Marriage is in the Air

(Here's How to Avoid it)

I'm sitting at a round dinner table in my best suit. For the first time this year, I'm at a wedding for which I don't have to wear a tux and stand with the couple for their vows. The girl at the head of the main table was a wild one in college and after college—and even last week when we got drunk together one last time. But there she is tonight, white dress, demure smile, an objectively good-looking corporate lawyer beaming at her side. One of his buddies is talking: "The guys on our rugby team used to say Jonathan was useless at any position. For Kate's sake, I hope that's not true." Big laughs. But I'm not laughing. I'm crapping my pants because, without even looking, I can tell that there's a gleam in my date's eyes. It's a gleam nearly impossible to avoid. It's a sparkle inspired by visions of marriage.

Weddings used to be great. My buddies turned grooms would rig the procession so I could walk down the aisle with a hot bridesmaid rather than the older sister of the bride. Then, after drinking (a lot) and dancing (a little), there was a good chance of some nice-nice. All the girls were in the right mood, and a lot of them were single. In fact, they were better than single—they were in their immediate-postcollege experimental phase, the time when even girls who were mousy in college feel they owe it to themselves as independent women to seek new experiences. Which almost always boils down to experiencing sex with a series of men who are all but strangers.

But these days weddings suck. Most of the guests I know are already married, or at least seriously involved. My buddies can't get trashed; the girls want to go back to the hotel room, but only to curl up and watch Father of the Bride 2. The ceremonies are like Volvo ads, full of nice-looking couples whose sense of adventure has been reduced to climbing out of their four-wheel-drive wagon to save a fucking turtle. And it's not just my friends who are marrying and disappearing. Even my younger co-workers and the friends of my girlfriend—who graduated six years after I did—are coupling up. The average age of marriage seems to be falling. The pressure is on.

There are at least two sources of pressure. One is my mom, who will start talking about how cute some baby is. And I'll say, "Ah, you just have PGS—premature grandparent syndrome." And my mom looks at me, without a hint of humor, and says, "It's not premature." The second source is my girlfriend, who realizes her friends are getting married. I've gone out of my way to find a ludicrously young girlfriend, and even her friends are heading down the aisle in droves. This summer I have at least four weddings to attend. And I can't get out of them—my girlfriend says she'd feel humiliated having to go alone (or, for my friends' weddings, being left home) when she has a long-term boyfriend.

Then, of course, there is my deepening sense of foreboding. The scummer who lived in my college dormitory—the guy who was notoriously unhygienic, who would sit in the library dipping huge chunks of Monterey Jack into a vat of generic-brand salsa, who would prefer to sprawl out and hap next to a keg rather than go home with a girl—is getting married to a beautiful girl who works in an investment bank. I roll over late at night, look at my girlfriend's face, slack with sleep, drool on her pillow, a sweaty lock of hair pinned to her forehead, and think, If I don't marry this one, maybe I'll never find another.

Then morning comes. As she watches some inane piece on Today and smiles at Katie Couric, I remember why I'm (continued on page 172)marriage(continued from page 109) still single. And I remember all of the reasons for being single that I've heard from my friends. You'll probably recognize a few of them.

•#x2022;#x2022;#x2022; You can indulge all your fantasies of being a rock star, academic or astronaut without anyone saying, "Don't be ridiculous. You don't know the first thing about physics" or "But you promised you would go to Sunday brunch with my parents."

•#x2022;#x2022;#x2022; You can remain an immature, rebellious runt.

•#x2022;#x2022;#x2022; You can piss in empty soda bottles when you can't be bothered to leave your room and walk down the hall to the bathroom.

•#x2022;#x2022;#x2022; You never have to call and tell someone where you are.

•#x2022;#x2022;#x2022; You can go to the movies alone and not argue with anyone about what to see or, afterward, discuss what it meant.

•#x2022;#x2022;#x2022; You can eat Honey-Nut Cheerios from the box while watching V.I.P.—with no one there to say "Use a bowl!" or "Why are you watching that crap?"

•#x2022;#x2022;#x2022; Your girlfriends will occasionally pay for a date, or at least split the bill.

•#x2022;#x2022;#x2022; You get to daydream about who you're going to make out with on New Year's Eve.

•#x2022;#x2022;#x2022; Two natural highs: the excitement of new affairs and the anonymity of hotel rooms.

•#x2022;#x2022;#x2022; Russian girls.

It's one thing to talk shite, but it's another to speak the truth. After some intense conversations with friends, both married and single, I can say with conviction that the odds are strongly in favor of staying single until you're absolutely ready to commit (if ever). We talked about some of the things marriage means, then looked at the upsides and the downsides.

