Today, I heard about a gal in her twenties that had been dating a guy for 10 months. Apparently, they had an amazing relationship, where they rarely fought, they had romantic dates, they had friends and parties together. In her mind, they were well on their way to a chapel, wedding cakes, and puffy white dresses. But then, all of a sudden, he hit her with “the bomb of Gilead”….out of the blue, he took her out to coffee (because that’s what really great men do when they are about to give you the “talk”), and told her that she just wasn’t marriage material for him. Obviously, she is devastated. Can’t eat, can’t sleep, needs a whole new friend group…the whole sha-bang.

Right before Christmas, a dear friend of mine had the same kind of “hit-by-the-break-up-bus” experience by her then fiancé, several weeks before their wedding. His reasonings were complicated, but when distilled, the same kind of message: “I’m not ready to be married to you.”

Us women joke that there must be something in the water, because about 2 months later, I had the same conversation with a boyfriend that I was planning on getting married to. I was planning on moving out of the country to be with him, and already had the boxes packed when I got the call. The only reasoning that he could give me was “I’m so sorry, I just can’t do this.”

Ok, so for me, this puts me at the end of a really bad dating streak. For the friends that know me, they have seen me date slews of men that I thought were just the greatest thing in the world. But in reality, they really treated me quite crappy….and things would get so horrible that the relationships with crumble.   …Or they would cheat on me….or they would call me when I was driving down the 405 Freeway and say “I’m so sorry I just can’t do this.”

So at this point, we have to ask “Jenni, why is it that you are always attracted to the asshole?” This is a really great question. I would love to find the answer to that. (Actually, when Im honest with myself, the answer to that question freaks the shit out of me). But, bottom line, I realize that some couch time with a shrink might do me some good.

In fact, I have several girlfriends that also got tired of getting their hearts ripped out and went to counseling to figure out their patterns. Several thousand tears later, the light bulbs go on. They realize that their dads were emotionally distant, they felt abandoned by people that they loved, their mothers were manipulative, or whatever twisted paths they had led them to choose assholes of men.

Now, while on the phone with my mother (because all good conversations about marriage take place while driving home on the phone with your mother), we are talking about me, and counseling, and the ways that I saw my dad be sometimes a little horrible to my mother, and the kinds of things in men that I can be blind to. It all seems overwhelming. Like here I am at 24, drowning in an emotional sea of dysfunctions, hurt, brokenness, abuses, fears, the unknown….and it dawns on me….

Since when has marriage been rocket science?

“Mom, was it always like this? I mean, was it like this when you were young? You got married at 22 or something…how did you figure all of this out before you married dad? And was it like this in the 70s or the 50s or the 40s? Did you sit down and delve into the depths of your path with a professional counselor just to feel like you could really say ‘yes’ to a man when he gets on one knee and gives you a ring box?”

“Nope”, my mom says. “It was different then. We just got married, and as you stumbled into the problems within your marriage, people just dealt with it differently. Men were workaholics, alcoholics, emotionally dead, or whatever it was that helped them deal with what came out of marriage.”

So this bring me to a long emotional conversation that I had over dinner at my favorite micro-brewery/restaurant (Karl Strauss in Costa Mesa, I highly recommend you visit) with a dear gal that I used to work with. She has been married for 38 years, and was nice enough to speak candidly with me about her marriage to her husband, his alcoholic tendencies, and the way thoses shaped her life and her thoughts in the wake of his lifestyle choices.  She is beautiful, and incredibly strong, although I don’t know if she knows that fully yet (If you are reading this, know that I think you are incredibly beautiful and strong).

What I admire about her is that she never left him. She said “That’s just what you do. That is what sacrificial love is. Even if it kills you, you stay in it. I have a family, and I had to do what was the best for my family. I still think of my adult children and want to make sure that they are all happy.”

Now, it was the same thing with my Grandma. There were ALL KINDS of dysfunction that she dealt with. When asking her about it, she just says the same message “Jenni I had a family. I did what I had to do.” I know that my grandfather was injured which led him to be depressed, and alcoholic, etc. And the interesting thing is as a child I remember him being very quite and reserved. According to my grandma though, before the accident, he was always jovial and fun loving. She told me that she used to tell her children “Don’t worry about your Daddy, this isn’t really him. He really is a happy man, he is just not himself right now.”

Neither of these women would have ever dreamed of leaving their husbands. Despite the fact that they turned into very different men than the men that met them at their wedding alters, forever meant forever.

….So what changed?…

Finishing up my conversation with my mom, I joked that maybe we would all just be better off if we resorted to arranged marriages and wrote off the false idea that marriage is one giant romantic comedy. Maybe I am too much of a realist in that way, or maybe I have just gotten my heart broken too many times. But I hate romantic comedies. They poison our brains with the idea that there are men out there that know all of the right words at the right time, and they can swoop in and save us from our own adversity. They don’t show the part where you wake up 38 years later and realize that you might be angry with your husband for the ways you had to adjust to his choices. I think they give us overly sappy, unrealistic expectations to what love is like.

So, now that we are watching incredibly fake movies, going to counseling, and waiting to get married later in life, it changes the game. Isn’t it a lot of pressure to make sure that you have all of your issues sorted before you say yes to the beautiful man on one knee with a ring box? Because for me, at this point at least, I don’t know if I’m going to get there. I might just tell him “Go on ahead with out me…I’m just a mess!” Wouldn’t it be better if we just knew that each other were constantly going to be messes? We could get married to men that wooed us, and we could wake up later in life staying in the marriage because that is just what you do.

For me at least, the pressure seems too great. I love the idea of arranged marriages. In fact, I have been begging my parents to get me an arranged marriage since I had my first break up (they wont for the record). With arranged marriages you could chock out all of the fluffy expectations of a passionate, perfect marriage with a healthy man. You just own the fact that you don’t know each other very well, and you are going to do what it takes to make it work. I think that maybe a littler closer to what marriage turns out to be in reality any way.

I question whether or not we’ve gotten it better now. Maybe our marriages have less dysfunction in them, but it takes so much work to even get to the alter! I appreciate that in 50s, 60s and 70s, marriage was more like of an arrangement: Real. Not fluffy. Ugly sometimes. But everyone knew how it was going to be. No one was diluted with the “Rom-Com” mentality. Maybe if I beg my parents enough, they let me forgo the science experiment, and arrange a marriage for me after all.