Marriage Doesn’t Change Anything – UW64

This is a reprint of the letter from the editor in Unwinnable Weekly Issue Sixty-Four. You can buy Issue Sixty-Four individually now, or purchase a one-month subscription to make sure you never miss an issue!

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Hi there,

The funny thing about being married is that it isn’t all that different from not being married. I have a new ring. There’s some cool new stuff in the apartment. Daisy and I are both fighting off colds made worse by stress and several days of ignoring the fact that we had colds. Everything else, though? Pretty much the same.

My married friends all pretty much agree on this (though none of them were particularly forthcoming on that point in the run up to my wedding – but then, I sometimes suspect married people of stopping at nothing to get more members to join their cult, so maybe I’m not the right person to comment).

Which isn’t to say that weddings are meaningless. If done right, I think a wedding is a kind of culmination and celebration of life to that point. I know I certainly felt loved, not just by my new wife, but by all the family and friends who were at the wedding (and those who weren’t – all you lovely people who wished us well online, I thank you).

It is strange because, before and after the wedding, these folks are incredibly familiar to me. I don’t feel particularly loved by my best man, Shawn, when we meet up at a bar, or by my mom, when I stop by to fix her TV. It is like the wedding brought all these unconnected people, took all that familial and friendly love from them and compressed it into one incandescent evening.

I think you’re supposed to feel that light and heat for the rest of your life.

It is early days yet. Maybe I’ll feel different in a week or a month or a year.

I’m not sweating it, though.

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That gorilla up top is a painting by my friend Heath Pestow, his gift for my wedding. I haven’t seen Heath pretty much since I officiated his wedding to Amy 14 years ago. He and Amy drove 32 hours round-trip from Florida to get to my wedding, which is some indication of that love I was talking about.

Incidentally, I presided over two other weddings – Phoebe and Jeff Meade, and Unwinnable’s own Charles and Tara Moran. All four of them were at the wedding, too, which meant for the first time all three of my married couples were in the same room,  which is another bizarre detail of the night. They all seem very happy and have kids, so if you need an internet reverend…actually, you’re out of luck – I’m retired.

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This week, I spoke to Dr. Cynthia Marcello about her quest-based learning program as part of our sponsored series of interviews with Unreal Dev Grant winners. Our cover story, by Rob Rich, explores how the real terror of SOMA has nothing to do with monsters (be warned, play the game before you read the story – Rob holds nothing back). Rounding out this issue, we’ve got Sayem Ahmed’s comparison between Dark Souls and the mythological Sisyphus and Matthew Kim’s look at Destiny’s promise of a universe beyond the sky.

We have a bunch of cool stuff coming in the next weeks, but more on that later. I’ve got a honeymoon to go on.

Stu Horvath,
Jersey City, New Jersey
October 8, 2015