Marriage is Weird: I'll Have Another Daiquiri, Please

Recently my husband and I took a trip to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. As per my norm, when we’re away, just the two of us, I find some way to nose dive the romance by pontificating over how weird marriage is. It’s a gift I refuse to abandon. A lot of work has gone into its perfecting, and I saw no reason to make this trip any different. We were celebrating, after all.

“Marriage is so weird,” I say, just after I’ve scoured the couples at the pool to prove me wrong and just before I’ve ordered my first daiquiri. “Don’t you think marriage is weird?”

“Mmmm hmmm,” he says like we've done this before because we have. “Yep, marriage is weird.”

“No, I’m serious,” I say.

“I know you’re serious,” he says.

“You don't listen to me.”

“Say something interesting and I'll listen.”

“I will not say something interesting. I will say exactly what I want to say.”

“Then I will continue not listening. It’s my marital right.”

“And this is why marriage is weird. You have to take trips with someone who openly admits they don’t listen to you.”

“I hear you, marriage is weird, and you don't need another daiquiri.”

Well, I sure do if this is the conversation I have to endure, and I will charge it to the room he’s paying for, which also means I’m paying for it because we share money. Marriage is so weird. But this is the part I think is less weird because he makes most of the money, and I spend most of the money, and this seems very enjoyable to me and not so weird at all. This is the part of marriage I was made for.

As I sip and stew, I study the couples around the pool, looking for evidence I’m not wrong for thinking that marriage is a foreign object, a subsidy track they put you on for medical benefits and generational trauma you hand down to people who wouldn't exist if you hadn't agreed to this weird relationship. It's not that I don't believe in marriage, I have 25 years to prove that I do. I just think the whole thing is a little, well, weird.

Since I’m a hard study and also stubbornly southern, I typically find evidence in support of my hypotheses pretty quickly and tell myself, because she and I agree most often than not on important matters, and also on not important matters. We are good friends who listen to each other, unlike this weird man to whom I am married.

“Look at them,” I say to the man who isn’t listening. “She’s got to be some kind of fitness guru. Look at her legs, they could hold up a house! Look at his belly, it could do the same! Do you think they looked like that when they got married? That is so weird.”

He continued reading on his kindle, more engaged in a fictional story than the one his real-life wife was telling him, or maybe he was pretending. Either way, he was missing out.

“And look at that one. She’s half his age, clearly a second marriage for him. He’s a good dad. You can tell he learned a lot from raising his first set of kids. He takes good care of her, too.”

“How do you know that?” Mr. Kindle asks.

“Because he brought her a hamburger. Also, they obviously go to the gym, unlike us. I bet he listens to her.”

“I bet she isn’t spending their vacation telling him how weird it is that they’re married,” he says. “I bet that’s why he’s not married to his first wife.”

“Say what you want,” I say, "but everyone can see it’s weird.”

“That’s your last daiquiri, and stop talking so loud.”

There was the young hippie couple who had long armpit hair (hers) and thinly flowing auburn locks (his). You could see both their nipples on high alert and neither cared. They looked content and happy, and also a little high. And cold.

There was the happy couple around our age, floating in the pool and talking quietly, laughing periodically, while he cradled her in his arms like you would a child who needed a break from dog paddling.

“Why don’t you hold me like that in the pool?” I ask. “Because you won’t get in the pool.” “Of course, I won’t," I say. "If I get wet, I’ll have to skip dinner.”

With all of his mental energy viciously drained by this point, he could only muster up enough to slip me the side-eye like I’m delusional, which I am not.

“I don’t have beach hair genes like the hippie, and I like to eat all my daily meals. I’ll starve in the hotel room by the time my hair is washed and air-dried if I get it wet.”

“You’re the only weird thing here.”

“Not weird, practical. And hungry. Also, my hair is a little dry, and the chlorine, you know...”

"Why did we come here again?"

I watched rowdy, tipsy couples make friends with other rowdy, tipsy couples. They all looked happy, but maybe that's because they were being rowdy. Personally, I'm always happier when I'm being rowdy.

I watched couples mumble every once in a while towards each other as they came up for air from a phone or book.

I watched other couples wrangle small children, give each other breaks, and feed mouths, the same things they’d be doing at home, but with wind and palm trees and a pool instead of high chairs and dishes they had to clean themselves. I remember those days when vacation didn’t feel like vacation, when we were just doing the same things in a different place without all the things I needed to do all the things. Good times.

I watched a weathered old man and woman lovingly hold hands as they descended into the water, making sure each other held steady down the slippery, wide steps. At this age, she had learned not to care, or maybe she never cared, if her hair got wet. When I'm her age, I thought, I hope I won’t care either, but by then, maybe David will be too old to hold me up. That was a weird thought, and a hard one. Maybe I should go ahead and stop caring.

I don’t know whether it was to shut me up, or if all my very insightful commentary led my husband who wasn’t listening to speak the golden nugget of our trip – one never knows what finally leads my husband to crack – but out it came, this thing I had been searching for.

He said, “I think marriage is two people deciding to have shared experiences with the intent and hope of growing together through those shared experiences. And when that doesn’t happen, that’s unfortunately what divorce is for.”

Well, it certainly took him long enough, like 25 years and 327 poolsides, to find that gem. I ordered another daiquiri and charged it to his room which was our room which was being paid for out of our money. Basically, if you think about it, all these shared experiences make everything half price.

Then, because of the work I do with couples, I thought sadly:

When shared experiences include one partner yelling for 26 years while the other partner takes it, that’s not a shared experience that produces hope or growth together. It kills them.

When one partner lies, abandons, betrays, ignores, cheats through real-life or online infidelity continuously, those aren't shared experiences that promote hope or growth together. They kill them.

When each partner demands their own way, refuses to heal, works all the time, doesn’t work but needs to, those aren't shared experiences that produce hope or growth together. They kill them.

This weird relationship, where two people meet and decide, “Hey, you’re pretty cool, and I’d like to make you this promise that, though I don’t quite understand it because we’re young and inexperienced and think we know things we don’t know, I’ll stick around to have experiences with you, some of the most important experiences, like vacations and grocery shopping and boring Saturdays, like kids and the flu and conversations I’m too afraid to have with anyone else.

And I hope these shared experiences over time and sometimes through sheer grit, when we have to decide we still will grow together and not apart even when it’s hard, will lead us to weathered skin and holding hands down slippery slopes and feeding grandchildren so our kids can have a break and room service if we have to because my hair got wet, except by then I may not have any, and if I do, maybe I won’t care because we’ve had too many experiences together that there’s no way I won’t feel beautiful around you.”

When there are more shared experiences of handling what life throws at us together, rather than what we throw at each other to handle separately, well, that’s not weird at all. It’s beautiful, like really beautiful.

And when it stays not beautiful for years, that, unfortunately, is what divorce is for. You get to call no growth and the end to lone survival because you haven’t been in a real marriage for years or maybe ever.

Or, for two people who want to do the work, you get to say,

“I want the experiences if you want them, too. I’m tired of living apart. Can we try this again? Will you come grow together with me?”

If the answer is no, I wrap my arms around you and pray you have the peace of mind to know what to do next.

If the answer is yes, I'd like to raise my poolside drink with the cutest little umbrella and watered-down rum to wish you 25+ more years of shared experiences with the intent of growing together, 327 more poolsides, and at least that many more daiquiris. And if you feel like getting rowdy at the pool, or anywhere for that matter, obviously Mr. Kindle and I are a laugh a minute. Look us up.