Ryan and Becca

First off, many congratulations to Ryan and Becca. Everyone has said it, but you've truly begun a new life together, and I wish the best for you both. It would take many pages to enumerate the many advantages, both subtle and obvious that committing myself to Julie has done for me. To date, no drawbacks have manifest either. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough, but I'm happy, and I feel very confident that you two will be as well.

The wedding led to an interesting conversation between my wife and myself. Nothing like two friends going through a life altering event for you to reflect on some aspects of your own life. Here's a VERY hypothetical that was fun to play out. Let's say some other girl had an interest in me. She liked me for who I am and wanted to be more than just friends, perhaps even to try to steal me away (like I said, VERY hypothetical). But the fact is, Julie and I have been married for 3 years. Even in that short amount of time, we have both changed drastically to better complement each other. Most, if not all, of the aspects that some other girl might find of interest in me is due in no small part to who I'm with. If I left Julie, I would lose the very influence that caused me to have the behaviors this other girl would like about me. Quite the fun Catch-22. You've also got the violation of trust issue, and a whole heap of other things that just makes the entire scenario impractical. Needless to say, Julie and I are in it for the long haul. It's best for us and the rest of the world.

To say that you will change in a relationship is very true. If it's a close relationship, I think change is far too weak a descriptor. Malcolm Gladwell details this briefly in one of his books. When a person is single, they have to manage every facet of their lives and understand details about anything and everything that could effect them. You must have full understanding about your finances, nutrition, work life, social life, quiet time, etc. When you entire into a full fledged relationship, you get the oppportunity to split those things up. Divide and conquer. Julie has some insight into the finances, but I'm the one that balances the checkbook each week. She's not concerned about what percentage of our spending is going towards household goods and what percentage is going towards dining unless I notice that we're straying from the budget we'd set for ourselves. Conversely, Julie handles planning out meals and preparing them, which is good, because she's a much better cook than I. We both have insight into everything, but not the level of detail that's needed than if we're single. As such, we've got more free time as we're not busy managing absolutely every aspect of our lives.

Nuts, can't come up with a pithy closing line.