My ears ache and my head starts to throb in non-sexually-pleasurable ways any time someone brings up the topic of gay marriage, polygamous relationships, or other joinings of people in ways that aren’t traditionally mainstream. The unwashed masses toe up to the lines on the playground and throw feces at each other across the quad while I sit here with a simple, obvious solution to all of this mish-mash, and all I can do is reel under the waves of debate, screaming, “WHY DO YOU PEOPLE SUCK!?”

Yes, I’m on medication, just not the kind you’re thinking of. ~

Here’s how you solve the “problem” of marriage, once and for all, for all situations, types, and combinations, without hurting anyone’s feelings, stepping on any religious toes, or violating any laws of the land. This solution is airtight, I believe, and really doesn’t have any downsides — at least, until you prove otherwise. Feel free to show me a moron if I am, truly, barking mad.

The Problem

Parishioners get their petulant panties in a twist anytime someone goes to get married that doesn’t fit their religion’s bill of tender. Yet the act of not getting married means that the couple (or group, as the case may be) does not get to participate in the tax breaks and other civil benefits that marriage brings (for instance, getting to be your partner’s health care decision maker). Married folks clearly have the advantage when it comes to this, as well as simply being able to state, “We’re married.” Most homosexual couples are happy enough to simply have a “commitment ceremony” to say their vows to each other, but they feel they’re being shafted in the benefits department (and rightly so) by a society geared towards heterosexual unions.

The Solution

The answer to all of this is very simple (told you), can be understood by anyone, and involves little change from our current way of administering and handling marriages. It is also compliant with all religious beliefs, whether they specifically allow or disallow homosexual marriages or other different unions.

Marriage is, right now, a combination of two facets: one, the legal joining of two people in the sight of the government and society for purposes of taxation, health care, benefits, names, and other associations, and two, the religious ceremony that unites two people into one unit.

The key is to disassociate these two acts from being one act into their separate facets once again without any cross-association between the two. Once we are able to do this, marriage can happen and civil unions can happen and nobody gets their feathers ruffled.

The Civil Union

The word marriage gets stripped from government and the legal side of things and in its place the civil union is born. This is a legally-binding agreement that joins two or more people together in an entity that is recognized by government and society as being a single unit for purposes of taxation, health care, names, responsibilities, etc. I say two or more because what is to prevent a group of four from becoming a civil union? Logically, there’s no barrier to this. The result is very much like incorporating a business; you have to fill out the forms, jump through the legal hoops, pay your fees, and then you are joined. There’s no religious involvement — indeed, no ceremony at all. It is simply a matter of following procedure. The process should be difficult enough so as to not be easy but simple enough to not prevent anyone from going through it. The cost can be set high enough to make it a significant financial decision, yet not out of reach for the poorest yet well-intentioned.

The process for disjoining would be similar to the dissolution of a corporation. Agreements about assets and liabilities would have to be resolved, agreements made, and the courts involved to review the case and agree to the divorce. Again, it should be difficult enough such that it won’t be taken lightly and the system clogged with weekend pranksters, yet workable for the poor and inept to accomplish if necessary.

The Marriage

Marriage, then, is left to be a purely religious ceremony, carried out in whatever way that particular belief chooses. The religion of note can choose whether or not to support homosexual or polygamous relationships or to disavow them, much like it already does now. There would be no paperwork for the State involved with a marriage — if the religion has paperwork, so be it, if not, that’s fine, too. It is performed before or after the civil union or without it as people like — having a marriage does not mean having to have a civil union, nor does having a civil union mean that a marriage is required. They end up being two completely different acts.

It Works. Really.

The separation of these two aspects into different acts is the solution I propose. It allows any sort of combination of people to reap the benefits of government and society without being tied to a religious definition. Anyone can have a religious ceremony without having to make a civil committment. Divorce is taken in the context of which it was conceived — you can break your religious connection without dissolving your civil one if you choose. Each belief system can condone or disown each couple or group as they like.

“But Nathan,” you say, “I don’t believe that homosexuals should get married!” Fine. What’s the problem? You can believe that all you want, but you cannot tell me that in a religiously-neutral context it makes any sense to legally disallow gays or other groups from being civilly joined. If you insist that the government disallow civil unions because they aren’t allowed by your religion, then you are asking the government to align with the beliefs of your religion and that, my friend, simply isn’t right. Nobody wants the government to dictate religious beliefs — that’s a founding principle of the United States — so why do you insist on doing so with marriage?

