Whom not to marry

My girl friend Pinky has to be home on Sundays at 6:30 p.m. to watch The Buzz.  All appointments must be done by 6 p.m. and that includes Sunday mass, family outings, and million-dollar deals.

“Who cares about the deals if I miss out on Gretchen’s or Ruffa’s latest romances!” she laughingly tells me.

 Probing celebrity love affairs seems to be a great Filipino pastime. Many years ago, Kris Aquino made the headlines when she broke up with Joey Marquez and revealed all the gory details about their dangerous liaison!

Weren’t there more newsworthy world events then like the crash of the stock market, George Dubya invading Afghanistan, an intensity-eight earthquake in Mexico? Nope, not to our editors. They knew that the Kris-Joey  controversial  breakup would sell more newspapers than any other headlines. 
Some weeks ago, I was glued to CNN listening to the glamorous all-American beauty, model Christie Brinkley, confess in court  “the man who I was living with, I just didn’t know who he was.”

She could not believe that the man she married and loved all these years led a double life. Brinkley’s husband, handsome ex-athlete Peter Cook, had a US$ 3,000-a-month Internet porn and swinger site habit, not to mention having an 18-year-old mistress/assistant.

So how do you avoid such a relationship?

The answer seems to lie in the wisdom of  Fr. Pat Connor, a 70-year-old Catholic priest born in Australia and based in Bordentown, NJ. This genteel priest has spent his celibate life — including nine years as a missionary in India — mulling connubial bliss. His decades of marriage counseling led him to distill “mostly common -sense” advice about how to avoid getting hitched to the  “wrong marriage material” kind of guys.

“Hollywood says you can be deeply in love with someone and then your marriage will work,” this white-haired priest says with a twinkle in his eyes. “But you can be deeply in love with someone to whom you cannot be successfully married.”

For 40 years, he has been giving lectures on “Whom Not to Marry” to high school seniors, mostly girls because they are the most vulnerable and interested.

“It’s important to do it before they fall seriously in love because by then it will be too late,” he explains. “Infatuation trumps judgment.”

Here is a summary of his talk to high school seniors:

• Never marry a man who has no friends. This means that the man will be incapable of the intimacy that marriage demands. “I am always amazed at the number of men I have counseled who have no friends. Since as the Hebrew Scriptures say, ‘Iron shapes iron and friend shapes friend,’ what are his friends like? What do your friends and family members think of him? Sometimes your friends can’t render an impartial judgment because they are envious that you are beating them to the altar. Envy beclouds judgment.”

• Steer clear of someone whose life you can run, who never makes demands counter to yours. Well, it’s good to have a doormat in the home but not if it is your husband.

• Is he overly attached to his mother and her mythical apron strings? Don’t marry a man who can’t make a decision without consulting his mother.

• Does he have a sense of humor?  That covers a multitude of sins. Fr. Connor’s  mother was once asked how she managed to live harmoniously with three men — her husband and two sons. Her answer was: “You simply operate on the assumption that no man matures after the age of 11.”

• Are most marriages killed by silence than by violence? World-class misogynist Paul of Tarsus got it right when he said, “In all your dealings with one another speak the truth; to one another, speak that you may grow up.”

• Don’t marry a problem character thinking that you will change him. People are the same after marriage as before, only more so.

• Take a good sentimental look at his family. In that way, you’ll learn a lot about him and his attitude towards women.

• Is there a history of divorce in the family? An atmosphere of racism, sexism or prejudice in his home?  Are his goals and deepest beliefs worthy and similar to yours? “I remember counseling a pious Catholic woman that it might not be prudent to marry a pious Muslim whose attitude about women was very different. Love trumped prudence; the annulment process was instigated by her six months later. Imagine a religious fundamentalist married to an agnostic. One would have to pray that the fundamentalist doesn’t open the Bible and hit the page in which Abraham is willing to obey God and slit his son’s throat.”

Fr. Connor ended his lecture with: “Finally, does he possess those character traits that add up to a good human being — the willingness to forgive, praise, be courteous? Or is he inclined to be a fibber, to fits of rage, to be a control freak, to be envious of you, to be secretive?”

“How am I going to find a new husband?”  sighed my newly divorced friend.  “He just about eliminated everyone! Life is not fair. “