Among my college crew, there were three sets of guys.  The first set were the guys who fit the Midwestern mold: meet your wife as a teenager or early 20s, get married, have a couple kids, the white picket fence, etc., all by your early 30s.  The middle set were the guys who would probably get married but they’d settle in whatever town they ended up in first, then it would happen in their mid to late 20s.  The final group of us, well…back in the day, if you would have asked us, “Don’t you want to get married?”, you might as well have been asking, “Don’t you want to get the swine flu?”  You would have gotten the exact same facial expression.

The Ones have fulfilled their destiny, most of them are working on having children (multiple).  The Twos are enjoying the early stages of their marriages.  And today I got the call that the first of my brethren in the Three Club is walking down that aisle.  We’ve all matured some, so there was no questioning why he wanted to get married, or who he’s marrying.  We’re all happy for him.  I’ve already been pegged twice now as being Next, we’ll get to that at the end of this post…

I can recall when the concept of marriage hit me hard for the first time.  My last spring break in Kansas, the Three Musketeers had our bonding trip by traveling to Myrtle Beach, with a pit stop in Atlanta.  We got to Atlanta about midnight; we were staying with some Deltas who were friends of my boy’s cousin.  They asked us if we wanted to go to the club; we told them all our clothes were wrinkled up and packed in the trunk.  So you know what happened?  These girls ironed our clothes for us, so we could all roll to the club together.  The next night, unannounced, they had their girls come over and cook us some Chicken Parmigian with vegetables while we hung out at the pad.  By the third day, when we went to hang out at Lenox Square, I was glaring down every brother in a throwback Dominque Wilkins jersey who even looked like he wanted to step to ‘my girl.’  Even now, the film geek in me wonders if my life is really just Vanilla Sky:  we drove off a bridge on the way to Atlanta, suffered horrific injuries, and now I’m really cryogenically frozen somewhere, trapped in a lucid dream where me and my boys had the time of our lives with these gorgeous sisters showing us Southern Hospitality.  I’m half-joking, but I fell head over heels in love for the first time that weekend.

Back to the present.  I’m certainly not the guy seeking out this material, but I seemingly now can’t avoid getting on the Internet or turning on the radio and hearing a debate about whether marriage is ‘dead’, or ‘how hard it is to find a quality mate’.  I’ve thrown my two cents into these convos when the mood hits me, I’ll admit.  I mean, we all need a little guidance or advice from time to time, but that said, I am still very much against overdoing it.  Becoming a husband and a father is very important to me, but not to the point of forcing a situation to happen.  Like my Atlanta trip, I tend to think the best things in life are often the things you don’t plan for.  I’m a man, of course I like having female friends, but I never imagined it would grow into the number and variety I have.  I knew there’d be a few guys who became my ‘Board of Directors’, but it’s not the guys I imagined it would be even 10 years ago.  Me writing this out makes me recognize why I despise micromanaging:  I think it’s essential to have a general plan, I think it’s suicide to try to plan every detail.  Good and bad, things always happen.

I don’t think it breaks my ‘Code’ to reveal where my head is at mentally right now.  Not long ago, my Captain became engaged.  When I asked him about it, he said he just started praying to God to bring the right woman in his life.  For me personally, it was like a light went off in my own heart.  My faith is such a central part of my identity, in my opinion, this will be the defining decision of my life: why wasn’t I doing this?  So at some point each day, I get on my knees and begin “I don’t know exactly what I’m doing, but I know what I want…” and go from there.  Sometimes it’s a few minutes, sometimes it’s a lot longer depending on what happened that day.  If nothing else, it’s cathartic, I’ll tell you that.  Most important of all, when I’m done, I get up and go back to just living and enjoying my life.

Like I said, nothing to gain from overthinking it…