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I should have listened to my inner goddess. Surely she would have known that the skunk under the floorboards of our honeymoon cabin was an omen. Ah, but that was the honeymoon, and it was already too late.

There were, of course, other vague hints. He was 6-foot-7; I was 5 feet tall. He was a Republican; I was a Democrat. He was a cattle rancher. I was a vegetarian. His psychotic ex-wife had trapped me in a hall at a local church and threatened to beat me up. My future father-in-law, upon the announcement of our engagement, took me aside and whispered cryptically, "Appearances can be deceiving."

When the inevitable crash came my therapist asked, "What were you thinking?"

I wasn't thinking at all. Like many Americans, I was in love with the idea of love. I was in love with the thought of slipping into a family that had lived on the same ranch for five generations. I was in love with the dream of a cowboy. I was in love with the fact that my fiancé could take dirt, seed, sunlight and water and create food, food to feed people.

Ours was not a marriage that developed fine cracks slowly. The fissures were immediate and unbridgeable. Our first fight was at the grocery, where, finding a picket line, I refused to go in, and he refused to leave to go to the other store. We stood in the parking lot in a silent impasse. Fifteen minutes later we got in the truck and went home, ungroceried.

Soon after, I was out riding my horse on a fine Saturday morning when I met my husband on the lane. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"I am out riding my horse," I responded. "Why?"

"Er, um, it's just that my mother never would have been out playing when she had as much laundry as you do."

In my own subtle way, I screamed, "Well, I guess you should have married your mother," turned around and galloped away.

Did I mention that he lived at home until the age of 37?

To his credit, he tried to be a man of the '90s. He recycled. He tried every new farming technique that was environmentally friendly and still allowed him to make a living. He sent me mushy cards, and every Monday morning he gave me a rose to grace my desk.

But still, one of my clearest memories of our relationship is him standing in his boots refusing to help me hang a mountain of clothes because it was "women's work."

Betrayals in a marriage come in small, medium and large. I still joke about how he lied to me about liking tomatoes, which I consider the food of the gods. After trying to get pregnant for two years, and undergoing fertility testing, he finally acknowledged that he was sterile and had been for years.

I'm sure he wonders about the night I came home missing one earring, my makeup smeared to all creation. Or why he could never reach me in my hotel rooms when I traveled on business.

I was so embarrassed at the shortness of the marriage that we filed for divorce in another county, since they publish all the divorces in our local paper. I wondered whether I had to return gifts.

Still in all (as we say out here in the country), I learned a few things. I learned that the biggest impediment to a successful marriage is a lack of self-knowledge. I learned that I have a tongue that can be as harsh as a lash or a fist, and maybe more damaging. I learned that cowboys really do know lots of secrets about the earth. And, maybe most important, I learned that I consider any exclusive relationship an unendurable impingement on my freedom.

-- Peggy Carey

Life saver

I remained pretty indifferent to my marriage for the first two and a half years. My husband and I don't share last names, bank accounts, credit cards and, many times, vacations. I got married for him, because he wanted it, even gave me an ultimatum -- either get married or break up. I looked upon my marriage as a sort of gift I gave my husband, like a brand-new DVD player he could enjoy and that I could certainly benefit from, but not take as much obvious pleasure in.

I still thought about what I heard on a regular basis from my mother as I grew up: "Never get married. No woman in her right mind should ever get married. No good ever comes of it."

My mother was a divorcee by the time I was 3, and threw herself into every new-age, subculture and religious movement of 1970s California. An avid devotee of the Maharaja Rajnish and Transcendental Meditation, my Catholic-reared mother spent her first liberated decade taking belly dancing, macramé, tarot card, and San Diego Hustle lessons. She spat on the traditions of her strict upbringing and as a result made it one of her missions in life to let me know just how awful and antiquated the institution of marriage was. I worshipped my iconoclastic mother, and she knew I was listening.

I never daydreamed about my perfect, fairy-tale wedding as a child as all women supposedly do. Instead, I proudly wore my "Every Woman Needs a Man Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle" pin to school every day of third grade. At age 13, I heroically proclaimed at the Thanksgiving table that I would not marry until I was 30. By 16, I made it known I would never marry at all. My mother, it seemed, had accomplished her mission.

When it finally happened, no one knew. My husband and I each took half a day off and marched to City Hall at lunchtime to be married by the chief magistrate. The ceremony lasted 10 minutes and consisted mostly of the magistrate lecturing me about how hard and sometimes miserable, painful and joyless marriage could be. I laughed nervously, and thought of my mother the entire time. No rings or kisses were exchanged.

I was 30 years old. My inner 13-year-old was so proud.

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