Paging Prince Charming

I've been doing this marriage thing for about two-and-a half years now.

It's been a wild ride.

Not wild like a roller coaster, but more like driving through thick fog down an unfamiliar country road. While there may be ups and downs, it's the abrupt changes in direction that are the true challenges.

My wife and I got together after knowing each other for years as friends, and that made for an interesting transition when we tried the whole romance thing. Actually, the switch wasn't as hard for me as it was for my wife because I had been crushing on her since middle school, while she previously saw me as the plump kid who liked to read. Honestly, I had been plotting on her for years before I saw my opening.

What I'm trying to say is that me and missus didn't have that magical love at first sight thing that gets played up in all those sappy movies. Nope, our relationship was more tortoise than hare. In fact, while I have been known to break out a massive romantic gesture when I really mess up, for the most part I'm a fairly pragmatic, plodding husband.

I may forget the flowers, but the rent will always be paid.

I thought about my pathway to matrimony recently when a friend of mine sent me an article on marriage and love. You can check out that article here.

The basic premise of the article, at least the way I understood it, was that women need to give up on their fantasies of Prince Charming and settle for Leroy the Plumber. Apparently, waiting around for Mr. Right makes a lot less sense than settling for Mr. Good Enough.

You know, while I understand and agree with many of the points made by the author of the column, in some ways I think my opinion is fairly irrelevant. After all, worrying about finding the perfect mate seems to be the domain of women, not men.

I actually came to this conclusion back in college at Howard University. I distinctly remember this one young lady explaining to me that most girls view college as the prime time to find a husband. She noted that in the "real world" it was going to be much more difficult to find a pool of eligible black bachelors comparable to the one available at The Mecca. She then told me that after they turn 35, women are more likely to get struck by lighting than they are to get married.

Whoa.

When she dropped that depressing factoid on me my first reaction was disbelief. Not at the idea that women rarely get married after age 35 because I could easily believe that those pickings were slim.

Nah, I was shocked that she was even thinking about this kind of crap in college. The fact that women were trying to sift through the various weedheads, misogynists and dirtbags on campus looking for a life partner put them a distinct competitive advantage. It's almost like trying to find Bill Clinton's soul.

Difficult.

For me and most of my college friends, marriage was like the economic status of Chinese peasants; the furthest thing from our minds. Any heterosexual male who has attended an HBCU, particularly those chosen few who have strolled across The Yard in spring, understands that the ratio of women to men on campus makes it damn near impossible to think of yourself as anything but a squirrel in a forest of oak trees.

It's all about getting some nuts.

See, most men and women approach marriage from two totally different perspectives. Both genders see it as a probable destination, but women see it as that perfect tropical vacation, while men view it as federal prison. I would estimate that roughly 90 percent of women have spent part of their childhood planning the details of their eventual nuptials.

The estimate for men is hovering right around zero.

As bad as it sounds, even the most fugly of men is convinced that if he really wanted to, he could find a decent woman to settle down with. And, while she might not be the fantasy girl from his solo trysts in the bathroom, she would be good enough. Most men don't obsess over settling in marriage because most of us spend very little brainpower thinking about marriage period.

This doesn't mean that men can't be picky or have impossible expectations when it comes to their potential mates. In fact, most of us are so picky we think nothing of expecting any woman we would even consider for marriage to be a combination of Claire Huxtable and Vanessa Del Rio.

However, men long ago learned that if the other person wants you more than you want them, you always win. As long as women want to get married more than men do, men will typically get to marry a little bit closer to their fantasy.

So, while the column's author thought she was dispensing some rare wisdom with her exhortation that independent, career-oriented women abandon their high standards and be practical, I actually think she's late to the party. Not only have women been settling for centuries, but even the most idealist, modern striver understands in the deepest recesses of her mind that settling is probably her eventual fate.

How else can you explain the ratio of hot women to ugly guys on sitcoms?