Marriage means you've settled down.

Pro: I suppose, if I think really hard, this would mean you're satisfied with your lot in life. That you can be trusted not to quit your job, buy a secondhand Land Rover, put a Pizza Hut tablecloth on your head and travel the Silk Road. That you're comfortable in your own skin—and hers, too. That it's onward and upward from here.

Con: Ever seen that look on the face of a married man? The kind who drools over an Audi TT at a car show but drives away in the family minivan? That guy's going postal. From what I've seen, a properly functioning marriage is anything but settled—particularly if there are kids involved. Married people move at a feverish pace. They're rushing to get home for dinner or to pick up the kids or to take the babysitter home. (OK, so maybe there are some perks.) There's a reason for the high divorce rate. I'm not about to wear myself out trying to make a marriage work until I'm completely bored with being able to drop everything to go to a baseball game during the day or to a concert at night, or to sleep until dinnertime on Saturday.

Two salaries are better than one.

Pro: First you save on rent, then you invest in a house and your net worth starts heading north. There's an extra room for your CDs or power tools. You eat out less; you watch more videos. Together, you stockpile little bits of savings that you either keep or blow on trips to warm and sexy places.

Con: What you want is a woman who can support you both. Two salaries also means two sets of bills and countless conversations about money and how to spend it. Deciding where to go for dinner on a date is tough enough. Plus, you quickly realize you need two salaries—you want to save for college tuitions, for family trips to Wally World, for a backyard grill for Memorial Day cookouts. Also, upward mobility can be dead boring. Matt, 33, recently took a trip to an old buddy's summerhouse: "Everybody is in a couple. They sit around and grill and talk about clothes and houses and even school districts. The lake is beautiful, and his wife OK'd the money for a new 80-horsepower Mercury for the Whaler—but by 10 o'clock, it's lights out. Dull."

The sex is always there for the taking.

Pro: You don't have to pack clothes for the morning. You don't have to go out to dinner first. No dating necessary.

Con: Leaving afterward in the middle of the night can be problematic.

All the pressure is off.

Pro: The uneasy sense of transience in your life is banished. Her feeling that you're holding out is gone. You can relax and enjoy—instead of having her on your back, she'll be patting or rubbing it. Once your futures are inexorably connected, you encourage each other instead of competing with each other or feuding about trivialities.

Con: There's always pressure. One of my married friends explained it like this: "I knew early on that I was eventually going to marry my girlfriend Sarah. But I wanted to have my say about the timing of it. I erected what I call the Knights Templars lines of defense—think of them as concentric rings of castle walls. First wall to go: giving her a drawer in my dresser. Then, sharing the keys. Next one was living together, and, after that, marriage. Then I thought it would stop. But it never ends. After that, the hand-to-hand combat in the castle tower begins. There's having a baby, getting a bigger house, having another baby, spending half of your vacation days at her parents' place, schools and on and on."

Marriage is respected.

Pro: Bosses give you more responsibility and treat you better. Banks will loan you money to build a home. No more dirty looks from your friend's wife as you hit on her little sister.

Con: Building a home equals suburbia equals commuting time. Better to stay close to where the nightlife is. There's no better feeling than stumbling home from a bar at four A.M. and waking up your roommate to tell him you've fallen in love with somebody new—for the third night in a row. It's creepy and weird when people get married too young.

My girlfriend would be happy.

Pro: Whether she admits it or not, around the 30-year mark, she's starting to feel some anxiety. Even if she's opposed to marriage, she's faced with constant questions. Plus, she will always have a creeping doubt about loyalty. If it takes a ring on your finger to allay all of that, so be it. She'll be able to put the social desperation behind and feel confident about the relationship. And it will be easier to go watch the Rose Bowl at Andy's place, as she'll know you won't get piss drunk and drop out of sight for a few days while you nurse the hangover. In fact, you can have Andy over to your place and she'll have to help you roll out the pizza dough and stir the soup mix into the sour cream on game day.

Con: Just because you're not planning to walk down the aisle right away, you don't have to take marriage off the table altogether. Everybody hooks up eventually, I'm told. My friend Steve, a hardcore bachelor, says, "It's always a good idea to make a woman think that she could marry you—the sex is much better and you get more blow jobs and little presents." And she can tell her friends about how you're willing to talk about it, which means she can hold her own during table talk on girls' night out.

Makes my girlfriend's parents happy.

Pro: You can count on a big drop-off on the tension meter during those rare occasions when you're forced into dinner with them. You might get an extra present at Christmas. And her mother might actually deign to speak to you—though this, of course, is of questionable value.

