Long Term Relationships

On learning surprises about your fiancé shortly before your wedding…

Old man here. Married four decades.

Look, it doesn't matter what you find out about them now. The question is what are you going to find out about them after 10 years, 20 years, and 30 years?

People change. They change a lot. Boy Scout this year. Ten years from now? You find out he is secretly doing hard narcotics and has been for a couple of years. She's shy and doesn't talk much? Raising teenage boys will change that for sure. She'll be a loud mouth harpy and dressing you down loudly by association. Sexually driven almost to obsession? How about zero libido in the same person ten years later. Or how about libido that suddenly manifests in a prude who suddenly can't stop fucking everything shaped like a cucumber.

Kids (shaking head), you have no idea what it means to be in a long term relationship. You think it is about getting to know each other and then you cruise through.

That is wrong!

You think you are cruising, and while you are busy taking them for granted, then turn around and BANG! Some ridiculous new hobby, a new look... now fat, now skinny, now muscles, now fat again, and now back to muscles, oops cancer, and affair, more cancer, how can you have an affair during chemo?... it does not stop.

Marriage and long term relationships are not for cowards or the weak of will. You don't stay together because of love (romance fades into family familiarity and competition for control of children's future) or trust (you cannot trust humans - they are unpredictable even to themselves). You stay together only out of sheer willpower, and because you have a sense of humor about what the person might be up to next, and you want to see it and help them through it.

The first decade of a relationship is like some kind of a joke. People get divorced during that time. Good. They needed to. Because after 4 decades, those pussies would be taking their own lives or end up in 12 step rehab centers.

Oh, that happens too. You'll see.

Wait until their parents die. And then yours die. And then your brother sues you to get all of the inheritance, but won't clean out the basement of their house filled with shit. Then you find out he has a grow lab on a farm, and DEA is investigating him. Oh wait, your brother was shot to death. Now you need knee replacement. What do you mean you slept with my brother? Why the hell are you telling me this now after 30 years? Good god, woman it doesn't matter now.

Walking down the aisle tomorrow? GRAB THE "OH SHIT" HANDLES NOW.

In 40 years, you will be able to look a Marine Drill Instructor in the eyes and say, "Out of my way, kid. I have seen shit you would not believe.”