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Sunday, March 24, 2019

The Marriage Game



A good buddy of mine was in the middle of a divorce. He approached me and asked if I was interested in buying his handgun collection. Now at the time he had at least a half dozen quality pieces. Some were quite rare and collectible. There was no way I could give him anything near market value. Out of curiosity I asked him how much he wanted.

“Twenty-five dollars,” he said.

“What?” I said.

“My wife said to sell my guns and we’d split the money,” he said.

There was no way I was going to get in the middle of that. As it turned out her lawyer had already gotten a judge to prohibit him from selling anything. In the end the guns are one of the few things he actually got to keep.

Then there was the time an acquaintance asked if I would like to buy his motorcycle, a fairly new Honda Goldwing. I declined, but later discovered he was quietly selling all kinds of stuff. About a year later he divorced his wife. Surprise, surprise, he had almost no money in the bank and few physical assets. He quietly turned everything to cash and hid it somewhere. The guy got away with it too. He always was a little sleazy.

We all know people who’ve been devastated by divorce. If you are lucky it’s just someone you know and hasn’t happened to you. It’s rare that a divorce goes well and no one feels that they were screwed over. There’s only one couple in my experience who’ve had an amiable divorce where they split in a calm and reasonable manner.

It really matters who you marry, yet so few of us are really prepared to wed wisely. Matters of love and lust make us all a little crazy. Throw in money, religion, culture, society and all the other factors around it and level headed decisions are nearly impossible. There should be a course taught in school or something.

As for myself, I was lucky. When you marry at twenty after knowing your spouse for only four months the odds aren’t good. However, in my defense, we always communicated well with each other. Even after just four months we had a good idea about our values and life goals. It wasn’t all luck, but there was that too.

-Sixbears

8 comments:

  1. Dated my first wife three years and were married for five. Dated my second wife for four months and we just hit 36 years. Not that it's been easy, but long engagements don't always prove anything.

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  2. The odds today of a person marrying for the first time and making it to the three year mark are appalling. When I was a kid, I never heard of anyone getting divorced in rural Georgia. Now, nobody stays married.

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    1. One advantage that I had back then was a steady job. That's not to be underestimated. The pay wasn't great, but it was regular.

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  3. I'm happy that it's working out for ya and you certainly are right about being a good thing to be steadily employed when starting off.

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    1. Thanks Hermit Jim! Employment is a lot less secure for young people today. That makes it almost impossible to make plans.

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  4. Good marriages are a result of a lot of hard work and compromises. My wife and I have been married 23 years and still intend for it to last until one of us passes on. A lot of choices to 'die on this hill or not' have resulted in it lasting this long. I have things that drive her crazy and she has some which do the same for me. In the end though - its worth the work. I was lucky to find her and I hope she feels the same for me.

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    1. Congratulations on making a good match. It's work, sure, but there has to be some fun times in there too or why bother?

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