Every time we hook up with someone romantically our hearts our minds start racing towards this marriage idea. I notice it in myself all the time. it just starts thinking about it every few seconds whenever I meet someone new or start getting romantic with someone. It's like we’re in this race to get married and then of course once we are married it's like time just drags on forever, I mean you start to realize that now it is forever. 

With la Princesa she was always talking about that she didn't have time. "I don’t have time to waste if you’re not the one or I'm not the one for you. I don't have time." She was in a race. Her childhood was awful according to her own account, mother and father never got along, should have never got married, he was always drunk screaming all the time, money was their love, and I always used to think when she would tell me that she didn't have the time, well what are we in such a race for? She had already been married once and divorced. So what are we trying to do, make me the number two divorce??? I mean why are we rushing to this marriage thing so fast, so we can have kids and be miserable and get divorced and never speak again? I think of the Italian stallion and her telling me how her parents never got along and her family life sucked. 

Me, I never knew my dad, he left before I was old enough to really get to know him, my friend N, who after nine years of marriage, has reached the point where both of them are just stuck in a stalemate, not in love but stuck with kids and a home. The cat and the wolf now are separated, who would have ever thought that would happen, but you know it happens. He lives in his own little apartment by himself with his birds and his dog. Kids live with mom.

I mean, I'm sorry but I am not in a hurry to go through that. But here's the fucked up part. I totally believe in love. I mean I believe in love with all my heart. I believe in love at first site. I believe that somewhere out there is someone for everyone who we can love with all our heart and who will love us the same, madly passionately and unconditionally.

And I believe that when that feeling overtakes us then yea we want to get married we realize O.K. now well here it is. Here is that feeling I have waited for all my life. This is the one. And then it becomes easy to lose all rational and to just go for it no matter what may happen in the future. And nesting with another is certainly more enjoyable than going it alone. I’ll be the first to offer that.

I just don't know if that means forever. Yea once and a while it’ll happen, but to try to generalize about all humans, it just seems kind of silly. We don't do that about anything else in humanity except marriage. It's the only box we still try to jam ourselves into still. And I don't believe in the church so I don't care what they say about God and marriage and all of that. I mean, for me personally, God, he wants us to be happy. And to help others around us be happy. Period.

I'm not saying marriage isn’t a good thing. I think it can be. my brother and his wife are still married. Twelve years or something unimaginable as that. Still happy and in love. Two kids. But her sister on the other hand, a complete mess. Stayed married way beyond their time, had kids even though they weren’t in love anymore thinking the kids might help, and now on their way to divorce. You know, it's these rules and limits and laws we place on marriage because of the church that make people feel like they have to stay in these marriages forever and just try to endure the pain and the unhappiness even though it feels like a mistake and so then they have kids and it becomes even more of big fucking problem for everyone especially the people that those kids are going to eventually turn into.

And I love the idea of kids. I cannot wait to meet them and play with them. But I'm just saying that for me now I am starting to think we need to start thinking out of the box a bit. Break the mold and even throw it away. If we don't set ourselves up with all this fake marriage stuff, all these phony lies and half truths and un-natural vows that we know we can’t keep then maybe divorce wouldn’t seem like such a bad thing, it wouldn’t carry such a stigma, it wouldn’t be so traumatic. We could kind of ebb and flow more with our life relationships. You know, be more kinder gentler and appreciative of the natural state of love within us rather than trying to box it up and package it. I don't know if we can capture love and sell it to ourselves like that, you know wrap it all up in all that religious dogma and life or death stuff. After all it's love, we don't even know what it is yet. How can we define it, trap it, set rules to it?

I keep this postcard from Christopher Reeve (post accident) and his wife Dana on a shelf in my closet, for many reasons. One of them is to remind me that life is short, that every moment we are alive and breathing with all four limbs in working order is precious. Another reason is because his wife sitting next to him there smiling is such a beautiful reminder there of the ideal, the archetype, of what marriage should be all about. The man is paralyzed. Cannot move. So for the last how many years she has become the caretaker of the household and more, her once strong and able husband. And there she is smiling next to him. Granted, they are filthy rich so the work isn't really a factor, but still, one can only imagine the sacrifices and hardship of their predicament. But there she is. And it's precisely because of those vows that we make. It's that sickness and in health thing. And I would guess it is also true love. And pictures like that remind me of the ideal, of the original intent of marriage, of that sacred bond between two people that can keep you searching and searching for ‘the one’ for a long time, and when you find them they can make you believe. Forget that most of the people you know are either divorced or on their way or twice and three times married, forget the stories of cheating and affairs and all that crap on the TV and in the movies. You know that the two of you will be different. You will be the ones to show the whole world that it can be done.

Me and Cleo thought we were that couple at one time, no different than anyone else who is newly and happily married or engaged. And now she and her new husband believe the same thing about themselves. She told me so today. That she believes that this time it is forever, that she and he will never get divorced. And I told her that I believed it too. And I meant it. And I hope it is true.

But to insist that it is a natural right, a natural ability, a natural tendency, a natural state, of all humanity to be able to mate for life is no more accurate a generalization than trying to say that all humans can play golf well or worship the same God or type fast, swim fast or sing in key. It's a gross generalization that causes a lot of pain and confusion for many people. People believe it. They rush to the altar and when they fail at it they wonder what is wrong with them. And when married couples fall around us like mosquitoes in a fumigation tent we say, "poor them, they were such a good couple, but I suppose it is for the best. They weren't happy anymore." And we meet a couple who have been together for 20 to 30, or more, we act like it is a miracle, like they are some kind of rare phenomenon. We want to know their secret. And we whisper to ourselves, "maybe I can meet the right person one day and have that too…" but it is a rare occurrence. We don't notice them very often because we are too busy consoling friends who are breaking up or getting divorced because that is far more common.

If we would just let ourselves off the hook a little. Just allowed ourselves to entertain the idea that perhaps mating for life isn't such a natural common state after all, and that perhaps we should rethink it a bit, maybe then we could devise a system that was more easily attainable. Where disappointment wasn't the expected outcome for so many (over 50% divorce rate now). Or perhaps it's just me; perhaps a lot of people just go into it knowing that divorce could very well be the outcome eventually but it's worth the risk. That the good times that you do share while you are together are worth the divorce if that ever comes. A lot of people seem O.K. with having two or three marriages in their lifetime. Friends have told me that they expect to probably be married two or three times in their life. Which may not be such a bad thing. Social scientists have already predicted that that is the future of the human family. But what gets me is the use of the words “forever” or “till death due us part.” Especially if you are already thinking that it may not be...

Personally speaking I cannot say because I have never been married. I have never met anyone where I could look them in the eye and not lie and say "O.K. I will be with you forever." But I hope that it is possible. I keep that dream alive in my heart everyday. I look for her everyday in every corner of the world that I walk; in every moment. 

And that's the amazing thing about it all. With all of this knowledge, with all of these ideas floating around upstairs, the heart still holds the ideal of it, and still longs to find that one someone that is going to shut off all those ideas in our head in a heartbeat and bring in peace, love, family and hominess into our life. Now, I don't know if that is marriage, as much as it is just pure love itself.