Why Men Secretly Love Being Married
A former male dating columnist for Glamour returns with his reflections on marriage, two years after having been married himself … and it just seems to get better and better.
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Some of you might remember me as the (charmingly!) equivocating Jake who almost two years ago gave up the single-guy gig writing this column to get hitched to a woman known as Orange Blossoms, my longtime on-again, off-again girlfriend. I want to assure everyone that, even with a ring on my finger, I'm just as confused by love as I was when I was single. But I'm happy — and here are the reasons why:
The drama is over. And that's a good thing. Because while we still have thorny issues to negotiate — the little problem of how we both try to control each other, for example — the anxiety is gone. The whole business of "Is this the right relationship?" and "She talks on her cell phone inside of elevators; she must not be the woman for me," and "If I don't make her spontaneously combust in bed tonight, she's never going to sleep with me again" — all that stuff? Up in a puff of smoke. I have to say, life without the question of something being a deal-breaker is pretty amazing.
We can share our fantasies — even the ones about other people. Yes, I have sexual thoughts that don't include my wife. I've discussed this with lots of men, and they've agreed that extracurricular attraction never goes away. However, now I can talk to Blossoms about them. Not explicitly (the fantasies are rarely that graphic — it's more of a feeling, like, Yeah ... her ... yep, for sure), but we joke around about which women I'm drawn to, and then I hear about men she's checking out at the moment. Before marriage that kind of...