God damn you, Robert Sinn! Why did you have to ask a question in my every Thursday Twitter Q&A that turned into an entire blog post just by itself? And it was the very first question! You even asked it before the Q&A began. What is going on in your life that you had to be in such a rush to ask that question?

Robert (@StockSage1) asked:

“What’s the purpose of marriage?”

Answer:

First off, I know Robert very well. He has an idea for a blog post that he’s never done that I think is brilliant: it would bleed, tell a story, and show his clients that’s he’s not afraid to speak the truth. But the post has the element of fear in it. It’s revealing so he’s afraid to do it.

Fair enough. Secrets are kept.

Meanwhile, he was telling me this while beating me in chess last February (an unforgivable sin).

It was cold outside. I can’t give any other excuse because it was just as cold for him. He’s a strong player, a ranked master, and we had one draw and one win (for him). I want a rematch–February 11 at the Doral Golf Club near Miami, 4pm. Robert, are you in?! (in chess, the annotation “?!” means “could be interesting”or also “dubious” whereas “!?” means probably good, scary, full of potential but if not done correctly, horribly awful, beyond dubious.

So Robert, to answer your question fully, I have to say, Marriage is “!?”

Marriage is a gift you give to your spouse.

It’s a gift that says, “I have fully enjoyed our past together, I fully enjoy our present together, and now I want to devote the rest of my future to helping you achieve your goals, to being with you, to you being with me, and to taking care of you (or vice versa) when we are old and sick, as we will almost assuredly will be.”

You can’t give a gift like that lightly. The pieces have to be set up in the right spots. Everything has to be aligned. The slightest piece off could mean that your position has gone from “strikingly interesting” to “dubious”. The seeds of disaster are always right there in front of you if they exist.

One area where Claudia and I differ, for instance, is that she likes to travel. I don’t. But I’ve succumbed. We’ve been all over the world since we met. And fortunately it’s been much to my enjoyment. One way she’s “sacrificed” if you call it that, is that I have two kids. Two kids are a lot of work! But she loves them and it works.

But the rest of the position on the board works. So I was happy to give her this gift and I hope she was happy to give this gift to me.

Robert then asks,

“but do you have to be legally married?”

Of course the answer is “No”. You don’t have to be anything. But there’s something psychological about being physically married. You go from “what am I going to do with Claudia tomorrow” or “this week” or “this month” to “Where should Claudia and I live fifteen years from now?” And how do we get there together, hand in hand. If you can get that feeling without being legally married then power to you. But for me, I can’t. The past and the future co-mingle once that marriage certificate is issued. If marriage is a gift then getting legally married puts the wrapping on that gift. It makes the gift pretty

So that answers: What is the purpose of marriage, but let’s do a quick checklist on

The should you get married Checklist:

A) Ethics. You should both have similar ethical standards. Standards about non-violence, telling the truth, feelings about adultery. Feelings about what you want in life (does this have to do with ethics? Of course, because if you want similar things then you will feel similar feelings of envy or non-envy as the occasion arises).

In NYC, I go to Grand Central a lot to take the train home. Whenever I see a man and a woman kissing right by the train gates I think one thing: adultery. I would say about 1/3 of NYC marriages are adulterous. That’s their business. But why are people taking trains to two different places in the suburbs? It’s because they live with two different spouses. Again, it’s their business. But doesn’t seem, for me like the most relaxing and pleasurable way to live life.

B) Discipline: Do you both work in similar fashion towards your goals? Do you both keep clean? Equal standards of cleanliness are very important. Claudia is very clean, for instance, and I’m disgusting. But I work towards being similar towards her. It’s important to me. If it wasn’t, then attraction would subside faster than it normally does in any long-term relationship.

There’s a saying, put a dime in a glass jar every time you have sex with your girlfriend/wife the first year. After that, take a dime out everytime you have sex. You’ll never empty the jar.

Your goal, if all of these boxes are checked, is to empty that jar as quickly as possible. Equal standards of cleanliness and discipline are part of that after that blissful first year.

Do you both eventually want to move towards a life of material pursuit to one less ambitious, more in tune with contentment? This goes along with religious. If one is into New Age Born Again Christian Astrology and the other is an atheist then these are 100% different religions. So this suggests you might have great chemistry but in the long run, even five years out, you might have great problems. (Nothing wrong with New Age Born Again Christian Astrology and nothing wrong with atheism. But they ARE different).

