I promise to love, cherish and not chase you down the street with a crowbar

A lot of people look at me with crazy eyes when I tell them I have been married three, yes, three times. I am not ashamed that I have taken the ceremonial walk down the aisle three times, I am just old school - meet someone at a crowded party, sleep with them on the first night and marry them three weeks later. I am proud to say there has never been drugs or alcohol used during any of these three marriage ceremonies, although it probably would have been in my best interest to have gotten sloppy drunk and passed out with my head wedged in some space much too small for it to be removed without liberal amounts of butter, Clinque daily moisturizer or Crisco rather than say "I Do". This head stick was my most effective contraceptive method throughout college and worked fine until the morning I woke up with my head stuck in the SAE Fraternity House Lion's Mouth and a pink Vespa scooter containing a litter of pygmy guinea pig babies and a half eaten Stromboli in the scooter basket. After that I had to swear off the Goldschlager and just use plain old Absinthe. (Turns out the Vespa, Stromboli, and Guineas belonged to a Luxembourg exchange student majoring in veterinarian medicine whom I had befriended at a luau and plied her full of Everclear jello shooters in exchange for a ride and a snack. I heard she is now the CEO of Goldschlager Europa.)

The marriage ceremony and 2 week honeymoon part of my relationship history was not that bad. I would wake up each morning to the various rainbow prisms off a variety of engagement rings and try to remember the name of the fellow next to me. The divorce part however is like taking a dull bread knife and sawing at the dorsal aorta trying to expunge life killing plaque. I have tried to be trite in my view of divorce, saying things like, "I crapped out on the marital table of love" or "I folded before the diamond and my husband lost their shine".

While this makes me no expert on marriage, it certainly has given me the advantage of knowing how toxic divorce is to a person's heart, mind and soul. The new car smell of a 62 inch plasma tv or your soul-mate always dissipates in the most inconvenient manner. The sweet early morning high of a new marriage bed, waking up with sweet smelling breath and filled with an agenda of pleasing each other becomes mornings filled with rushing off to some outside responsibility like the gym, job, carpool or walking the dog. Suddenly this person we promised to cherish is just another item on our agenda to check off in our daily routine. Some folks keep their routines fresh and alive while so many others just slowly die on the vine inching each day further away from their partner.

Because I have failed at so many marriages I have watched with the precision of a love starved stalker how marriages survive and even more amazing how husband and wives continue to delight in each other. What I have learned from digging through numerous bedside tables, breaking into personal e-mail accounts and crashing countless anniversary parties is that these happy couples continue to honor the promise of their wedding vows made many years before. The promise to love is the foundation but it is the cherishing of one another that raises the cream to the top. Cherish seems to be about as close to unconditional acceptance that two people can gift to each other. This promise to cherish keeps marriages solid because they know despite the $20,000 Visa Bill or the socks strewn all over the bathroom floor that this family unit is special, precious and deserves to be protected like an infant child.

I have promised to cherish on three different occasions and have failed each time. Serial adultery and being chased through your neighborhood by a drunk spouse wielding a crow bar can tarnish those promises and at the time I felt and still feel that divorce was the best option for me. This decision does not come without a price tag the size of one found on a haute couture Donatella Versace Hog-tying Gown. Breaking those promises that were made to another person, to family and to what ever higher power was ordaining the wedding service just strips away little pieces of the crucial self. I will forever carry a sense of "what if" in my ever growing emotional luggage set and a bit of failure in my matching hatbox. For me it was hard to cherish when there was a strange woman wearing a corset and garters drinking my Coca-cola in my bedroom or from behind dark wet shrubbery because I didn't want to find the prying end of a crowbar.

If you are one of the lucky ones still married then do yourself a favor by putting the kids to bed early, turning off the internet, letting the kitchen stay dirty overnight and go cherish that person who held your hand on your wedding day and promised to love you. Chances are you will find that you still delight in that person and that the dirty little bits of life have just temporarily clouded your marital vision. Cherish it is a beautiful word that we should use more often than the overworked love.

As for me, I am going to rummage through my emotional Gucci baggage put on my Versace gown, stick my head in my dear Joe's desk drawer and see if we can use the crowbar to dislodge me and then cherish him for being my savior. Put on your crazy eyes cause maybe there will be a number four, yes, four!