Con: Who the fuck cares?

Makes my parents happy.

Pro: You've finally proved to them that you're straight. You also know how much your parents would like to lavish attention on a grandchild. And it's not a selfish desire on their part—they want to be able to contribute to the happiness and education of another generation. They want to see you grow up, to put yourself in a situation where you can prove your selflessness. (Self-absorption is childish and unattractive.) Plus, a wife might help you remember family birthdays and anniversaries—getting cards on time is bound to make them happy, too.

Con: Feeling pressure from your parents? Please. You're on your own. Unless you're taking money from them or living in the basement, you have no worries. Besides, if you are living in your parents' basement, you're not getting any anyway, and your prospects of marriage are bleaker than the future of the XFL.

Because everyone says so.

Pro: Your family loves her, your friends say it's time and your friends' wives are saying you'd be nuts to let this one get away. And it's a lot easier to hang out with your married friends when you also have a wife. Suddenly, long weekends together make sense, and your friend's wife doesn't treat you like a bad habit.

Con: It's not difficult to change the minds of all those people who are in favor of your getting married. Plant mines. Karl, 30, says: "When I realized I wanted to get out of one long relationship, I 'confided' to my girlfriend's older brother that I thought I might be gay. It took a while, but he got the ball rolling."

She's the one. Isn't she?

Pro: You love her. She loves you. Sex all the time.

Con: That's your johnson talking. Tucker, 27, says: "Often when I sleep with a new girl, I think, Wow, she gets the gold medal. But then the next one comes along and she's even more fun than the last—and she gets the gold medal. So after this happens a few times, you just can't stop because you know there's always another gold-medal winner out there."

Because your wife will do all the little things.

Pro: Laundry. Travel plans. A fully stocked fridge. Someone you'll always be able to talk to, someone always on your side. There's nothing as nice as having a girl in your corner. You have a safe haven when you get slammed by your boss. If you get sick, she'll make you soup. Single girls, on the other hand, keep their options open. Unbelievably, they are looking out for number one—and that's not you, pally.

Con: Single girls will go through torture for you (would you have someone spread hot wax on your genitalia?)—and this is before they've even met you! Beth, 28, says, "My married friends pretend their lives are interesting, but they're not. They socialize only with one another, and talk about buying homes and having babies. Yawn. I would much rather be me, having new adventures every weekend and shaving my legs and buying ridiculously expensive lingerie and doing all those things you get to do when you're single." Victoria, 32, says, "My friends need the reassurance that someone out there is having a wonderful time doing all the things they miss doing. When they are all popping out babies, they live vicariously through my wild, tumultuous affairs. So I earn a certain notoriety, which gives me confidence and isolates me on a desert island of lust and adventure." Beth and Victoria are four friends. They are also down with the concept of friends who fuck. And who isn't down with that?

Do it now, because time is running out.

Pro: Your body isn't getting any thinner; the hair on your head is. You just bought a nose-hair trimmer. You may not have many more years when you can pull quality snapper. Besides, going out is tiring, and there comes a time when you just can't be bothered anymore. How are you going to meet a girl then? There's also the danger of falling behind the pack. One of my friends, an associate professor at Stanford, got married after school and had three kids right away. Now he's in his mid-30s and has all the two A.M. feedings, diapers, toilet training and first days of school out of the way. "Other people in my department outworked me a few years ago when I had to help at home, but now they're getting married and having kids in their 30s and they feel like shit. Meanwhile, I'm able to devote loads more time to projects than they can."

Con: It may be unfair and unsavory to admit it, but time is always on the guy's side. There is a steady supply of young women being produced every day—by the same people who are putting the fear in you in the first place. And as you age, you become, by virtue of nothing more than years of experience, inherently more interesting to young women than the one-dimensional postfrat boys their own age. Plus, attraction, at its most fundamental level, comes down to fertility—and because men can produce offspring right up until they kick the bucket, old men don't have the built-in biological negatives of menopausal women. You will get laid again. You will again meet a girl who wants to be with you.

You can start your future sooner rather than later.

Pro: There are three things every man looks to resolve: job, living situation and companionship. Periods when all three are stable are good periods.

Con: I took a trip to Egypt with a friend a few months ago. We found ourselves in a belly dancing club, lit, at five in the morning—the only foreigners in the place. It was loud, smoky and crazy. One belly dancer came up to us and started shaking it in our faces. So we jumped onto the table and started doing the back-dat-ass-up dance with her. The crowd went nuts. Then my friend tore off his shirt and threw it into the crowd. The roof practically blew off the place. Somehow I don't think I would have had that experience had I been traveling with a wife.