The Power of 10 Marriage

In the Power of 10, a new prime time game show, Drew Carey asked the following question: "What percentage of married Americans said they do not currently love their spouse at least as much as they did on their wedding day?" This was the $1,000 question (the first question), and the contestant said between 15 and 55% (they are given a 41 point range, though the show producers say it is a 40 point range). The answer was 9%.

Before I continue with this, I just wanted to say that I found out about Antenna Web, a site for the few of us who do not have cable or satellite television. It tells you what stations are in your are by zip code, and it tells you about angles. Okay, I have not clue about the angles, but it seems like a cool site.

Back to the Power of 10. Oh, and I heard it online instead of with rabbit ears. But I digress again. I guess I digress a lot.

When I listen to the show (while I am doing other things), I often guess on the percentages. And in this example, I knew the percentages were less than 50% (about the divorce rate). But of the other 50%, I figured half would have said that they loved their spouse at least as much. The figure I came up with was 23%. And I would have been wrong. Well, I would have placed the range between 3 and 43%, so I would have gotten the question right, but I would have been very wrong.

9% is pretty a skimpy number.

I was pretty happy with my hubbie on our wedding day – most people are, I suppose. Now, I don't know a way of measuring, in any quantifiable way, one's love for another. It is not like getting a blood pressure, or figuring out the pH of your soil. Actually, I know some girlfriends who wouldn't mind driving an aluminum testing meter through their husband's heart.

But if I could quantify my love for my husband, I would hope that the love was more than on the day I married him. Actually, I remember not being too pleased on the honeymoon, wondering if I had made a mistake. I had not noticed that he doesn't ask for directions (we were lost for hours because of this). I also recognized that we really didn't know how to fight at the time.

But our love grew after that. And I know I loved him more afterwards. Several years later, I can confidently say I loved him more. Of course, I loved him more then than I do now. Not that I don't love him. I would be in the 9% - in that lonely demographic, but I do wish that our love did not wane. Because it was better than it is now.

I guess infidelity does that to a couple. I trusted him completely, and, you know, he trusted me as well. I guess we did not deserve to be trusted. Not that simple, of course, but that's what I was thinking about now.

I want to love my husband more now than ever. I mean, that's what is supposed to happen. I wonder if the questions were as follows: "What percentage of married Americans said they currently love their spouse as much as they ever did?" I want to be one of those people. Yeah, I know we all control our own thoughts, but darned it, I want to be one of those rare ones. I want my marriage to be extraordinary.