How Marriage is Like Remodeling a Bathroom

The Idea: You've finally decided to take the plunge. It's an idea that's been rolling around in your head for awhile now, but it is time for you to commit. Your excitement of what can be overrides your fear of not having a clue of what you are doing.

Demolition: Your excitement continues to grow as you begin to deconstruct the "old" so that you can start over.

Preparation: You accumulate a bunch of stuff that you feel is "required" for your journey. Half of it, you don't really need.

Reality: You are now knee-deep into your commitment. You pause for a second and look around and all you see is utter chaos and destruction. How could you have been so stupid to get yourself into this mess? What were you thinking? You are a sad, lonely human being. Your options: break down and cry, call in a professional to fix your mess, or keep pressing on.

Reconcile: You decide to press on. You must now go out and get more stuff in order to patch up the mistakes that you've made.

Hope: You change your tactics. You realize that the "old way" isn't going to help you through this. You make notes that will help you to refocus yourself (see the "during" picture). You still don't know what you are doing, but things are starting to look better. You begin thinking about random philosophical allegories that would look good on a blog.

Clean Up: The hard work is done (for now). But the remnants of your past trials lay in piles all around you. You must pick up the pieces and move on.

Amazement: You're done! You realize now that the happiness that you had hoped for from the beginning can only come through a lot of hard work. A complex hormone is released in your brain that makes you forget about the "Reality" stage.