5 Reasons Being Married Is Awesome
1. You have a killer teammate for that game called LIFE, yo. Yeah, I get annoyed too when those Facebook anniversary announcements pop up. “Soooo happy to be married to my best friend for all these years!!!” Smiley face, heart. As much as these posts make me gag every time (seriously, stop. You’re not original), it IS truth. Over the years of marriage, a crazy bond is formed. You become more than BFFs. Your spouse becomes more and more like a blood relative and less like that hot guy that used to wash dishes at your sorority house. I have a highly scientific theory that after sharing a toilet for over five years — a couple’s DNA actually starts to meld.
Having this in-house clone comes in handy repeatedly. You always have a trust partner when you want to try new street drugs. (Completely unrelated: Did you know that horse tranquilizers will turn your tongue green??) In addition, your spousal best friend will stand with you as a united front against unreasonable parents, deadbeat landlords, and Jehovah’s witnesses. They will never fail to laugh at your poorly developed jokes about dog barf and masturbation, and they will ALWAYS have your back. My husband has repeatedly offered to beat up the better-dressed girls at the party for me. I mean, that’s fucking devotion.
2. It’s the dopest slumber party every night. Before cohabitation, the best slumber party I can remember was when I was in 2nd grade. It was in a trailer park. The parents let us watch Nightmare on Elm Street, and I managed to finagle my way onto the older brother’s lap. It was a highly phenomenal (and educational) overnight. Now, pretty much every night I can have this (or a better) scenario. Plus there’s the added bonus of being legal drinking age and having instant Netflix. AND, due to reason #1 above, your spouse will let you pause Sherlock Holmes every five minutes to listen to your predictions about how the serial killer got into the apartment. (CHECK FOR FINGERPRINTS OUTSIDE THE WINDOW, DUMBASS.)
Every-night-slumber-party-mania is a blast. Once you realize that most people in the world suck, you want to maximize your time with those few that don’t suck, particularly one that shares your newly-formed toilet DNA. The best times of your life will be when you are sitting together, just the two of you, under the moon and drinking bourbon while the dogs hunt the rats in your backyard.
3. There’s at least one person in the world you can pee in front of. So I know that for some of you — peeing with the door open, discussing bodily functions, laughing at each other’s barf — is common practice. I, however, grew up in a relatively repressed midwest Protestant household, where burps were suppressed and menstruation was denied. It truly took years of living with my spouse before I could acknowledge that I, occasionally, urinate.
Even for the most squeamish, you too will finally succumb to openly recognizing human biological processes with your spouse. You will be forced to scrutinize their oddly-colored bowel movements after they have eaten too many beets. Your spouse will mock you when you laugh too hard and vomit a few Ramen noodles on the coffee table. It will make you love each other all the more.
4. There are NO RULES. When I was a kid, I grew up expecting adulthood and marriage to be pretty vanilla. Edward-Scissorhands-suburbia shit. The reality is that your relationship is whatever you want it to be. Go ahead, engage in zombie LARPing together, have extramarital relationships, flee to Egypt a few years, do whatever makes you guys tick. Maybe even decide to have kids if you are particularly batshit. I know couples that have sex outside their relationship, couples that sleep in separate beds, even married couples who voluntarily live in separate states. Hell, I knew one couple that ritually sacrificed pigeons together. (Note: Not condoned.)
You get to make your own normal. And no one else can do a damn thing about it. The only person who should give a shit about how you run your monogamous (or maybe not monogamous) relationship is your partner.
I know what you are thinking — yeah, that’s all great, but you don’t really need marriage to have this. No legal document is necessary to make all this greatness happen. I see the point to that argument, and agree that marriage isn’t 100% critical for the awesomeness outlined above. However — the legalization of your bond makes is so. much. better. One reason alone is that you get to have a wedding, and people go bananas for weddings. It’s a time where you get unlimited attention (and breadmakers and flatware and potholders that look like PacMan) from the masses, so you might as well just take advantage of that. Another thing is that married couples get more allowances, because people of all religions and political persuasions find it powerful. When you and your spouse are caught dry-humping at a playground, you can just say “Oh, we’re married” and everyone is suddenly chill. The magic of holy matrimony!
5. Once you are officially married, you GET TO OWN another human being. How fantastic is that? A lot of people don’t know this, but written above your spouse’s name, in tiny print, on your wedding license it says “Property of.” That shit belongs to YOU. The argument “Because I’m your fucking wife, that’s why!” will always win over rational thought.
It goes without saying that every human being should be entitled to this kind of partnership. No one should be denied the right to be legally bound to their favorite friend/ cheerleader/ back-rubber/ designated-check-to-make-sure-there-are-no-murderers-under-the-bed guy. The human right to be fundamentally irrational, disgusting, and snarky, yet still loved should be had by all. Amen.