2.1: Marriage SATs

MARRIAGE SATs

Because my wife is Catholic, I got married in the Catholic Church. If she had been Buddhist, I no doubt would have been married standing there with a shaved head, wearing an orange robe and saying "AUHM", over and over. But, I digress.

In order to be "married Catholic", the Roman Church - in its infinite wisdom - makes ALL prospective couples participate in some things I like to call "Marriage SAT's" and "Marriage Driving School".

Yes? You in the back? What? (*sigh*)  Okay, yes, obviously they have a different, official-sounding name for it. And if you want to know what it is, get off your lazy ass and call the local parish office, okay? I'm not your fiancee, you know.

Anyway, although I resisted doing it at the time – after all, this was stuff I already knew, right? – in retrospect it turned out to be one of the best, most important things we both could both have done BEFORE we got married.

We started out by filling out an SAT-style questionnaire where we answered a series of questions about our ideas and opinions on the state of matrimony. Things such as:

·         What did we think marriage was going to be like?

·         What did we think our responsibilities to our spouse would be?

·         What did we think about the discharge of finances within a marriage?
  (Who controls the money? What's important and what's frivolous?) and;

·         Why were we getting married in the first place?

The questionnaire was then analyzed by the Catholic Church's famed UniBlab 9000 computer (the Jetson's stole that from them, you know), and then a nun – Sister Mary De Profundis, who'd taught enough boys just like me to have my number right from the jump – took us through our answers one by one, especially the ones where our hopes and expectations where markedly different.

What we learned about each other was surprising. And crucial.

I learned things about my wife that I hadn't even realized. And vice versa. Important things. Things we definitely needed to know and discuss with each other but seemed unromantic. Before we got married. It opened our eyes to each other's expectations. And knowing those things are what lasting relationships are really based upon. So if you both have it in your heads that this is just a "starter marriage", then feel free to skip this.

extra credit:  A basic difference between being a single man and a married man was once summed up by author G. K. Chesterton, who observed, "A man's friends like him but leave him as he is. His wife loves him, and is always trying to turn him into somebody else." Oh, and, by the way, she's not stupid. She's not going to tell you that's what she's doing, because she may not even realize it herself. But it is. She's just not counting on what a stubborn jackass you can be sometimes.

The reason she thinks it's possible to change you, by the way, is because she – like all women – is constantly changing her likes, dislikes, needs, desires and hopes. And she believes that you should too. Just so long as they coincide with hers.

Besides, as she'll no doubt be telling you soon enough, liking the same things the same way all the time is boring. Unless, of course, you're the one who's actually moving the couch back and forth across the living room four times in a row.

Back to the point. There are a number of places that you can go, both religious and secular, to take a version of Marriage SATs. Most major organized religions offer them in some form or another, as do secular marriage councilors. I highly recommend it.

Why? Because despite the lack of romance involved, plus the hassle of finding out where they're offered, the time spent taking them, then listening to somebody who's not married anymore (or never has been or will be) yammer on about the results, taking Marriage SATs still involves a lot less time, money, effort and heartache than even your average "no-fault" divorce.

real life:  As we left, the nun turned to my wife and said in a conciliatory fashion, "And good luck, dear." Yeah. Sisters of Charity my ass.

'Marriage Driving School', on the other hand was, to me, a HUGE waste of time. I mention it here only because it was required of us to do in order to get our ticket punched so we could get married in the small side chapel at Our Lady of Great Agony.

We arrived at the huge “gym-a-torium” redolent of every Catholic grammar school at the achingly early hour of 7 a.m. Then, a tepid cup of weak coffee and a stale doughnut later, precisely at 7:30a sharp, Father Monotone began his all-day-long pep talk re: All Things Marriage.

Yes, you read that right: 'All-Day-Long' -- hence the sobriquet "Marriage Driving School." The talk wandered from topic to topic, but all were basically structured to inform us about the different aspects of marriage and about what we, as potential life partners, should know.

And the whole time he spoke, I couldn't help but think to myself, over and over, "How the hell would you know, pal? You're a Catholic Priest! Technically, you're not even allowed to have sex, let alone be married!"

Then he made his mistake. It was late afternoon and he must have sensed he was losing his audience, captive though we were, and foolishly decided to throw a question open to the peanut gallery.

"What is the correct response," he wondered aloud, "to the statement, 'I'm sorry’?"

A sweet young girl - you know the type: always sits in the front, always studies, never lets you look at her answers - raised her hand and said, "Um… 'That's okay?'"  The priest smiled and gently shook his head no. Then from somewhere in the middle of the auditorium, another woman's voice called out, "Eh… 'I'm sorry, too?'"  "No", Father kindly replied.

Finally, unable to stand it any longer, from the last row all the way in the back where the bad boys usually sit, I called out my answer: " 'You oughta be'!"

Not the right answer, as it turned out, but I got the laugh. The real answer, according to the priest, was "I forgive you." Yeah. Sure. Like that's ever going to happen in my house.