the marrying kind

I met my current man almost a year ago. We have had fights and arguments a couple times a week since. Things weren’t so bad a first but by the time he decided to ask me to marry him (four months into the relationship) we were petty bad. He hasn’t hit me or vice versa, but it seems like all of our fights are over the same things, and usually stupid petty things as far as I am concerned. We don’t like the same music, and most of the movies he likes are the teenage fart humor sort. He is older than me (30s) and is planning on getting a mohawk and wants his bridge (mid brow ) pierced for the fourth time. He also leaves cups and bowls lying around until I ask him to move them, and he doesn’t wash his own clothes. Did I mention we live at my parents’ house right now? Never does dishes or helps out aside from taking out the garbage occasionally.

I think he’s going through a midlife crisis and thats why he wants a 20-something woman as this third wife. I don’t know if I should keep trying to work things out or if I should tell him to hit the road?

—Totally Lost

The Gay Perspective: Was this guy a one-night stand who just never went home, or what? Are you for real? This is the man of someone else’s dream—and of your nightmare. You’ve answered your own question repeatedly. Ditch him.

The Straight Perspective: I say: Do not let this man go! Obviously he’s got something to offer, something which you are not sharing but which is fabulous and rare enough to compensate for pretty much every other thing about him. (He’s the only one who can satisfy your need to play Dungeons and Dragons 10 hours a day? You share an obsession with Mork and Mindy, right down to wearing matching suspenders? he has two penises?) Whatever it is, fate has brought you together, and it seems that maybe you’re not a bad couple.

The Roller Girl says: And you’re with him in the first place why? You don’t mention any positive aspects to this relationship, which makes the answer you evidently want to hear pretty obvious. You both live in your parents’ house? He doesn’t do basic housework? His personal style choices aside, you don’t seem to have anything in common. I’m utterly bewildered as to why you would want to stay with this person, let alone marry him.

There is more to life than getting married. There is more to a relationship than whether it’s going to lead to a big wedding. If someone asks you to marry him, you do not owe him a positive answer simply because someone finally asked. If someone drives you crazy and has no redeeming merit, there’s little purpose served in making yourselves miserable by continuing to fight. If you’ve had the same fights over and over, for months on end, and haven’t resolved them, you’re not going to.

You don’t say it, but if you’re feeling obliged to marry somebody before you’re no longer a twentysomething, you’re going to regret it before you even finish doing it. It’s not a sentence to lifelong spinsterhood for a woman to turn 30 unmarried anymore. In fact, I’m not sure marriage really means anything at all in our current society. I have a friend in California who, on November 5, had to change his status on Facebook from “engaged” to “in a relationship” simply because Proposition 8 passed. I’d never cried at a Facebook notification before. Marriage is something only some people get to have, regardless of love or commitment? What does it really mean, then? What can it mean? Not a whole lot, if you ask me. I say we abolish the institution altogether, and then the two of my teammates who are currently suffering through messy divorces from men who seemed like a good idea at the time can both end their pain and save themselves a few thousand bucks.

Ruthless says: Midlife crisis? What life?

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