignore that.)

But I accuse you of dishonesty. To yourself, as much as to anyone else. I accuse you of refusing to acknowledge the simple fact that, sometimes, you want to fuck other people. That, sometimes, you see another cute girl in yoga pants in the East Village. and you check out her butt and legs. And you think, ‘hell yeah.’

And do you really think she—your wife, that is—doesn’t want to fuck other guys too? Of course, you know it intellectually. But you don’t like to think of it, do you? So instead what you do is you play it down in your head. You maintain a state of denial where you are fully aware of the human nature “dashboard’ but you hold an ‘it would never happen here‘ line.

And you know what? Maybe you’re right. There’s a good chance you are right. Quite conceivably, your wife will never cheat on you. And perhaps you will never cheat on her either (not even with a hooker, when ‘it doesn’t really count’).

Well done. But I would be correct, wouldn’t I, in saying that you and your wife would have only not fucked other people in spite of yourselves. You would, in other words, have successfully repressed your natural desires, perhaps over decades.

Ah yes, Troy, you say. But don’t you realise that there is something greater than our basic instincts? Don’t you know that we can rise above those in the pursuit of “something higher”. Something “more meaningful”.

Don’t you care about LOVE, Troy?

(No, you don’t. Because you are just a damaged, frightened, immature little man-boy, aren’t you?)

Etc.

Well, this is where the fallacy of intimacy comes in. You imagine that because your heads lay on the same pillow every night, you hold one another while you sleep, because you talk to one another about your hopes and dreams, that you are “connected”. That you are “intimate”?

You forget that, in truth, she is in her own head and you are in yours. You experience physical and emotional feelings alone. So does she. You cannot “climb into her” and live her life any more than she can climb into you.

That’s intimacy is a fallacy, bro. There is always, necessarily, a gap. You are not (despite the love songs) the same person.

We all die alone, as the cheery idiom goes.

What married couples do is repress (or attempt to repress) their sexual desire for other people over decades, while aiming for a ‘oneness’ that will never truly manifest itself.

At best, they achieve a simulacrum of oneness that feels like the real thing, but isn’t.

More often than not cracks begin to show. No, not in the first three years. But after 15 years? Now even the most insensitive spouse will be aware (even if only subconsciously) of the distance between intimacy as advertised what they have.

Well, what of it? you ask. Even if that’s the case, something else kicks in. Friendship. Companionship. All of that jazz.

Yup, maybe. If you’re lucky. It depends on how the pair of you are able to put up with the sexual and emotional sanctions you have placed upon yourselves. In the end, a lot of couples manage OK. Because after all, if not this, then what  . . . ?

But that doesn’t make the state of long-term marriage desirable, merely ‘better than nothing’.

Should You Get Married?

Am I saying people shouldn’t get married? No. I’m not saying anything at all. People can do what the hell they want—what does it have to do with me?

What I am saying is you have to get real—with yourself, at least. We all know we’re animals. You know, reading this, that you’d fuck many more of the people you encounter on a daily basis than you would ever admit to publicly.

And yet still you consider marriage the endgame.

Well, do what you like. But it seems like a lot of work. Decades keeping up a shared pretence. And I’ve seen firsthand the fallout when it goes wrong. It’s not pretty.

For myself, it just seems like a massive distraction from what I really want to do, which is write. Why would I get into a long, drawn-out psychodrama with a woman when I can just live alone, date, and spend the bulk of my time doing what I actually want to do with my life instead?

I’m going to be dead in a few decades’ time (if I last that long). You have however long you’ve got left. My advice is this: instead of doing what other people tell you to do, why not think about what you actually want out of this weird, random stint you didn’t ask for on this imploding planet, and do that instead?

And if you’d like to learn why I write so much about dating, go here.

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