How To Successfully Talk To Your Boyfriend About Marriage
Greetings, Steve here, welcoming you once again to When Reality Knocks Lifestyle and Technology Guide. Today’s topic: How to talk to your boyfriend about marriage without killing him.
Now, some of you ladies out there may think that this is over-stating the case and it is certainly true that men are capable, as reasonable, responsible adults, of talking with their partners about marriage and looking at it as a chance to expand their horizens and to grow as a couple. Ha ha ha, woohoo, heh heh, hooooooo! Boy, that was a good one. Most men, if you try to bring up the concept of marriage, even in the hypothetical, such as “Marriage is a institution between wherein two people commit to spending their lives together,” will go and hide under the bed, crying softly. If you actually bring up the idea of them getting married, they may well go into full-on apoplexy.
This is not entirely our fault. There are distinct psychological processes at work here. It’s not actually that men are incapable to talking about marriage, it’s that we are incapable, without proper warning and preparation, of dealing with the 6 bad words. What are the six bad words, you ask? Here they are, alhpebetically by height:
- Marriage
- Committment
- Children
- Financial Responsibility
- Family Obligations
- Prostate
Men are, by social training and physical constitution, unable to deal with these words without considerable pain. If you fail to warn your man before you use one of these words, the effect is similar to sneaking up behind him and smashing him in the head with a brick. This may sound crazy, but it’s actually scientifically documented. The Washington Post reported recently that a woman in Vermont, with no warning whatsoever, said to her boyfriend of 3 years: “Honey, I think we need to talk about what’s going to happen over the next five years. I mean, we could be talking about marriage, commitment, children.” The man went into a seizure and subsequently had to be hospitalised (link available upon request).
So, is there a way you can overcome this major disfunction and actually communicate about marriage with your boyfriend, without causing him permanent injury? In fact, there is. All you need to do is give him a few hours warning before you use one of the bad words and he will have time to brace himself before the event. If you tell him in the morning, “Bob, I don’t want to alarm you, but I am planning to use the word `committment’ this evening, probably around 7:30,” then he will have time to prepare himself. Unless his name isn’t Bob. In that case he’ll be kind of confused, but when he gets it straight, there are several methods he can use to prepare himself, both mentally and physically. There is, of course, the old stand-by of having a stiff drink and then having a burly friend smash you in the face repeatedly to dull your senses, but many alternative therapies exist as well. Many males are reluctant to use alternative therapies, but studies (published in the journal Nature) have shown good success with tai chi, as well as zen buddhist meditation and aromatherapy. It does require a bit of planning on your part, but if you give your boyfriend ample warning, he will be able to talk in a more reasonable manner about your future plans, without any crying and with a minimum of wailing. Another relationship innovation brought to you by the When Reality Knocks team. Don’t thank us, we’re just doing our jobs.
A note on gay marriage: I have heard, of course, many conservative commentators, especially in the Excited States of America, bemoaning the evils of gay marriage, citing that it will bring on the apocolypse, that it will cause the collapse of civilization and that it is bad. I’m not gay myself and so can’t give a first-hand account, but this seems like a bit of an over-reaction. Here in Canada, gay marriage has been legal for some months now and, to my knowledge, Canadian society has yet to collapse. I’m not saying that it may not be in the process of collapsing, nor am I denying the possibility that there are gigantic hordes of gay people somewhere, stockpiling mountains of interior decorating magazines and hair dye, nor am I denying that maybe society collapses a bit, here and there, ya know, mostly on the weekend, but generally gay marriage doesn’t seem to have brought about the horrors
that have been predicted. I’m not saying there haven’t been some trials, such as the unexpected arrival of Rosie O’Donnell, but we’ll all got through them. Rosie came to Halifax this Summer with a number of gay Americans so they could get married, but, really, it wasn’t so much of an invading horde, so much as a large cruise ship. A number of them did break out and spend money downtown, and a few went on tourist tours, but other than that, the effect on Canadian civilization seems to have been negligable.
So here’s an idea: We live in a world of famine, hunger, inequality, disease and war. Maybe gay marriage isn’t the greatest evil mankind faces. What about putting your considerable organisational efforts into fighting a fight that actually matters? Thank you.
Tune in next time when we discuss the Seven Stages of Grieving For A Friend who’s Getting Married.
November 15th, 2005 at 9:53 pm
Thank you Steve for pointing out that gay marriage will not destroy this wonderful “paradise” we live in today; and doing it with your fantastic sense of humour.