Arranged Marriage

Two of my roommates have already spent time planning my wedding reception. They have now taken it upon themselves to plan my courtship, engagement and marriage as well.

It’s nice to know I’m not going to have to worry about it anymore.

Actually, it was one of the most amusing conversations I’ve had in a long time, as what started as a joke gradually became surprisingly serious. We were discussing housing, and my roommates’ housing dilemmas. My favorite joke is that if you have a problem, the solution is to get married, because everyone knows that marriage solves every problem. But the funny thing is, what seemed like an unsolvable problems suddenly started to pull together quite nicely as soon as marriage was thrown into the mix.

Originally we thought one of my roommates ought to marry a friend of ours. It’s hard to explain without giving too many identity-revealing details, but the marriage really did solve a lot of the housing problems. And there were other benefits, too. We just kept talking, and it just kept sounding better and better. The only problem was, it only solved housing problems for the one who was getting married. The other roommate was left out on the street.

Until she suggested that I marry the boy.

That’s when the conversation really took off. The more we discussed it, the better it sounded. The arrangement solved problems and concerns that we didn’t even know existed. Everybody benefited. In multiple ways. We could not think of a single practical reason why this would not work out. It was a win-win-win-win situation. And finally my roommate, in wide-eyed amazement, said, “We have to tell him. I don’t know how he can turn this down.” And she was serious.

“But there’s no way he’s ever going to believe that we’re serious,” she added in dismay.

So why can’t things be this easy? I was thinking about relationships yesterday (long before this conversation ever happened) and it occurred to me that it really doesn’t take much to put a relationship in place. I mean, the other person does have to meet some basic standard of intelligence, maturity, personal hygiene. But all it really comes down to is a commitment—I am willing to love and accept and listen to the other person so long as he is willing to do the same for me, and so long as it is understood that this loving and accepting and listening to also includes helping each other work through weaknesses and trials, seen and unseen. The only real difficulty is getting both people to be willing to commit. But if, logically and practically, everything works out, why shouldn’t both parties be willing to commit? And isn’t everybody frustrated with the dating game? Wouldn't a person be thrilled if it just fell onto his or her lap without any effort whatsoever?

Okay, I know it’s a lot more complicated than that (sigh). And as serious as my roommate was (I really do think this boy is going to be informed of the plan), I’m not sure I was ever really serious over the whole course of the conversation, especially since I am the one we would be marrying off. And I think that in our enthusiasm about just how many things fell nicely into place, we consciously ignored some of the glaring imperfections in our plan and pretended that none existed. I wonder if we wanted so badly to come up with a perfect plan that we were able to make it a perfect plan.

No matter. I laughed, and I bonded with my roommates, and I had fun, and at the end of the two or three hours that we sat there in the living room I was ready to sign myself away to an arranged marriage. All for the common good :).