CHANGE! Do I have to

I recently attended a wedding which signified the coming together of two families and the union of two people. A wedding seems like eternity. Oh I have lived in so called sin many times but second guessed myself about the walk down the isle, always in fear of that eternity. I really have no ideal how much work a marriage can require or how much more difficult it would become once children are under foot. By the time I considered the walk down the isle I had been shamelessly shacked up for some time. Although the shacking up part never bothered me one bit, the rest of the world saw it as a sin. At least I never killed any of my lovers, now that would have been a sin. Isn't living is sin like an engagement without a ring? I have come close to marriage a few times but the thought of that down hill slide into eternity has always kept me away from the isle.
Marriage is equal parts of love, compassion, understanding and blackmail. I always had too much of the first three and never enough of the fourth. The key to marriage is choosing your battles but the battles you will most want to choose are the ones better left alone. I would have never made for a great General. The locations, subjects, timing and defenses were always wrong so my emotions usually lost the battles for me.
I might be willing to try the wedding thing some day if I could ever solve the age old problem that starts when a marriage begins. A woman gets married thinking that the man will change and he ends up staying the same. A man gets married thinking the that the woman will stay the same and she ends up changing.
I have never really liked change very much and always been thrown into it one way or another, usually by no fault of my own. It's best that change stays around for without the fear of it I would have two kids, a white picket fence, weigh 30 pounds more and always be looking towards the day I would have do battle with eternity.