By Jake Vest
The wedding of billionaire Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez cost $50,000 per guest, a figure that was widely reported and much discussed, but too unreal to hold my attention.
A much more interesting figure is what that price tag will work out to per day of staying married. It can’t last. Anyone who spends $50 million on a party is not the sort of person who will put up with anything that is wrong with another person. And the kind of woman who would marry a man like that has got to have something wrong with her.
Life has not prepared them for marriage. People that wealthy learn that if they get tired of something or if it starts to irritate them, they can just dump it and get a new one. POOF, money makes it go away.
Anybody who has ever listened to the same person snore for 35 or 40 years can see the issue. Everything you do as one of the spouses in a marriage is highly likely, if not certain, to eventually start to irritate the other one.
First, take the honeymoon, then they start to regularly see one another first thing in the morning. Each of them will get to watch the other creak off toward the bathroom scratching some too-visible body part, preparing to enliven their fabulous Sicilian beachside boudoir with a symphony of bodily functions. No matter which one does it first, worst or most often, the other is going to wonder, “Am I not entitled to something better than this?”
People who have grown accustomed to not having to put up with anything that doesn’t suit them are poorly equipped for a test of how much they can put up with.
A honeymoon would be just the thing, but they should have gone on one before making a decision about marriage. And not in a private jet or on a yacht, either. I’m thinking 38 to 45 hours of interstate, barely habitable motels with uneatable breakfasts, a flat tire, a dead battery and a missed exit. Both occupants in close quarters making sinus noises, luggage carrier buzzing, golf clubs rattling, and… well, you name it. The list is endless.
It doesn’t take long before people start blaming each other for what’s on the radio.
The phrase “for better or worse” comes into much clearer focus, and believe it or not, that is a good thing. You’ll find there is a lot of “better” out there if you are willing to work for it. You will laugh about stuff that made you want to scream at the time, and, in fact, you will even come to enjoy some of the stuff you have to put up with—including each other.
It is good for a marriage in the long run. The rich and celebrated folk don’t have to put up with that sort of thing, which I think makes their run less likely to be long.
She will never know what it is like to share a peanut butter sandwich that wasn’t big enough for one, let alone two. He will never know the feeling you get when you notice that somebody just as hungry as you were, tried to give you the bigger half. That meal might be the one remembered most fondly for the longest time.
When the trip’s over and each of you can honestly say to the other, “I couldn’t have made it without you,” you are ready for a wedding. When they get to that part in the ceremony that asks if you are in it “until death do us part,” you won’t just be guessing.
