To Rant and To Hold

The Wednesday Pop Culture Rant celebrates twenty-six years of marriage today. We’ll pause so you can make a snide comment about the time/space continuum being sundered, the condition of our spouse’s eyesight, evidence for miracles, blah, blah, blah. So mature.

Statistically, marriage is a 50-50 proposition, with around half of all marriages ending in divorce, which sounds about right to The Rant. We find all the blathering about the secrets to a happy union amusing. If we understood the formula of our long relationship, we would write a book and sell it to you via infomercial. Order now and get a free Snuggie!¹ And the Perfect Bacon Bowl. We didn’t even know people were struggling to make bowls out of bacon. Thank you television.

In his story “The Other,” Jorge Luis Borges makes himself the central character. He is 70 and sitting by a river near Harvard where he teaches. A young man joins him on the bench. He quickly recognizes it is himself as a young man. Through the course of their conversation, the old Borges and the young Borges realize they don’t really care for each other. They are practically different people.

The thought of meeting The Young Rant at age twenty-three or so makes The Old Rant shudder. The idea we have any conception of what we will be like ten years, twenty years, from now is laughable. If we remain that mysterious to ourselves, what hope do we have of knowing who our partner will become?

“You aren’t the person I married,” the unhappy spouse says in the Lifetime movie. Exactly. That’s the norm not the exception. Not wanting change, or at least the change that occurs, in those we love is what destroys our relationships.

The Rant has had the good fortune of loving every version of our spouse these many years. Is that luck? Hard work? We have no idea. The Rant just hopes our latest iteration remains at least tolerable to our Twin Compass.

1. But not this Snuggie. It may take years to get over that picture.