5 Reasons to Never Get Married. Ever.

Ben from Dad of the Decade is a versatile, brilliant writer. He is currently writing the poignant story of his life with his daughter Emma. Ben has regularly been bringing his readers (me included) to tears with each beautifully-written installment. With Ben writing on such a serious subject right now, it was with a little trepidation that I asked him to be a guest writer. Not because I was worried about what he would write, but because I was asking Ben to respond to a specific writing assignment, something I have never posed to a guest writer in the past. The concern was because I was asking him to write a humor piece, which is a genre I have not yet discovered from Ben. By asking though, I learned something about my writer friend:

Ben is capable of pure comedic genius in his writing.

I am so happy he accepted the assignment, which was to write a male’s rebuttal to my post “5 Reasons to Get Married.” After you read his guest post, go visit his blog and stalk the guy on Twitter. Let him know the Naked Girl sent you.

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Friends, consider this an intervention. It is a call for a restoration of sanity to our gentle hostess, a fiercely independent single mom and doer of Very Good Deeds. This guest post, this occupation of her blog home, has one simple demand:

That Kelly and every single reader of Naked Girl in a Dress remember why they did or should have never tied the knot in the first place.

You may recall that Kelly recently posted her “5 Reasons to Get Married.” Poppycock, say I. As Rowlf the Dog famously sang of the fairer sex, “Can’t Live With ‘Em, Can’t Live Without ‘Em.” Rowlf’s gravelly-voiced counterpart Tom Waits sang “Better Off Without a Wife.” If the combined wisdom of these two paradigms of modern relationship advice can not persuade you, well, you may be certifiable. However, in the fervent hope of awakening whatever small shred of a soul you may still have, I present to you my 5 Utterly Unassailable and Completely Correct Reasons to Never Ever Get Married. Ever. For Realsies.

Reason the First: Pants.

Single life is a pantsless land of bliss and dreams. Need to pee? No need to put those pants back on after, soldier! Just prance on out of that lavatory and back into your butt-groove for the rest of that Battlestar Galactica marathon. It’s no-pants day, every day! Get married, though, and suddenly you are in a constrictive world of below-the-waist confinement. That pleasant breeze you have become accustomed to gently wafting through your thighs? It becomes nothing but a memory of freedom and a reminder of your poor decision making. Back when I was married, I was actually asked if I was coming to bed without pants, disappointment and regret in the eyes of my ex-wife. No, apparently I was never going to bed without pants again.

Reason the Second: In-Laws.

No matter how awesome the parent of your partner may seem before that long walk down the aisle, that evil glint in their eye as they hand the fruit of their loins off to you is not a trick of the light. It is pure malice spilling out. In it, the realization of all slights, real or imagined, past, present, and future is kindled. Thought you were going to carve your own turkey for Thanksgiving? Think again. For that matter, think you were ever spending Thanksgiving with your own family ever again? Nope. Say goodbye to mom’s famous giblet gravy, you’ve swallowed your last globular drop. It’s your partner’s Grandma Bessie’s weird sour cream and cheez-wiz shredded potato casserole from now on. With NO GRAVY.

It doesn’t matter how amazing you are. You could save orphaned American babies from armies of ill-tempered terrorists every Tuesday, armed with nothing but a bible, your chastity, and good-old American know-how, and you will still never live up to the hopes and expectations the parents of your betrothed had for their kiddo. Are you a doctor? They hoped for a cardiologist. Are you an astronaut? They hoped for Neil Effing Armstrong. An elected official? No matter what your party affiliation, it’s the wrong one.

Reason the Third: The Loo.

It is a proven scientific fact that your partner leaves the bathroom smelling SO. MUCH. WORSE. than you do (Jackson’s Scientific Principle #2). What may seem like a surprise you can live with in the dating/sleepover stage – something which might even be a little bit funny, one of those imperfections which make you love your special someone that much more—in marriage will leave you to the grim realization that you’ll never be able to use your bathroom second ever again. What your partner does in there will start to remind you of what your grandfather did in there, and life will quickly start to fall apart. You will wind up in a race to wake up a few minutes earlier than your spouse, just to ensure you get to the bathroom first. Your morning constitutional will slowly become your “early morning constitutional,” and then your “midnight constitutional” and soon you won’t even be sleeping at all. When your “number one” takes his or her “number two,” you will long for the days of pants-free premarital bliss.

Reason the Fourth: The One That Got Away.

Marriage means giving up the dream of the grand reuniting with your secret crush of the past. Remember that time you were alone in the band room with the apple of your eye near the end of senior year? Remember how your eyes met over the music stands, and the sparks of adolescence and impending adulthood nearly killed you both? Remember how you found yourself standing so close to each other, you could feel the heat pouring off of her? Remember how in that magical moment before you leaned in for that perfect kiss the door banged open and the tuba section poured in for their Thursday afternoon sectional and the moment was lost?

Remember? Of course you do!

Well, say goodbye to any chance of the Garry Marshall/Nicholas Sparks style reunion. As you say “I do,” your own personal Dustin Hoffman will not be banging on the glass screamin “Mrs. Robinson!” before you both ride off on the back seat of your Simon and Garfunkel tinted future. It’s over, and it’s never going to happen, ever, and that’s sad.

Reason the Fifth: Weddings are Expensive

You think you’ve seen a high bar tab before. Maybe you spent lavishly that last time in Vegas. Maybe you splurged on a bottle of Armagnac after that last promotion. Sister, you haven’t seen anything, yet. Wedding guests who have not consumed anything but Natural Light in a can their entire lives will suddenly be drinking Drambuie cocktails garnished with caviar and the feet of an endangered South African pheasant – because it’s on your dime. The prison-released meathead slicing the oppressively dry beef at your “Steak d’Amour” carving station is making thirty-eight dollars an hour before tip, and will probably come burn down your house if you don’t tip at least twenty-five percent. Of course, if you’re paying off a wedding you won’t be able to afford a house, so that’s good.

So, dear friends – don’t do it. Stay single, pantsless, and in the good graces of Mr. Tom Waits.