Going Through With Getting Exactly What I Want

“Hi, my wife asked me to pick up her prescription, the na-”
“You’re married?? huh; - What the hell are you; 20?”

I can understand why it’s so surprising to see ‘young people’ married, but what I don’t get is the “double surprise” people have. When people found out that I was engaged to Theresa, there was surprise, shock, congratulations et cetera. However, when they find out that I actually went through with it, they were even more surprised.

“Wow, that’s amazing! I mean, last I heard you were engaged, but I had no idea you actually went through with it!”

Was I expected to back out? Do I have a history of not being dependable?

“went through with it.”

That’s the same language used to describe suicide attempts. Abortions. Jihad. School shootings. And apparently, weddings.

“We knew he was teased, and I heard how he had threatened to bring a gun to school, but I didn’t think he would actually go through with it…”
“Angus had spoken much about making jihad on the kuffar, but we thought he was just letting off steam - I didn’t expect him to actually go through with it…”
“Lots of kids talk about how they wish they were dead! Everyone exaggerates their drama, writes poetry about suicide, but no ones expects them to actually go through with it!”
“Well, she was a single mother with another on the way from a different father - she mentioned a partial-birth abortion once as a last resort, but I never thought she would actually go through with it…”

Maybe it’s just that Theresa and I had a short engagement - 10 months. Most couples are opting for the extended-engagement package, in upwards of six years or longer. But if you haven’t set a date, if you haven’t even set a year, in what sense can you possibly call that an engagement of any kind?

Being engaged as I was for 10 months, I learned that it’ pretty much like having a ticking time bomb strapped to your chest. Not in a bad way, of course, but you know that with every second that goes by, you’re one extra second towards the inevitable. A wedding is going to break out sooner or later. It’s guaranteed.

Maybe it has to do with our ultra-modern attitude toward love and sex these days. A recent Maclean’s magazine interviewed feminist Laura Sessions Stepp, author of “Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love, and Lose at Both.” Commitment is perceived as getting in the way of your plans, and is therefore not ideal. If you’ve lived your life by your thirties, maybe then you can settle down - but never before, because life is all about you, and you don’t want a wife or a husband screwing that up.

If anyone has ever seen that “EasyHome” truck kicking around town, you know the hook I’m talking about - “Get exactly what you want, for as long as you want.” This I think is in sum the mantra of our age, which is indicative of our ultra-modern symptoms of Hyper-Selfishism, Hyper-Capitalism and Hyper-Materialism. The collective fantasy of our species is to be able to have enough money, time, freedom, and resources to satisfy whatever exotic lust you should ever have. (Props to Andy Crouch) But then again I don’t see life as getting what you want and satisfying your desires. I can’t tell you what life is all about, but I can tell you what it isn’t.

“Get exactly what you want, for as long as you want. And then divorce her.”

~ by Tyler on March 9, 2007.