The solution above is the best of all worlds. People can once again reap the benefits of being legally associated with others and conform to whatever religious belief they prefer (or to none at all, if that suits them). What astounds me is why nobody seems to think of this on their own.

Why is there such a barrier to an idea such as this? How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?

The world may never know.

If you have a significant other, do you speak worse in front of them?

I have noticed in the past week or so that when I’m talking to my lovely and talented wife, I sound like a complete and total nimrod. I don’t mean that I’m saying things that are stupid (although, inevitably, that sometimes occurs), but that I am physically speaking badly.

I have always had a lisp although, apparently, some people who know me have never known that or at least never noticed, and so I’m pretty grateful that it’s not very prominent. Over the years I’ve been able to compensate for it in most situations, but when I was little I went through a lot of speech therapy classes to try to correct it. My problem is my ’s’es — I create the ’ssss’ sound by holding my tongue between my teeth, whereas most people make it by folding their tongue back into their mouth and pressing against the roof to produce the hiss.

I spent the better part of 3 years of my childhood education being pulled out of my lessons and being drilled by a speech therapist (who, if I had been 15 years older, would have very much liked to drill, but alas…the innocence of youth), speaking in the way in which she wanted me to (forcing my tongue to make those positions…oh, hell, that just reeks of innuendo, doesn’t it?), and then promptly going back to my old ways once I got back to class. After all those sessions, I think she gave up and went back to teaching others how to do more useful things, like saying ‘w’ instead of ‘r’.

Now, over the years I’ve gotten so good at my own way of doing things that it’s second nature and I’m very accurate, masking most of my problem. But when I’m intoxicated or, apparently, talking to my wife, my speaking problems come back again from time to time. I’ll find myself saying a sentence and simply being too lazy to bother saying it any clearer, because we know each other so well that even if I was 10 feet underground, sucking on a rutabega, she would be able to finish my sentence.

I wonder if this is an automatic response being initiated by my brain which, after witnessing the copious amounts of excellent communication flowing between me and my wife, has chosen to simply not work as hard, figuring that if she’s going to figure out what I was going to say anyway, it just can’t be fucked to make the effort. Either that or it’s testing me (or her) to see how far it can go before I get too many “WTF?”s and I have to actually work at speaking again.

I don’t mean to be lazy, really…I’m usually pretty conscious about my speaking and how it is coming out, but one has to admit that they get pretty comfy with your spouse and you let certain things go that you’d be more vigilant about in public. I’m not out to fart on purpose (usually), but releasing the occasional blast in front of the wife, while might not be the most romantic thing in the world, certainly isn’t something that I prevent as much as, say, doing so at an interview. “Well, Nathan, what do you think your best management style is?” “I rather prefer *bwaaaht* a more pragmatic approach to *ffffaaaapppt* conducting business, don’t you, Jim?”

I guess I haven’t asked my wife how many times she’s noticed me sounding like a complete doughhead, but I imagine it’s happened more than once. Or, perhaps like me, she’s just getting lazy with her hearing, too. Which explains a lot of our odd mishaps, but at the same time, means we’re clearly destined to grow old together and drive each other nuts for years to come.

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what? I didn’t hear anything you daffy old bird, and knowing your ears, you didn’t hear anything, either.”

“Listen to the sound of the whistling in the air as I hit you over the head with a skillet, you old bastard.”

*WHONG!*

My wife doesn’t stop me from doing anything I want. If I want to go out tonight and boink a high school tart to a weak-kneed state, I’m welcome. If getting slobbery drunk and streaking naked down the streets of Sheffield is to my liking, more power to me. Gambling away the house on high-stakes poker isn’t even out of the question.

In fact, my wife doesn’t stop me from doing anything at all.

That’s not to say that some actions might not come with some consequences.

I’m highly annoyed when I hear people talking about getting married and not being “allowed” to do anything; it’s like they are subjecting themselves to another parental figure who is there setting rules and boundaries and limits, and, “mommy said I’m not supposed to.” I think the ones that take this attitude with their marriage end up in a very bad place after awhile, because their entire premise for not doing something is because their spouse won’t let them and they feel trapped.

Instead, I’d highly recommend taking the attitude of entering into a contractual agreement with your spouse. When I married Yolanda, I essentially said to her, “I agree to enter into a mutual agreement with you, the conditions being that we agree to look after each other, do things that will be for the good of each other, and to not do things that will go beyond the comfort levels of each of us, so much as we both agree on things.”

