“Marriage is a wonderful institution … but who wants to live in an institution?”

—Groucho Marx

Finding the Perfect Match

Some people search for mates who are much like themselves — a “perfect match.”

In 1971, Mick Jagger married Bianca (no known last name), who bore a strong resemblance to Mick. She, in fact, looked enough like Mick to be his fraternal twin sister.

Was this vanity on Mick’s part? Every time he looked into her eyes and said, “You’re beautiful,” was he really thinking, “You’re beautiful because you look just like me”?

Their striking resemblance was not enough to save Mick and Bianca’s marriage, and it ended in divorce.

This is not the only instance when two people with a lot in common failed to make a relationship work.

The mad scientist in the movie The Bride of Frankenstein hoped that making a bride for his Frankenstein monster would improve its disposition.

Frankenstein and his bride had much in common, both being conglomerations of dead body parts. In spite of this, the marriage didn’t work out, for Frankenstein’s bride found Frankenstein repulsive and feared he could never be trusted to go anywhere without killing someone.

Oftentimes, opposites attract. Many people, in fact, choose partners who are their total opposites — those who possess some quality that they see lacking in themselves. For example, many women are attracted to men with penises. Likewise, men are often attracted to women with vaginas.

More important than finding the right man or woman is to be the right man or woman yourself. In other words, don’t be like most people — as flaky as a finely baked French croissant.

You Smell Like My Type

Recent studies have shown, and I’m not making this up, that your body odor reveals your genetic makeup — especially the genetic makeup of your immune system.

Women have an acute ability to detect these immunity genes and are attracted to men who smell like they have a different genetic immunity than their own, thus insuring the production of healthy offspring that are resistant to infection.

A man goes out on a date, just looking to have a good time, and all the while, the woman is busily sniffing his genes, peeking into his DNA without his permission. So, even if the man is successful in getting into the woman’s jeans, the woman, in effect, has already gotten into the man’s genes.

As we can see, mate selection is the product of evolutionary forces, and although humans think of themselves as being highly evolved, we still act like Neanderthals when it comes to choosing mates, which makes you realize that it’s a miracle that the humor gene ever survived.

God knows, the Neanderthal woman undoubtedly smelled the humor gene emitting from the body of the Neanderthal humorist, and comedy didn’t put food on the table, so the Neanderthal woman ended up mating with a Neanderthal man who smelled like he would be a successful hunter and bring home the mastodon meat.

Weddings

For many years, the marriage rate was going down while the divorce rate was going up. Surprisingly, that trend has changed in recent years, and more and more people are getting married.

In fact, many people are getting married over and over again, to different people, which probably skews the numbers somewhat.

Most people, when they get married for the first time, have a big expensive wedding, because someone else is paying for it. Everyone loves a big wedding — “everyone” meaning “women.”

Men, on the other hand, sit uncomfortably in the church with their suits on, squirming, bored out of their minds, thinking what a big waste of time and money it all is — especially a waste of money, which could have been better spent on a truck jacked up really high with big wheels.

When the Honeymoon’s Over

When the honeymoon’s over, every bride gradually discovers that she has married a flawed, imperfect human being.

One day, she may wake up and find a complete stranger lying in bed next to her, or even worse, find the head of a dead horse, which is when she realizes that she has unwittingly married into organized crime.

What else do I not know about this man?