At Mere Comments, Anthony Esolen has posted a personal list of his Rules to guide young people into matrimony. They're funny and wise. For example:
+ Never marry a man who is not admired by respectable male friends. The people in the world who know a man best are the men he works and plays with. They know well if he is a cheat, a thug, a loser. You may marry a man who does not have female friends. If anything, you should be suspicious of a man whose friends are principally female. The men may be avoiding him, and there is a reason for that.+ Never marry anyone who is not interested in looking at your fourth-grade yearbook. This means: never marry anyone who seems unaware that he or she is marrying also a family, a hometown, a past, silly friends, comedies and tragedies. Never marry anyone who does not want to meet your father and mother. If your sister doesn't like him, dump him. If your sister doesn't like her, dump her. That is why God created sisters. Their approval, however, is not a sufficient condition; they will occasionally like losers, but they almost never detest good marrying material.
+ Never marry a woman who does not like to feed people, or a man who does not like to help out with the removal of a junked car, regardless of how much he knows about junked cars. By all means marry a woman who enjoys seeing men eat, or a man who looks at a mudslide and says, "I can make a really fine wall out of that."
+ Never marry anyone, man or woman, who scoffs at virtue, who reduces "good" and "evil" to arbitrary counters in the war of all against all, whose humor is flippancy, who looks down upon janitors and maids, who cannot delight in making simple things (like a batting T or a thank-you note), who thinks tradition is old and shopworn (such people are followers of every fad that comes), and who is never, ever, just relaxed, grateful for a shady seat under the maple tree in fall. That is another way of saying that you should never marry anyone who does not know who God is.
Read the whole thing. Add your own personal rules in the comboxes below.
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On second thought, Esolen's list is good as a thought-provoker. There's nothing in the list that I can say is objectively bad, just that some of it is too specific and rules out people on what might be spurious grounds, depending on circumstances.
So probably, everybody seeking a spouse or watching their offspring do it should read through this list and think through what Esolen's saying, but nobody should use it as an actual checklist, ruling people in or out item by item.
If anything, you should be suspicious of a man whose friends are principally female. The men may be avoiding him, and there is a reason for that.
Sheesh, except for a few very close male friends, most of my friends are female. It's not so much that men are avoiding me (so far as I know), but that I am avoiding them. In my experience, when groups of men get together they tend to talk about a) sports, and/or b) cars, both of which bore me to tears. I enjoy having friends I can really *talk* to, and, sorry to say, but on the whole women are better at that.
Having said that, I have generally preferred to date (and have had more successful relationships with) women who have more male friends than female friends. I don't have a gang of male friends, and I prefer women who don't have a gaggle of female friends.
But, then, I've never been married or even come close, and at this point I doubt I ever will.
Brett, while I am truly sorry for the troubles you've experienced, please understand that your list is pretty offensive; just because someone has been abused does not mean that they're guaranteed to evolve into someone who has multiple psychiatric issues or who will make someone else's life hell. There are more variables involved than just the abuse, including other events in one's life, genetic predisposition to mental illness, etc.
That mentality is PRECISELY the reason why I don't talk to anyone up front about my childhood. It's too easy for people to jump to the conclusion that I'm damaged, that I am unstable, or that I'm emotionally fragile. I'm none of those things - I'm more even-keeled and resiliant than a lot of folks, and while the abuse was, yes, damaging at one point, time, distance, and (most importantly) the good Lord managed to effect a whole lot of healing.
Furthermore, to make the assumption that you need to run from someone who's been abused just adds insult to injury in the most painful way -- it implies that person is not worthy of love or a healthy relationship. If it didn't work out for YOU, recognize that 'you' are not 'everyone'.
Anyway, on to the original list:
Some of it was funny and spot on, but some of those items weren't what I'd call diehard truths. I know plenty of men who have or love dogs, for instance, who should never, ever become fathers. And plenty of tidy men who are manly. Etc. But I think the larger truths behind the snark are pretty much spot on -- people who take themselves too seriously, who are irresponsible, who can't relax, etc -- probably will make a relationship harder work than it needs to be.
I won't even bother reading this list, as the snippet Rod posted sounds stupid and every list I've ever read like this has been just as dumb.
From being badly burned, my rule is similar to what a few people above have said: problems that are unsolved pre-marriage will not be solved after. Most likely they will get worse. My only rule? Trust your instincts. Keep in mind that you may have children with this person, and if your worst suspicions come true, you will be visiting this awfulness on your own flesh and blood. Trust me -- nothing is worse.
MJ
Hey there, r-e-P! It seems we have similar acumen in selecting a mate. ; ) Mine is similar, though he didn't get his tattoo until quite awhile after we'd wed.
My rule number one would be, don't marry a man who writes for Touchstone. But I suppose that's one of those things one couldn't predict until it was too late. I don't think I'd have married any man who wrote for a conservative publication. That would have seemed far too incestuous, rather like being married off to one's father's uncle's second cousin in settlement of some feud among the legendarily bloodthirsty tribes of Konservistan.
Seriously, I don't think any human relationship should be based on a checklist. If I ever found I was being evaluated according to a checklist, I believe the evening would end with my invitation to the idiot to "check off THIS!" How rude and demeaning. My advice would be, never marry anyone who doesn't make your heart sing, and never marry anyone who doesn't consider him or herself the luckiest man/woman in the world to have found you. When hard times come, and they will, the knowledge that you got into this via the truest love you've ever known will help you get through them.
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