Marriage as a road trip

My wife is writing a blog. Now it’s one thing when your spouse begins writing a blog about the drug war or astrology or Julia Child, but my wife has started a marriage blog. That hits a bit closer to home. Were I to share this little fact with married men at the local pub, I imagine they would respond with looks of sympathy or masculine pats to my shoulders. Of course, I have to imagine such scenes…I tend to avoid the bars in my neighborhood because they look scary and my Spanish skills are somewhat limited. Still, this website could prove to be the WikiLeaks of the Johnson household: embarrassing conversations, newly reported insults, rude comments about foreign dignitaries. While one can never know for sure, I believe that most of my acquaintances hold me in fairly high esteem. This blog threatens all that for one simple reason: there is no greater threat to an individual’s impressiveness than that very same individual’s spouse.

Towards the end of "Bruce Almighty" (yes, I made it to the end of “Bruce Almighty” and, yes, I am about to add to that embarrassment by quoting the film), Jim Carrey/Bruce says, “Behind every good man is a good woman rolling her eyes.” Fair point, right? Spouses know the full story. They know when you overstate something for effect at a party. They know whether you pick your nose in private. They know just how petty you can be when things get heated. As someone who publicly represents organizations and hosts events, I can seem like a pretty good and impressive fellow. But Amber has probably been rolling her eyes for years. That eye rolling seemed harmless enough when I held the microphone, but now she’s posting marriage thoughts on the internet.

I had the pleasure of officiating a friends’ wedding in California a couple years back (those folks in California will let ANYBODY officiate a wedding). I spared them a full marriage homily/sermon, partly because their day was not about me…and partly because I was marrying an agnostic and a non-practicing Buddhist. But I still took the opportunity to suggest that marriage is much like one gigantic road trip. I shared that analogy for several reasons. First off, the lucky couple had taken a road trip with my wife and me a couple years earlier. Secondly, anyone who has ever been on a road trip knows that impressiveness goes to the wayside pretty quickly. Your fellow travelers knows how often you shower and what repulsive snack foods you enjoy and the frequency with which you inexplicably lose your temper. What’s strange is that this complete lack of pretense does not doom every road trip to failure. We have collectively learned that journeys are better with other people, regardless of how imperfect they prove themselves to be along the way. We will still see some amazing things and experience some beautiful moments; more importantly, those moments will be all the more beautiful because they are shared with a loved one. Not to toot my own horn, but I still think that analogy for marriage works. My spouse knows every single skeleton in my closet and every single bad habit that I carefully keep hidden with others. She knows it all, and she wants to journey with me anyway. No marriage is perfect, obviously. But – much like a road trip – perfection is never a realistic goal. You just want someone who sees you fully...and stays.

So my wife’s marriage blog probably guarantees that I will never look perfect to the outside world. But let’s be honest, that ship sailed long ago. If someone is going to tell the story of my worst moments and tendencies, I would never choose anyone other than the woman who sees me at my worst and inexplicably loves me anyway. Those guys at the bar down the street clearly don’t get it. Or at least I imagine they don’t.

- Cliff (aka: The Husband)