Is re-marriage a real option?

Ever since I came back from the wild west, I got myself mired in putting out fires. My woes with driving is not over yet - it seems. After two bangs with my rental on my way to the airport, all I wanted was to see my car drained of battery juice. Anyways, that's what the ubiquitous tow trucks and service places are for.

Finally, as luck would have it, I played with this site and screwed it up! So, here I am at the wee hours of monday morning, getting my brain dump going. By the time it's over, the sun will rise. Being a night owl, the only way I see a beautiful sunrise is when I am awake through the night.

Okay - enough of the preface. Over the weekend, I was working on a paper on "real options" and came across stuff that I found interesting- how well it fits to the decision on marriage. Of course, it's not something novel - Prof. Dixit from Princeton has innumerable annecdotes on this subject.

So here's how it goes:

The overall premise: Marriage is an investment. It's a contractual agreement. Period. Don't agree then just get over it.

The three aspects that are associated with a marriage decision are: uncertainty, irreversibility, and time.

Now, there is a cost or investment associated with each of these aspects. It's an ivestment because in face of these factors, you expect that you will have a successful marriage.

Uncertianty - You will never know everything about what is going to happen in the future. Even if you wait till you get to know there will always be some unknows (Gary Becker - A treatise on the family, ...divorces happen because couples enter marriage with incomplete info, and complete info is impossible to get before marriage).

Time - The longer you wait in the marriage market, the more information you will get about your partner - true which gives the option of backing out. But there is a cost associated with the wait. You get old, but more importantly, if you are turning down someone today, you may end up marrying someone worse or someone better. So there's a risk associated.

Irreversibility - Once married, there is a sunk cost component that you cannot reverse. All the roses, diamonds, telephone calls, etc. Well, divorce is certaintly there but even in that case there is a "title" associated which has a cost component. Now, the decision to get a divorce can be separately modeled - but for now, let's assume that one gets a divorce because he/she knows that the choice to be single again is better than being in marriage. And by the same token, can argue that if he/she decides to get re-married then the chances of making a better choice is higher.

So - the 64K dollar question is - if I meet someone really great - does it make sense to wait? How long?

The short answer is all other conditions being the same (pardon me - I hate that Latin term), it depends how I feel about myself, and the uncertainty associated with my future.

Suppose, you were a fashion designer or Tom Cruise - it would make more sense to exercise the wait option because the chances of meeting someone from the opposite sex would be very high. In more steamy technical terms, volatility will be higher - with more entries and exits into the marriage market game. But, if someone is in an environement where he/she hardly gets to meet someone from the opposite sex - chances are the waiting option will be an expensive option. And oh yes - I know many souls who fall in this category. They are willing to kill the option of waiting to get married early in the game. Just one caution, however, these friends of mine are driven by the few cubic centiliters of testosterone they have (a.k.a manhood) that dominates over their 2 lbs brain. As clear as I can get - I am not taking about these desperate junkheads who are willing to even marry the next lampost they see.

Coming back to where do I fall in this spectrum? To be honest, last time, I was plain and simply lazy not to invest much in my marriage search. Nor, was I willing to pay the cost of waiting. Strange but true, I treated marriage as a check list item to get done with - don't think too much - just do it. So based on minimal information, I had taken the plunge. Realistically, my action qualifies myself as a "rational fool".

You get what you paid for. So, in a way - marriage on the cheap did not turn out so good for me. Bad investment! Now, I am stuck with irreversiblilty, but how low or high that price is again falls under the domain of uncertainty. But with all rationality, I think I played the right game to clean the slate and work for a good future. Did I get hurt? Sure, I did. Did I learn from my mistake? Yes, I did. Am I certain about what's going to happen next time? No, but I am believe I will do better.

How long should I wait?

Ans...

Yackety-yak...and off I fall off the rationality track...

As my heart gets filled one drop at a time, I know, if the drops keep falling, the pain will grow. Right now, I am watching as each drop falls at its own pace - just as the ice melts from the glacier. I am holding off, but it will become a restless young river. And there will come a day, it will overflow, break the levees, and deluge my whole self. No reason will be able to hold the pain. That day, I will pour myself...into her. And vow to be together for the rest of our lives...

Hey, not everything in life can be rational. Love certaintly not! As I was taught love is not a decision. I kinda dont like this word - decide. Wrong family history. Its siblings are suicide, homicide, genocide ... got something to do with killing. Yes, decision is killing all other options. I like the word - choice, instead. I fall in love because I choose to. And I will get married again only when I choose to.