One Great Upside to Marriage

Marriage is not ALWAYS like this, just mostly.

So, you’re afraid of marriage huh? I’m sorry to hear that, you want some ointment for that? Truth is, marriage is a pretty darn nice thing to be involved in, if you find the right person and neither of you are selfish, self-important walrus taints. If you’re someone who always has to come first, who’s always got to have things “just so” and feels that your own feelings and desires are the single most important thing EVER, then do us all a favor. Don’t get married. Don’t go out in public. Just climb up the nearest cliff and jump off. We don’t need your kind.

If, however, you’re capable of caring about others, and you’re one of those rare people who actually have the unique ability to put yourself second in line once in a while, then you might be marriage material. Additionally, if you can find someone similar you’re doing even better. Congratulations, get hitched! It’s not that hard to do, a few bucks at the courthouse and you’re done.

Unless of course you’re marrying an average woman. I don’t mean average in terms of looks, personality, sexual prowess, skill at Dungeons and Dragons. I mean average in that most women have a dream wedding pictured in their minds and it’s your job to make sure they get it. Keep in mind, the wedding isn’t about the guy. It’s never about the guy. Your best bet is to go along quietly to pick out china patterns, blenders and flowers. Suck it up big boy, she puts up with YOU afterall. It’s really unfair to her if you think about it objectively.

So you make it through the circus of a wedding, you’re now deeper in debt than college loans could have ever possibly hoped to achieve, and you’re married. To the same person. Every. Freaking. Day. And you know what? It ain’t so bad.

Here’s the thing, the minute you get married you’ve entered into a partnership with another human being who’s also willing to let you have sex with them, every other Tuesday whether you need it or not. But in agreeing to marrying you, they now get to split the bullshit that life throws at you on the regular. Remember back when you were single and the car would break down? You’d look in your bank account and basically the ATM would spit out a receipt with this image on it?

madbro 300x273 One Great Upside to Marriage

Yeah, there's nothing even remotely close to money in your account

So you’d sit there, wondering how you were going to get to work, what you were going to eat and how you were going to get your car fixed. You’d run out of ideas and get blindingly drunk on mouthwash and Nyquil just so you could forget about your troubles for a few fitful hours of sleep. It was awful. But now you’re married!

That means she gets to help you deal with the huge slice of shit-pizza that the Pizza-verse has dealt you. While you’re walking to the bus stop to get to your low-paying, unfulfilling job, she’s able to call around for the best quotes on repairs and vice versa. You’re able to hunt down friends who owe you a favor or know a guy who’ll do the work on the cheap while she’s at her low-paying, unfulfilling job somewhere.

And remember balancing the budget? Trying to pay everything each month? Not only do you have a partner in racking up those debts, but you also have a partner in juggling them around each month so that you don’t get something turned off at the wrong time. ”So, we skipped the electric bill last month, this month we can skip the water bill to pay the electric bill. If it rains, we won’t have to worry about having water anyways.”

On and on this cycle goes. You’re still getting dumped on, but it’s being spread across two people now. You and your partner. The Jackie Chan to your Chris Tucker. The Cagney to your Lacey. The Spongebob to your Patrick. Well, that last one might be a little bit suspect.

But you can see how it works. Marriage absolutely has it’s challenges, anyone who tells you differently is either a) lying or b) happily divorced. Marriage, in my experience, has many more positives than negatives. The biggest plus for me? Knowing that at least once a month, I get to have sex, guaranteed. Whether I need it or not.

Don’t Stop to Think – It’s Not All It’s Cracked Up To Be

Yeah, let that sink in for a minute. Thinking is the root of all problems that I have. At almost 37 years of age, I’ve come to the conclusion that thinking isn’t really getting me anywhere. It used to, but not anymore.

When I was a younger Gutmeister, I was always thinking and then attempting to do what I was thinking about. I had about a 95% success rate with that method. Think it up, plan it out and execute it. Pretty straightforward. Then, I got married and we had kids. Lots of kids. Like 4 or 12 or something, I’ve lost count. The point is, they have managed to screw with my brain’s inner workings so much that now I can’t follow that simple three step process anymore. It’s aggravating to say the least.

At one point in my life, I was fully capable of having a rational thought. Of seeing it, visualizing it through completion and understanding the steps I would need to take to accomplish that thought. For example, I used to enjoy working on my truck. I had a mini truck, because I was mad-cool-radical to the max. I wanted to lower it, install a stereo system, etc. Towards that end, I would go out and climb under the truck, look around, see the parts I needed to change out and order the new ones to replace them with. Then I would read instructions, think about them a bit and get to work. Within a weekend, my truck was scraping pavement. Remember, I was ultra-cool-totally-to-the-max, so I had to have a ride that showed off that side of me.

Now, I try to read the instructions on the shampoo bottle. Lather, Rinse, Repeat. Somehow, between Lather and Rinse I lose my train of thought. I find myself thinking about where someone’s shoes have gotten off to. Or worse, where my shoes have gotten off to. My shoes always used to be in the same spot I left them when I was single and childless. It was an amazing process. Just the way nature intended it to work. You take off your shoes, you go watch Win, Lose or Draw with Burt Reynolds, you come back and BAM! there’s the shoes you took off an hour ago. Right there by the door where you left them.

