Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give

“You know when people always say, when they talk about the people they love most in their lives, ‘I would take a bullet for this person, I would walk through fire for this person’? That’s hurt. You’re saying, ‘I would hurt for this person.’ In a really profound and life-threatening way. ‘I would take a bullet. I would walk through fire.’ Infidelity

There is probably a better feeling than hearing your child praised, but I doubt it can be obtained legally.

These other men—did I ever really see them? Or were they just projection screens onto which I could shadow-puppet my own desires?

Marriage is a relationship far more engrossing than we want it to be. It always turns out to be more than we bargained for. It is disturbingly intense, disruptively involving, and that is exactly the way it was designed to be. It is supposed to be more, almost, than we can handle. —Mike Mason, The Mystery of Marriage, 1985

Why do we treat out-of-bounds desire as beyond our control when it happens to us but as an easily avoided abomination when it happens to others?

Marriage is a condition of being, not doing.

Other men—the heartthrob on tour, the Sanskrit chairman—they are so perfect, superhuman, gods of adventure and attention.

Their marriage is full of tragedy and chaos and mystery and triumph, and it lasts until death. It’s one of the great love stories of all time.

“So what’s the secret to staying together?” I asked her. “Be nice?” she offered. I laughed, but that may be it, the way a secret to losing weight is to eat less. Be nice. Don’t leave. That’s all.