Advice for People Contemplating Marriage

Advice for people contemplating marriage: encourage them to roadtest the relationship. Encourage them to do it before committing to marry. No, not that “it” – I’m talking about road-tripping, a long road-trip together.

Living together before marriage seems more rule than exception these days, quite out of the question in mine. Well, I approve. Living together is fine. It works to get to know one another: you come home, share your day, prepare dinner or go out to the pub with friends, go to bed, make love – that’s all well and good.  

But living together is insufficient.  Too many distractions -- work, friends, preparing meals and so on.  Road-tripping: now that is the real test. 

Being isolated together hours on end in a steel and glass capsule moving across spaces.  And when the capsule stops: you’re not with friends but dealing with strangers. 

On a road trip you learn about yourself -- if you can enjoy this person or are willing to tolerate him or her. You learn about planning and about flexibility when plans go awry. You learn about curiosity and impulsiveness. You learn about how you and your companion engage strangers. You learn about shared interests and about your tolerance for those interests not shared. 

I'm thinking about two road trips taken with wives, though neither was pre-marriage. The first with Barbara: 2,500 miles round-trip Minneapolis to New Orleans to celebrate her completion of nine weeks of drying out at St. Mary's. No need to go into details about the trip; suffice to say -- it was truly terrible -- punctuated with two threats to fly home! Had I not had overriding responsibilities and an endless capacity for rationalizing, I would have divorced 15 years sooner.  All the signs were there; time did not assuage them.

By contrast, the just completed road-trip with Ann was pure joy -- 19 days, 3,866 miles to Springdale, Utah to hike Zion, Kolob and Cedar Breaks; to Tropic for Bryce and Escalante's slot canyons on Willis Creek; to Torrey for Capitol Reef; to Moab for Canyonlands and Arches; to Vernal for the Dinosaur Monument; to Jackson Hole for the Tetons; through Yellowstone to Gardiner, Montana; off-highway to Wallace, Idaho and home. We have road-tripped often, in France, Italy, England, Norway, Scotland and here at home but this was our longest, likely our best.

We laughed a lot, bickered without wound or rancor, listened to news and music (Sirius XM a must). We read to each other and shared discoveries. We engaged strangers, we ate well and slept well.  Not a word in anger. And best of all, we enjoyed each other. 

Road surprises? At a roadside stop near Boulder, WY, a biker in his black leathers picking up his breakfast -- a fifth of Jack Daniels and a bag of Doritos. In Hanksville, UT, the Om-inspired wackiness of Carl's Garden of Critters -- only in America! Potato-king Simplot's phosphate mine tears apart the pristine high plateau of Utah's Unita Mountains. The cross-pocked backroads of beautiful, sad, broken Montana.  

Preston Trombly, host of Symphony Hall -- we've become fans and have talked subsequently. Shared driving -- we switched every 2 1/2 hours. Ann is a good driver, a much better driver than passenger. She's a terrible passenger. Subaru's GPS -- I finally learned how to use its 'nearby search' function having to look up Starbucks for Ann. 

Ann delivered master classes on engaging strangers: 

    

    ~ the Nuremberger, where I spent five Februaries back in my toy fair days 

    ~ an affordable housing expert, now mayor of Moab

    ~ the principal of Torrey's elementary school who has to waitress for her family's upkeep (What have we come to? She should be the highest paid person in town.)

    ~ the cattleman entrepreneur creating jobs for his town where 80% of the high school graduating  classes leave and never return

    ~ the Korean psychiatrist and his retired VOA wife 

    ~ four Iraqi emigrant software engineers on a hiking jaunt between nights in Vegas before returning to Galveston, no doubt with tales to tell

Plus discoveries, as: Payday candy bars offer excellent nutritional balance, cost less and taste way better than those fancy REI energy bars, As: Subaru's Outback fully lives up to its advertised  willingness to go anywhere, no matter how rocky the road, with love.

Our trip confirmed how well-suited we are to one another. So, when the time comes, encourage your kids or grandkids to road-test, to take a long road trip before committing to marry. It just might reduce the odds of grief later on.