These days, I can take off the shoes, put them by the door, walk into the kitchen, walk immediately back out and it’s like a really bad Indiana Jones script. Carolina Gutmeister and the Curse of the Misplaced New Balance. It’s awful. I don’t know where they go, or how they get there, but I do know that after an hour or so of fruitless searching, I do what all married men do best and I ask my wife. She points out that she has no idea, but to try looking in the attic. I don’t know why either, but usually she’s right. Somehow those damned shoes made their way into the attic, under a pile of Christmas decorations that we haven’t touched for 8 months. I suspect it’s either paranormal activity or my children trying to insure that I’m bat-shit insane before they grow up and I become their problem. They want me locked in an institution before they graduate High School so that they don’t have to worry about Dad coming to live with them.

Additionally, let’s say I’m working on the sink in the bathroom because it’s leaking for some unknown reason. I’ll be in the middle of cramming my mammoth ass under the cabinet to reach the pipe with a wrench, and I’ll think about something else. Well, at that point I may as well give up working on the sink because much like sleep walking, when the thought passes, I’ll find myself squeezed into a bathroom vanity with water dripping down my face, much like the world’s lamest Chinese Water Torture device, holding a wrench and not have any idea what the hell I was doing just now.

Professional Wrestling Can Solve All Our Problems

You’re familiar with professional wrestling. Even if you don’t like it and do everything you can to erase the knowledge of its existence from your mind, you know what it is and you’ve witnessed some of it at some point in your life. Sure, it’s scripted, they’re not really trying to beat each other, and it’s more show than substance, but deep down you know there’s got to be something positive we can learn from it. Don’t you? I believe we can.

Dealing With Your Boss

We’ve all had that one asshole boss. Or maybe more, I don’t know how often you’ve been fired for setting the fry machine ablaze or sticking your genitals in lettuce bin. I know you’ve had at least one job where you would have given anything to power bomb your employer through a folding table and then stand triumphantly on his chest while raising the World Heavyweight Championship Belt. In wrestling, they do that quite often. Usually to Vince McMahon.

Now what you do is wait for the boss to come in the stock room and you leap from the top shelf, delivering a near-fatal flying elbow into his spine. Wait, no. No you can’t. You’d be arrested. Sorry, I didn’t really think this through.

Relationships

Ever been in a relationship that wasn’t quite right for you? You stuck around because you felt obligated, or you were afraid you’d never find anyone else that shared your love of miracle whip and farm animals? Don’t fret, Pro Wrestling has you covered.

In the wrestling world, tag-teams function much the same. You’ve got two different people who get along and share a few interests, most commonly they want to win matches and enjoy success. Eventually though, one of the partners starts resenting the other because he’s either better, worse or continually screwing up and costing them a win. This is much like your love life. In wrestling, the most common way of dealing with this is leaving your partner out to fend for himself. You refuse to tag into the match, or you leave him alone at the mercy of two steroid raging behemoths intent on disassembling him. And while you walk to the locker room, you turn to taunt him as he’s ground into a pulp.

And you can do this with your psycho girlfriend/boyfriend. Wait, no you can’t. This doesn’t apply at all.

Parenting

Ah, the joys of parenthood. You’ve managed to prove that your reproductive system works the way nature intended it to and now you’re saddled with a demon spawn that you’re not entirely sure wasn’t switched at the hospital with Satan’s bastard son. The kid’s great and all, but he’s so needy. Feed me, change my diapers, take me to the doctor, don’t trade me for magical beans. Nag, nag, nag, nag. Oh, and forget about getting a good night’s sleep for the next 3 or 4 years. That shit ain’t happening.

In pro wrestling, I liken this to having a mostly pointless manager in your corner. You know the guys who talk for the wrestlers, get them into feuds with people they really would rather not be involved with and basically help them cheat to win, until it all backfires and the wrestler is left holding the shitty end of the deal? That’s a kid.

Let me explain. Kids are great, I love mine to death. However, when they’re babies, they’re exactly like a wrestling manager. They get you noticed wherever you take them, mostly by strangers and people you would rather have nothing to do with. If you’re a single dad, they can help you get dates with women who are turned on by a responsible Dad caring for his child. If you’re a married Dad, they get you flirted with by women who are similarly turned on, only now your wife can very likely find out and make your life a living hell for the foreseeable future. And, when you’re doing double duty baby sitting and watching the big game, they’ll shit their pants right when the clock is ticking down to zero and your team is on the 5 yard line going for the win. Or worse, they’ll sit on the remote and change the channel.

Eventually the wrestler gets tired of this little weasel manager getting him involved in fights he doesn’t want and doesn’t need and will dump his manager in an often violent way to be rid of him.

You know what? You can’t do this with your kid. You’re screwed for the next 18 or so years. Get used to indentured servitude.

Conclusion

In summary, it appears you cannot apply the lessons of pro wrestling into the real world whatsoever. You’re pretty much screwed no matter what happens to you. On the plus side, you can turn on the TV and watch big, muscular meat heads do this to each other on your behalf and live vicariously through their violence. It’s at least a distraction.

Belly Billboard

What What? On My Gut!

Tag Archives: life

One Great Upside to Marriage

Don’t Stop to Think – It’s Not All It’s Cracked Up To Be

Professional Wrestling Can Solve All Our Problems