To speak of joy that is in marriage
On becoming a wife guy
I completed the Milton Keynes Marathon on May 1st, raising money for Melanoma Focus. As people are still donating to my fundraising page, and huge thanks to those who already have, I’ve decided to keep it open until the end of the month. Donations remain very welcome here.
Despite this newsletter’s somewhat obsessive addressing of darker subjects – depression, troubled masculinity and the ethics of being born – I am always on the search for the positive aspects of life.
I believe, in the stability of marriage, to have found one.
I always wanted to get married. It was at the back of my mind in many of the romantic relationships of my early adult life. I had no fear of it, though I met many men, and some women, for whom the thought of getting married was apparently frightening. This fear often co-existed in such people with a strong desire to have children; this I didn’t follow, for while I understand the fear of becoming a parent – the absolute irrevocability of that decision and its cosmic level of inarguable responsibility – getting married seemed to me a voluntary association which could always be withdrawn from, which started with a party.
I suppose some of their fear was the fear of only having sex with one person, but I never saw that as an obligatory aspect of marriage anyway; spouses could after all come to whatever arrangement they wished about such matters. Anyway, marriage’s impact on your sex life much was hardly much of a reason to wed in the first place. If you liked someone enough to commit to them through all kinds of thick and thin there were deeper things going on than just a desire for a regular shag.
I’ve been married for five years now. I don’t want to go into the specifics of my marriage, nor do I take for granted that said union will endure; I can only say that I hope that it does, as it is a source of great strength for me.
Today I want to talk rather about the state of marriage in general and the benefits I think it can offer.
In the five years since I got married, my life has, in its own modest way, blossomed. I completed the MA course I met my spouse on – we were both training as interpreters – and became joint owner, through her work and my parents’ help, of our own small place. I recently secured a stimulating full-time job, and of course I built this newsletter up to just under 1000 subscribers and self-published my first novel.
I put a lot of this success down to having married.