I once heard this described as, “pissing within the litterbox”. Basically, each of us has an emotional litterbox. People, such as our spouses, can do things that annoy or hurt us within a certain limit — the edges of the box, or the “safe” area — and although it annoys us, it isn’t a big enough deal to raise a fuss about. But other things are outside this area and raise the ire of the person you’re taking a leak on. As a married couple, you have
to
know where
the other person’s
litterbox is.you have to know where the other person’s litterbox is.

This is different for every couple, I think, and if you’re stupid and think that some sort of “global waste dump” applies to everyone, you’re going to end up in a shitload of trouble. Maybe for you, a threesome with your wife’s sister wouldn’t be a deal-breaker, whereas your best friend’s wife would nail his nuts to a running chainsaw. You won’t know unless you talk to her and figure out where her lines stand on those sorts of things (and if it isn’t, lucky you, but I wouldn’t automatically assume it). So, communication is essential to knowing what things would really annoy your other half.

The other thing I fail to see couples do on a regular basis is evaluation. One should always say to themselves, “If I do this action, will it annoy or hurt them? If so, is it worth it? What will ultimately be the price that will be paid in the long run?” If you know anything at all, you know that hurts extend much longer than anything else in a relationship. So many times I see people acting on the impulse and not using their head to evaluate their action, firing from the hip and then trying to make up for it after. Guess what, people? It’s easier if you don’t fucking do it in the first place!

This is one of the reasons (among several) why I don’t go out and plow some random chick breathless, even if I thought I could get away with it. There are two main truths dealing with this scenario and ANY scenario where you’re stepping outside of the litter box of your mate:

First Truth: You will always be caught. Always. No exceptions. You will be caught outright, you will be caught subtlety, or you will be caught emotionally. You might get walked in on, you might have some secret communications found out, or you’ll get such a guilty conscience that it will taint you forever. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about doing something outside the comfort zone of your spouse, it’s that you never get away with it.

Second Truth: It’s not worth it. Imagine you go out and find this amazing person and you have mindblowing sex with them. I mean, crawling-up-the-walls-whimpering sex. Toes-permanently-curled and eyeballs-changing-color sex. The sort of sex that would make you gladly shave off your skin with a rusty cheese grater to get. I assure you, by the time you get found out, end up going through either a) the long, drawn-out emotional process of anger, betrayal, guilt, apology, compensation, therapy, retribution, etc and then years of trying to earn trust back, if ever, or b) through the process of having your ass dumped so hard it makes your balls crack and the impending breakup, divorce, splitting of property, legal hassles, emotional trauma, blah blah blah — that awesome sex was just negated a billion times over.

Folks, sex that would compensate for that sort of hassle would, frankly, kill you. That’s the sort of orgasm you’d only get once, because your chest would have to explode and shower little gibbets of flesh over a four-county area. It doesn’t happen, ever. You will always, always end up with a negative number on the balance sheet, and not just a little negative, A LOT negative.

This is why I don’t cheat or do other things outside of my wife’s sandbox. This is also why I make a sincere attempt to evaluate everything I do in respect to my wife. Granted, I don’t always judge her reaction appropriately and we end up discussing it, sometimes at length. I’m not perfect, and I’ll never claim to be. Some things are pretty straightforward; other things are more subjective and subtle, and I’m bound to miss a few on occasion. But if I know ahead of time that it isn’t going to be worth my time, I’ll just avoid it for the above reasons — I’m not going to end up ahead.

My wife doesn’t stop me from doing any of these actions; rather, I limit myself from doing them because I know it is in my best interest. I don’t know about you, but being an independent adult, I very much prefer limiting myself than being limited by someone else. Sure, I realize this might be hard for some of you, because it also means that when you screw up, you’re responsible for it, you twit. There’s a lot of people out there nowadays that have big responsibility issues and refuse to act like they’re in control of their own faculties, instead choosing to blame someone else in the wake of their idiocy. You are a Dumbass — Deal with It.

In the end, my wife and I have a great system that works wonders for the both of us. I feel like I’m in control, she feels like she is control, we don’t have trust issues, we keep our communication going so we know where each of us stands at any one point (and if that position has changed), and we both end up with a mutually-beneficial relationship that we enjoy so much we’d rather not be without the other.

As with all advice and suggestions, caveat emptor, but good luck nonetheless.