Tip #14: Listen to marriage programs

My clock radio has had a permanent place at my bedside for almost twenty years. It still works fine even after enduring many hard slaps on its two-inch-long, nine-minute (why is it always nine?) snooze button. But it has one of those really annoying high-pitched alarms, so I set it to turn the radio on instead when I need to get up. The station that wakes me in the morning is a talk radio station because, frankly, I've found that a talking voice is much less jarring to wake up to than Katy Perry. It also happens that the program running on this station when the radio turns on is usually about marriage or parenthood. The parenthood talks I generally ignore, but occasionally I'll lie in bed a little longer to listen to some of the marriage talks. This blog post is about why single adults should listen to marriage programs.

Whaaat?! So, maybe you were able to agree with, if not accept, the suggestions of hanging out with couples, attending weddings, and listening to love songs. But listening to marriage programs? Why the heck would you want to do that? Wouldn't it be more informative and interesting to listen to programs on how to set up a colony on Mars? At least that actually might happen in your lifetime.

Okay, now that we've got the cynicism out of the way, let's take a look at this. What good is it to listen to programs telling you how to have a good marriage when you're far from matrimony? Well, it's like any kind of skill. If I'm going to play a sport, I have to become familiar with it first. I have to understand the rules, taking training, and watch how it is done by professionals (or at least people much better at it than me). Knowledge alone won't enable me to play the sport well, but it provides a foundation that I can lean on and apply once I start playing the sport. Of course, I expect to learn much more as I am playing, and undoubtedly will find out that there are some things that work for others which won't necessarily work for me. Same thing with a career — you don't learn everything you need to in college, but you learn basic skills that can help when you start out, and there are some fundamentals you continue to go back to long after you've settled into your profession. Such as it is with marriage programs. You won't be able to apply the knowledge immediately, but at least it will be there to call upon if and when your situation changes and should not be dismissed out of hand.

Now, to address a common objection, I'll admit that it does seem to be a trait of many marriage programs to have an affiliation with a particular religion. That never really bothered me. The way I see it, when it's just you and the radio, nobody is putting any kind of pressure on you to accept any kind of doctrine, and it is possible to pick out the good points irregardless of the faith statement. Even so, I know that some people still get terribly offended by anything that mentions religion, and it isn't something they can overcome. To those, I say keep looking until you find a program that educates listeners on how to maintain a solid relationship (married or not) without the religious part. It will serve the same purpose, arming you with knowledge, preparing you just in case it does happen — maybe while you're on the flight to Mars to start a new colony.