The notion of contentment is very important. If one side wants to make $100 million and be a high-powered banker in the city and the other person wants to live in a small house eventually by the ocean then, again, the first year might’ve been huge chemistry but long-term you’re eventually going to drift to people who have similar feelings about long-term contentment.

C) Physically. You should always have similar ideas about what constitutes good health and the methods for keeping the good health. If one of you works out every day and the other never does then attraction would be lost fast. Also, the one who works out every day will have consistently higher libido. And the one who doesn’t work out oevery day will feel bad how they look and will end up with lower libido. If libidos are way out of whack then, that’s it, the marriage is in trouble and adultery is around the corner.

Physical also means how much energy you have. Is one is filled with energy from eating well, sleeping well, exercise, etc then the other person needs to keep up. Again, this can all be covered up the first year or two. But in marriage, things like this are a seed that turns into a big tree. And you can be at the bottom of that tree while your partner has climbed the top and is staring out at the mountains on the other side of the river. (See also, “How I was Completely Humiliated By Yoga”)

D) Mentally. This doesn’t mean you have to be equally smart, or like the same books and movies. In every Woody Allen movie they all seem to like the same boring operas and then break up at the end. But I do think it means having a similar curiousity, a similar love of having things you are passionate about, a similar eagerness to explore the unknown (and by the way I’m not saying you should both want to explore the unkown but have a similar predilection one way or the other towards exploring the unknown.

E) Emotionally. There’s the notion called “Splitting the difference” – one side is always aggressive, the other side is always passive. One side always wants to clean thehouse, the other side always wants to mess up the house. And this difference gets wider after marriage. So there has to be a constant recognition, “Okay, this is where I’m splitting the difference” and try to bring that difference back to even. A conscious decision on both sides. It’s a daily check because it happens every day. You have to consciously think, “this is what she would do”, so you do it first. There’s a piece of dog shit on the floor. I should pick it up first. (By the way, I could probably never marry someone with a dog). There’s a light on in the other room. I don’t care but I should shut it down first. And she should be thinking the same way. He probably wants that Amazon Kindle Case so he doesn’t break his Kindle. I’ll get it.

F) Willing to Surprise. The senses get dulled over time. If someone keeps scratching an itch, it eventually has no effect, or you end up with a bloody scab. You need different ways to approach surprise. To bring you back to that feeling you had the first moment you kissed.

One guy once wrote me last Valentine’s Day and said, “its 5pm Valentine’s Day, I have no idea what to do?” I never heard from him again after that but here was my answer:

Try one of these two things. With your handy waiter pad, fill it up with notes of love. Put it all over the house, so that even a year from now she might find a note in an obscure spot. Or make a blog, where every post is a different reason you love her. You can’t ever forget the desire to surprise that you had that first week, month, year.

G) Spiritual. Ultimately, we’re all on a path. Not to see who makes the most money. Or who can bowl the most strikes in game. Or who can do the most pushups. But what are the attributes I need to pursue to find contentment in life. You’re 30 years old, say, and thinking of getting married. 60 years is a long time if you think you are going to be in a monogamous relationship that long.

It’s good to check the box that you are on a similar path towards contentment. Not necessarily happiness. I’m happy when I’m eating a big lemon pound cake. But then the cake is gone and I feel sick. But contentment, where everything you have is enough. Where everything you don’t have is in just the right spot. And you’re together and that’s good.

Damn , I did it again. I don’t know how to write a goddamn short blog post. All Robert (who I will have revenge on February 11) asked was one simple question. And now I’m up to 2000 words. I can’t include this in the twitter Q&A blogpost.

By the way, the above checklist is not just to decide if you should get married to X, but if you, personally, should get married at all! You might not be ready to be “ethical” in terms of adultery. You might not have any clue what sorts of long-term goals surrounding contentment you have. Who knows? I just think this is a good starting point.

But I’m also pushing Claudia with this post. She wants to write a book “The Yoga of Romantic Love”. I think she has an outline. This post is my way of pushing her. Pushing is good. Don’t push someone off a cliff. But push until they laugh and say, “what are you doing? Why are you pushing me?” And then, hopefully, you both laugh without saying anything else. Because you both instinctively know why. Message received.