First Comes Marriage (Completed & Editing)

What If Your Wife Is From Pluto?

I don’t think that I will ever understand my wife. When we got married my dad told me, “Son, if you remember that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, you will save yourself from sleeping on the couch many nights.” Turns out, my wife isn’t from Venus. If anything she is from Pluto. I don’t think we could be any more different. Just when I think I know what she was going to do, she throws me a curve ball.

Damn, I love this woman.

“Good thinking Mel. First of all Doc, you have to remember that we have never had a conventional relationship. I mean our first date was barely a date. We had sex before we knew the other’s last name. Honestly, I felt really guilty about how our relationship started, so I tried to make it up to her.”

Guilty doesn’t even begin to describe how badly I felt after our first date. I had never slept with a girl that I wasn’t in love with, let alone one I wasn’t dating. Not only had we slept together, but we had done so multiple times. I am not that kind of guy. Wow, my inner voice sounds like a girl sometimes, but it is true. What is the point of sleeping with someone that you don’t have feelings for? I have friends that will hook up with a different girl every night, and they are the ones that always complain about being lonely. So when Mel and I started dating I felt like I had not been fair, taking advantage of her that night. How could I ever make sure she knew that I respected her and didn’t want her just for her body? Though I would never say no to her, she is just too beautiful.

“I decided to get help from man’s best friend. Google. And yes, that is where all the ideas for the dates came from. All I did was search for “romantic dates” and then picked the ones I thought were the best. The picnic really was planned with the best intentions. I thought being outside would be all sweet and picturesque. So, we drove south and went to this park I used to go to as a kid. Even though it was January, we had gone far enough south that it wasn’t even cold. I think we were like in the 60s. Mel, being the ever hot one, thought it was sweltering. I still wore my jacket.”

Now that is something about Mel that I will never understand. The girl is always hot. She wears flip-flops in the middle of winter. Aren’t girls supposed to be the cold ones? That way we can give them our jackets and warm them up. Then again, that would require Mel to be a typical girl, and there is nothing typical about her.

Looking over at Mel, she started running her fingers through her hair, clearly perturbed by the situation. That girl should never play poker. As soon as she starts to get agitated, she starts playing with her hair. Not that I can complain, I love her hair. I remember the first time I saw the light bounce off it, I swore she dyed it because it was too perfect. But, about a week into dating her, I learned that it really was natural. And she hated it. Of course, she would hate it because it wasn’t red or brown, it was auburn. It was the best of both worlds unless your name is Mel.

“Mel was being nice for my sake. The truth is, the only thing that went right on that date was getting to be with Mel. She got sunburned, the food was disgusting, and we both got covered in poison ivy. We couldn’t go past second base for a week. A whole week, with a girl I was falling in love with. It was torturous knowing that she was so close, but there was no way we were in a condition to do anything. On the bright side, she did let me just hold her at night. This is not very “Mel-like,” as I am sure you are discovering.” And cue rolling eyes from Mel. A hurricane has entered the peaceful Caribbean blue-eyed beauty, and I sense an impending downpour at any moment. I didn’t want her to say anything about how badly our dates went, because she just doesn’t see it the same way that I do.

For every disaster that occurred on our dates, I fell more and more in love with her. I didn’t know that it was possible, but it seemed that each problem brought out a side of me I didn’t know existed. Plus, it brought out a piece of Mel that I instantaneously loved. The problem is that if I tell her how each disaster date turned out to be perfect for me, she will be angry that I am being cheesy. If I don’t tell her, she may never know why I don’t complain about those dates.