Mandatory March Entry: Marriage in 2025

I need to make good on my New Year’s Resolution. March has blurred by. I turned 43 a couple of weeks ago. As usual, every time my biological odometer rolls over, I am compelled to take inventory of my life. Where am I? What am I doing? Where do I want to be and what would I rather be doing? Am I doing anything significant to propel me to those goals?

I find myself wondering if I should get married. The older I get, the harder finding someone I like with whom I want to join my life is only going to get harder. Growing up, I was never girl crazy. At least, I don’t think I was in the way so many of my peers were. I think the way most young people mature is that they don’t really have an interest in the opposite sex until around middle school, then they get that first crush. If that relationship doesn’t work out, or if it never manifests, the person looks for someone else. He or she searches for someone else. Eventually, someone will reciprocate the interest.

I was never really like that. There had to be someone I was interested in. When I liked a girl, she was the only person I would consider being with. Looking back, there were perfectly fine, attractive girls I could have pursued, but didn’t because they weren’t the one girl I liked. I suppose that if nothing else, I’m especially devoted. My regret is sort of lukewarm. As far as high school goes, none of those relationships could have worked out anyways. My college experience was much the same considering what happened with my unemployment during the recession and my dad’s brain injury. A successful relationship could not have been in the cards.

Now I’m getting to a point where if it’s going to happen, it needs to happen. Rather, I need to make it happen, but I have these nagging fears paralyzing me. For one thing, while I would love to be married, I really don’t want to have a wedding. I am painfully a wallflower. The last thing I would want to do is shell out tens of thousands of dollars for one day in which I’m the center of attention. I mean, weddings are one of those things where I think most people them in theory, but in practice they are usually giant headaches. There’s just so much other fun stuff we could with that money besides a wedding. Personally, I’d rather take a honeymoon every year. There are so many fun and romantic destinations we could visit: swimming in the clear waters of Cabo San Lucas or the Bahamas, skiing in Vail, seeing the Aurora Borealis in Iceland. That 99% of women would rather have just one giant day where they’re the center of attention as opposed to marriage full of romantic escapades comes across as almost pathologically self-absorbed.

Beyond not wanting a wedding, I have significant financial assets. I don’t have any debt. I don’t even have a house payment; my mortgage is paid off. At the rate I’m going, I’ll be able to retire before I’m 50. Unfortunately, marriages between middle aged partners have greater failure rates than people who get married young, or so I’ve read. Supposedly, two people trying to join their lives together after they’re already established is much more difficult than when they’re both just starting out. I don’t know if I could get married without her signing a prenup.

Even trying to imagine having that conversation is cringe inducing. It feels like I’m pursuing marriage with the intent that it will fail. My genuine sentiment is I don’t like the prospect that my wife would have a material incentive to dissolve our marriage. If we ever did have a season of conflict, I would have both an emotional and a financial reason to want to work things out, but she would only have an emotional reason to do so, but a financial reason to leave. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, a man being more emotionally invested in a woman than she has in him is basically a death sentence on the relationship. A prenup would make sure that we both had equal incentives to stay together. I wouldn’t propose a prenup that would be unfair. My basic idea is that we would list all of our assets at their market values as of a certain date as well as any debts greater than a few thousand dollars (to exclude our credit card balances). If we ever divorced, any appreciation or loss beyond our individual net worths would be split evenly.

Finally, I’m considering a job change. I’ve enjoyed teaching, but I’m kind of curious to find a new adventure. Seeking to start a relationship while my profession is undefined feels rather foolhardy. This concern is probably the weakest of my apprehensions, but that doesn’t make it any less compelling.

Still, for all my reservations, something seems to consistently trigger me to find a romantic partner. I’ll see a couple holding hands in church, or a romantic song will play on the radio. I just finished playing a zombie apocalypse game on my PC. The plot kicked when the hero, who the player controls, takes his wife to a helicopter evacuation point as the virus outbreak is starting. When they arrived, there is only room for one more person on the chopper, so the hero puts his wife on it and asks which refugee camp they were flying to. When arrived at the camp a few weeks later on his motorcycle, it had been overrun with the zombies. So much of the game is you trying to find out if your wife is still alive and where she might be. Spoiler: She is, and you eventually find and reunite with her. That one scene where see her again, I found myself leaning into the screen. After beating the game, there were still some more side quests, but I neglected doing them because I wanted to leave the protagonist in the camp, sitting next to his wife. Stuff like turns my insides to flaming hot mush.