Today, I’m guest writing for Travis at I Like To Fish because he likes to take Wednesdays off.  I’m also reposting that here, because why the heck not.

“I’m 28.  That means pretty much everyone I know is married or engaged.  The folks at Bed, Bath, and Beyond know me by name from the number of times I’ve bought things off registries there.  I’ve seen “Wedding Crashers” and it didn’t seem that much fun to me because I’ve gone to about that many weddings in the last year.

Awhile ago, one of my friends got engaged and has since gotten married.  Before he asked his fiance to marry him, he asked me, “Jeff, is it true?  Does sex really change after you’re married?”

I said, “No, not at all,” because that’s what married guys tell single guys.  And before the ladies get all upset with that, I didn’t say it “suffers”, I just said that it “changes.”

See, sex is like going to an video game arcade.

When you’re single, you go to the arcade with a pocket full of quarters and you want to try every game in the place. Well, maybe not every game, because some look like they have herpes.  All the machines are flashy and bright, and you keep almost getting whiplash from the really good looking game behind you.   You walk around, put your quarter into the machine and give it a try.

If you did really bad and failed miserably, well you just don’t play that game ever again.  If you did get lucky and actually win, well you don’t need to play it again because you already beat it.

When you’re married, you still go to the arcade with a pocket full of quarters, but you only play one game. You play it over and over, and eventually you get the high score.  Then it’s not enough to just have THE high score; you need ALL the high scores.  You want the entire screen to have YOUR initials on it, because you’ll be damned if someone else has the high score on YOUR machine. You don’t want to be looking through that high score screen going, “Alright, JAH, JAH, JAH, JAH…who the hell is DJS?!”

I really am lucky to be married.  My wife is amazing, and every day I’m thankful that she married me.  We were one of those couples that met online.  At first I wasn’t sure if it would work out, since I lived in a different city and she was an emoticon.  But there was just something about her semicolon-closed parenthesis that I just found irresistible.

I haven’t been married very long, so I’m not full of sage advice for those trying to make their way through the harrowing journey that is daily coexistence.  However, I do feel that I’m learning all the time; the trick is simply to pay attention.  For instance, after letting my wife proofread this article, I have learned that it is a bad idea to compare sex with video games.

Who knew?”