I should go ahead and tell you that I MIGHT come up with more than twenty (or maybe less than twenty) reasons. I wrote ‘twenty’ because I feel like it’s a good starting point AND a good round number for a blog title, so per my new-found mission to just WRITE now and edit never, I chose ‘twenty’ for the title of this blog post, and I’m stickin’ to it.

But it may or may not be exactly twenty because I’m writing with no outline, no plan. Just flying by the seat of my pants, man.

Welcome to my ENFP, Enneagram Type 7, Middle Child, Aquarius world. There are no plans. There are no outlines. We fly by the seat of our pants.

“Well, THAT was a dumb reason to get married.”

-ME

I beat myself up over that think that at LEAST once a day.

Me, to myself: WHYYYYYY LORD JESUS DID I MARRY HIM?! Oh yeah, it was because {insert really, really dumb reason here}.

It occurred to me, after thinking this thought once a day for several years now, that THIS IS A BLOG SERIES IN THE MAKING. I mean, *I made the dumb mistakes, so you can learn from my wisdom and not make these mistakes yourself, right? You’re welcome. So let’s just kick off this whole blog series with the first of {maybe} twenty {or more, or less} really, really dumb reasons to get married:

REALLY, REALLY DUMB REASON #1: BECAUSE HE’S SAFE.

Once upon a time, there was this sweet, wholesome college girl (let’s call her ‘Sandy’). She met this devastatingly gorgeous, strikingly handsome, muscular Adonnis of a college boy (let’s call him ‘Danny,’) and they began to date.

They were a beautiful couple {especially HIM… Lord have mercy}, and were called ‘Ken and Barbie’ everywhere they went. Mostly because of him. She was tall, fit, and blonde, but did I mention he was really, really handsome? And muscular? 

Yes, Danny was quite a specimen.

He was her first ‘real’ boyfriend. She had had a few dates in high school, but not too many ‘relationships’ spanned more than a week or two; I mean, she was pretty, but super picky and somewhat shy and really, really down with that church youth group scene, so she didn’t date much in high school, but then there was Danny, who ended up sticking around for a couple of years.

The girl was innocent and wholesome; the boy was most certainly NOT, being the handsome, popular football player type in high school. Sandy wanted to wait until she got married, and Danny said he was cool with that. The girls paid lots of attention to Danny, on account of how he was so devastatingly handsome and muscular, but he swore he loved Sandy and wanted to marry her and didn’t notice any of those other girls.

She wanted to believe him.

But, the stories kept coming back to her… ‘Tara’ had been at his house one night last week, she heard. ‘Tara’ told her friends some stuff happened. Then there was ‘Jennifer.’ ‘Jennifer’ told her friends Danny had asked her for her phone number. And Jennifer’s and Tara’s friends told Sandy, of course.

On an unrelated note, to this day, if you Google Danny’s name, you can find oiled up, tanned up, shaved chest, body building pictures of him in a Speedo, on the internet. So I hear. I’ve never actually looked, obviously. I mean, who would want to see that. But I digress. 

You know, that female intuition is a powerful thing, man. And in her heart of hearts, Sandy knew the rumors about Danny were true. EVERYONE swore the rumors about Danny were true. There was just too much evidence.

She broke up with him.

And she didn’t let anyone else in for years to come. Oh, she dated ~ a lot ~ but barely went out with anyone more than once, and if they went on a second date, there wasn’t a third. She made it her mission to date errbody once, but NOBODY three times.

That’s just the way you roll when your heart has been broken. She couldn’t bring herself to care enough to cry over anyone.

All because of Danny.

Fast forward a few years to the scene of Sandy’s first ‘real’ job post-college. There was a rep there, and her coworkers INSISTED Sandy meet him. ‘He comes every year,’ they said, ‘and he is SO NICE.’

‘But I’m not attracted to him,’ Sandy answered. ‘Like, AT ALL. HE IS NOT ATTRACTIVE.’

‘You’re just shallow and immature,’ they scoffed, ‘and only date handsome men. You could do A LOT WORSE than Walter (*let’s just call him Walter, on account of the Charlie Robison song).‘

But Sandy, feeling insecure about her novice, fresh-college-grad status, youngest one on the team with the face of a teenager and all, and determined to prove to her coworkers that she was, in fact, MATURE, caved and went on a date with Walter.

And she realized her coworkers were right.

She could do ‘a lot worse.’ He had a job and went to church. He had never had his nose broken in a barroom fight. Never been cussed by a country judge because of one crazy night.

There was that.

He was tame boring uninteresting dull he was nice. Nice, Dangit.

And you know what? He wouldn’t cheat, because women would never find him attractive.

And you know what? He would never make her laugh, but he would never make her cry.

And Sandy decided not crying, and never worrying about losing an attractive husband to other women, was important, and she found herself saying “I do” to Walter, even though her stomach was in knots all the way through her wedding day, and she woke up nauseated the day after the wedding, wondering WHAT SHE HAD DONE.

She had traded her soul for ‘safety.’

If you learn anything at all from Sandy and Charlie Robison, DON’T MARRY WALTER.

You have NO idea the depths of hell into which you can descend when you’re shackled TIL DEATH DO YOU PART, to Walter. He may appear ‘nice’ today, but that MAY be an act, and that mask MAY drop after the wedding, and he MAY call you ‘fat ass’ while you’re pregnant, for God’s sake, and he MAY throw your kids’ toys in the trash BECAUSE HE IS NOT NICE, and he MAY still be texting you 60 times in one day NINE YEARS AFTER YOUR DIVORCE IS FINAL to tell you that you’re a fat loser.

Hypothetically speaking, of course.

Whew, I almost had a PTSD flashback there for a second…

If your MAIN REASON FOR MARRYING SOMEONE is any degree of ‘safety,’ SAFETY IS AN ILLUSION, and that’s a really, really dumb reason to get married.

I would LOVE to hear your really, really dumb reasons to get married! Please tell me your reasons in the comments!

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