Beauty And The Beast, a weekly dating advice column with Kendra Cunningham and John Powers
Fan Mail Question of The Week:
Kendra and John,
“What is an appropriate age to get married now?”
Beast: John Powers
An appropriate age is… when it feels right.
When I was a young man, I thought there was a certain time and place when it was appropriate to get married. You get to know someone, share experiences, and then plan on being together. Now its clear to me that love can strike anytime. It could be your childhood sweetheart… a coworker that always smiles at you… or the person bowling in the lane next to yours.
It seems like chicks set age expectations on things… “I want to be married by 25, have kids by 30, and buy a house with a picket fence.” That’s just not fair. Most 30-something women that I know are jaded and secretly upset because their timeline was fucked up. It’s not the timeline that went wrong… it’s just life. Life takes you where you’re supposed to go, not where you think you’re supposed to go.
People seem to be waiting longer these days. We are more selfish than previous generations and less willing to put someone else’s happiness on the same level as our own. Marriage is hard at any age. The best advice I can give is not to listen to anyone’s advice. You will know when you feel right about committing your life to another.
You’re never too old to get married, either. People are living longer and choosing companionship over loneliness. A friend of mine in nursing told me that old people in her nursing home are boinking like it’s going out of style… mostly because they might be dead in a month or two. They don’t even care about STDs.
So boink someone tonight like it’s your last night alive.
Finding the right person is hard enough… let time worry about itself.
- John
Ask me anything… I will answer.
Email: FoolsRushIn@JohnJPowers.com
… John’s comedy single is now available on iTunes. Click here to buy “Get Some Blow,” his parody version of Gotye’s hit “Somebody I Used To Know.”
Beauty: Kendra Cunningham
In this day and age anything goes. Twenty years ago people were still in the mindset of getting married early to have kids and build a secure life together, nowadays everybody’s a bunch of me-me’s. Me me me! Middle America may still be more inclined to participate in that outdated conventional mindset but even Bible Belt people are showing up on these Me Me reality shows. “I want to be a singer” “I want to design clothes” “I want to be a model” Everybody wants to skip the years of work and just go right to the top. Same with getting married. People either avoid it until they are scared shit of being old and alone or they try it, realize its challenging, and jump ship.
But I’m not down on American culture.
Bottom line, it’s a free for all. In the 80’s if someone decided to get married for the first time in their 40’s people would say stuff like “He’s not gay?” or “Wow she finally found someone to put up with her whoring around”. Getting married later in life came with opinionated judgements. Now, shit, we have adults working in coffee shops as career paths. Seriously, if someone was to say to you in 1991 “in 2012, adults will work in coffee shops and organic food stores, highschool kids and PhD candidates will work hand in hand to sell you farm raised chickens and coffees with whipped cream options” you woulda called Bullshit! You know you would have. But here we are with people pining after jobs at Trader Joe’s and Starbucks like they were Smith Barney in 1995.
I gotta say, everytime I read an article about some 50 something year old who never got married but has some companion that they’ve been on and off with for years, I think “now here’s someone who is living an honest life”. No matter how much you love someone there is gonna be times when you’re like “OK you need to not talk to me for 3 months, you’re driving me out of my mind”. When you’re married you can’t do that.
5 years from now, maybe.
Marriage in ten years is going to be so much more loosely defined.
That’s what I’m waiting for.
Thanks for listening!
Kisses-
Kendra
Kendra is a stand up comic living in Brooklyn where she owns a super comfortable bed. She spends most of her time wondering where the hell her sugar daddy is and hoping he didn’t settle.
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I am starting to become addicted to you guys because you are both awesome. I just wanted to say that before I weighed in.
Both of you said it was a free for all, which I agree with. My take is, when I was twenty one I almost got married to the man I thought was my soul mate. Thank God I didnt. As a person, you change so much from the time you are twenty one to the time you are twenty five. My ex was a socio-path, he did not want to work, and he openly told me he had to sleep with other women because I didnt do it for him. In my youthful hubris, I thought that if I loved him enough I could fix this person with a damaged childhood and heal his bruised psyche only fixated on revenge. Instead what I produced was resentment on both ends, a stalker, and now have a different mailing address so he cannot find me. I almost married this man!
I think the problem with a lot of women is that they feel social pressure to get married and have children by a certain time because their friends are doing it. As a result, they settle for anyone rather than being alone. My Aunt Diane in Bulger has the best advice, “You don’t need a man. Anyone can be married. The key is, being married to the right person. If you are alone, it’s better than being married to someone who is wrong.” For the record, she has been married happily for twenty five years.
John hit the nail on the head. Marriage is hard at any age. My parents both married young, but delayed having children because my dad was in law school and my mom was completing her Masters. They have been married for thirty six years this August. Like everyone at the end of the day, they have suffered their ups and downs as a couple, but one thing can be said, they really do love each other. And that’s important in any match. They are alike enough that it clicks, but different enough that they compliment each other.
At this stage in my life I am happily single. I have dated my share of colorful characters, one which is in trouble with the law and is hiding out in an undisclosed locale. Another more recent one who is a pig dog past his prime. Then there are the celebs on the list and dear God. But the key is, I am happy. If I meet my soul mate, great. If not, whatever. The key is to be happy with who you are.
Lastly, the key in having a healthy relationship is learning from the mistakes of the past. For example, the ex fiance gave me the crash course in how some people are damaged beyond repair and therefore they cannot be fixed. I heard from him this past Christmas and he is getting sober and working with a psych in a day program for people who suffer from personality disorders. While I wish him a long and slow recovery, he will never be a part of my life again. He can’t be.
At the same time, I am grateful for that relationship because it taught me the difference between healthy and unhealthy, and how thankful to be when a good man truly does come around. xo
That was beautiful, April.
… and our blog is the healthiest addiction around!
Thanks for the kind words.
It’s true… being selective and realizing potential pitfalls are just as important as falling in love and being attracted to someone. I’d like to think that nobody is ever “beyond repair” but perhaps you need to encounter that person in the right step of their recovery process…