Married People Rock

Posted in OPINION to The Loyal Opposition by Dan Schreiber on Tuesday, July 15, 2008 at 8:00 am

In his column Single People Suck last week, Ryan touched a nerve among single people when he highlighted a billboard in Champaign that praised the economic advantages of being married. He believed this was an overt message disparaging single people because they are not married.

As a married person, I think I should chime in. It is unfortunate that Ryan should get this message directly from the billboard. Married people often have long discussions on this topic in their monthly cabal meetings, and we all generally agree: The message that single people suck should be subliminal, so as not to arouse heated arguments. Heated arguments just distract people away from their sole purpose in life, which is to get married as quickly as possible to the nearest person they can find.

There may be lots of good reasons to be married: tax breaks, longer lives, more health, less drug use. Lesser known is that married people are 50 percent less scared of clowns and 85 percent more able to tune out the constant droning of other people talking. At least that is what my wife said the other day, I think, while I was trying to watch TV.

But aside from all these practical reasons, married people secretly know that the number one reason to be married is to feel superior to single people. Single people may enjoy more freedom, get to manage their money without someone else watching over them like a schoolmarm, and have the opportunity to travel the world without a spouse and kids in tow complaining incessantly about how hot and tired they are. But married people get to have barbeques with their married neighbors and complain about never being able to find what they need at Home Depot. They get to clean their home if someone else thinks it’s dirty. They even get to have long, comprehensive discussions about where to hang a picture they are embarrassed to have in their house in the first place.

And yet, despite all these natural advantages, it is harder than you might think to make single people feel bad about themselves. Hence, the need for billboards to convince them that we are richer, healthier and generally better people than they are.

Killjoys may bring up the fact that 50 percent of all marriages end in divorce, ergo, marriage isn’t all that great. This is highly misguided. The math is simple here, folks: If being married once is good, then being married twice is doubly good. Don’t make us put up a new billboard that say “Married People are Better at Math,” because then single people will get all mad and distracted again from their true purpose.

In fact, there is talk among married people of retiring the whole single people suck campaign, and putting our energy back into a far more effective program: abstinence-only education. Convincing young adults they are evil and dirty if they have sex before marriage works in two ways. First, it increases the odds that people will get married years earlier than they would have, just so they can have sex. Second, it increases the odds of unwanted pregnancy due to lack of basic knowledge about birth control. This encourages shotgun marriages, which count just the same as legitimate marriages. Either way, marriage wins. Sure, these methods increase the odds of incompatible people marrying each other for terrible reasons, leading to hasty divorces. But as long as both parties jump right back into another marriage, all is well. Remember, this is about marriage, not happiness.

There is only one exception to the unadulterated good of marriage, and that is the presence in a relationship of an extra penis or vagina. In that case, compatibility and commitment is simply not enough to overcome the extra body parts. I don’t personally understand why this is, but remember (and I cannot stress this enough): married people don’t care if you are happy, we just care that you get married in the same way we are, and quickly.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention the second best thing about marriage (aside from the joy of making single people feel bad), which is, of course, great sex. Sure, single people can have it with anyone who is willing at all sorts of interesting places and positions. But married people get to schedule it, like God intended. The essence of this has been put into song form by The Flight of the Conchords, which I’ll leave you with. Hopefully, it will encourage single people everywhere to appreciate the wonders of marriage enough to go to Vegas this very weekend with some stranger off the street and get married by an Elvis impersonator.