Marriage

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, lovers and seekers, those who are lost, and those who are found.

Tonight, we have another fragment. This one sports a headline that reads:

Marriage.

And the body of this fragment reads as follows.

I now pronounce you OMG and WTF.

That's it - all of it.

Marriage.

I now pronounce you OMG and WTF.

Let's get started, shall we?

This fragment works because it performs a substitution without asking permission. It steps into a ritual phrase so old, so normalized, so unquestioned, that most people don't hear it anymore, and it swaps out the nouns without changing the grammar of authority.

"I now pronounce you…"

That line matters. It's not descriptive. It's performative. It doesn't report a fact; it creates one. When spoken by the right person in the right setting, it changes reality. Two people walk in as one thing and walk out as another. Status changes. Expectations change. Time changes.

And the fragment doesn't touch that power at all.

It leaves the authority intact.
It leaves the ceremony intact.
It leaves the tone intact.
What it changes is the outcome.

Instead of "husband and wife," or "married," or "one," or whatever modern variation is in play, we get two acronyms that everyone already knows how to say, already knows how to feel, already knows how to live inside:

OMG.
WTF.

This is not parody by exaggeration. It's parody by accuracy.

Marriage, as experienced, not as promised.

The fragment doesn't mock marriage from the outside. It speaks from inside the rite. That's what gives it teeth. It doesn't say marriage leads to OMG and WTF. It says that is what you are being pronounced as. That is the actual designation. The real naming.

And naming matters.

In many traditions, naming is not cosmetic. To name is to assign role, fate, jurisdiction. You don't just call something what it is; you bind it to a structure. That's why the fragment's title matters so much. It isn't "Love" or "Union" or "Commitment." It's "Marriage." The institution, not the feeling.

Marriage is where ideal meets duration.

It's where the vow stops being poetry and starts being logistics.

And OMG and WTF are not jokes; they are the two most common affective responses to sustained intimacy under shared consequences.

OMG is wonder. Shock. Gratitude. Terror. Joy. Overwhelm. Sometimes all at once.

WTF is confusion. Betrayal. Disorientation. Fatigue. Realization. Sometimes all at once.

Anyone who has been married for more than five minutes knows this oscillation.

The fragment understands something most wedding speeches refuse to admit: marriage is not a stable emotional state. It is a voltage range.

And those acronyms are shorthand for spikes.

What's elegant here is that the fragment does not moralize those reactions. It doesn't say they are good or bad. It doesn't say marriage fails because of WTF, or succeeds because of OMG. It simply names the two poles and lets them sit there, equal, unavoidable.

There is also something important about the conjunction.

"And."
Not "or."
Not "versus."

Not "from OMG to WTF."

You are pronounced both.

Simultaneously.

Marriage is not a progression from romance to disillusionment, despite how often it's framed that way. It's a coexistence. You can be deeply grateful and deeply confused on the same day. Sometimes in the same hour. Sometimes about the same moment.

The fragment refuses the narrative arc.

It gives you a pairing instead.

There's also a quiet cruelty here, but it's not aimed at the couple. It's aimed at the ceremony itself. The line "I now pronounce you" is usually spoken by someone who will not be present for the lived consequences. The officiant does not stay for the arguments, the illnesses, the resentments, the financial negotiations, the silences.

They speak the magic words and step aside.

By putting OMG and WTF in that slot, the fragment exposes the gap between ceremonial language and experiential truth. It's not that the ceremony lies; it's that it compresses complexity into symbolism. The fragment decompresses it instantly.

This is where the mispronunciation you noted earlier matters. "Pronounce" is not just to declare; it's to say correctly. The fragment suggests that what we've been saying all along might be mispronounced. That the sounds were right, but the meaning was off.

Marriage is not a fairytale union. It is an ongoing encounter with otherness under binding terms.

OMG is the awe of encountering another person who is not you and never will be.

WTF is the shock of realizing that love does not erase difference, and proximity amplifies it.

There's also a genderless intelligence in the acronyms. They don't assign blame. They don't say who is causing the WTF. They don't say who deserves the OMG. They simply name states.

That matters because marriage arguments often collapse into adjudication: who's right, who's wrong, who failed, who changed. The fragment sidesteps all of that. It doesn't care who did what. It cares about what it feels like to be in the structure.

Another thing the fragment does quietly is collapse time.

Most marriage narratives assume stages: honeymoon, adjustment, conflict, resolution, stability. The fragment refuses that chronology. OMG and WTF are timeless. They are not phases you grow out of. They are recurrent events.

That's why the fragment feels funny and devastating at the same time. Laughter comes from recognition. Pain comes from accuracy.

You don't laugh because it's cynical. You laugh because it's true.

And truth, when it arrives suddenly and cleanly, often sounds like a joke before it sounds like a confession.

There's also a structural elegance worth naming. The fragment is vertically arranged. Short lines. Breathing space. The words are stacked, not flowed. That gives each element weight. It reads like a pronouncement. Like a legal sentence. Like a spell.

OMG and WTF.

They're isolated. You can't rush past them. You have to sit with each one.

And because they are acronyms, they invite vocalization. Everyone knows how to say them. Everyone has said them. Often in the context of relationships. Often under their breath.

The fragment doesn't invent new language. It reveals what language people already use when the ceremony is over and the door is closed.

There's a subtle mercy here too.

By naming both reactions as part of the pronouncement, the fragment normalizes them. It doesn't say WTF means failure. It doesn't say OMG means success. It says: this is what you're signing up for.

That's kinder than most vows.

Because many marriages break not because of conflict, but because people believe conflict means something has gone wrong. The fragment quietly suggests the opposite: if you're not saying WTF sometimes, you might not be paying attention.

And if you're never saying OMG, something vital has gone quiet.

One last thing: the fragment does not end with punctuation that resolves. No period after WTF that feels conclusive. It lands, but it doesn't close.

That mirrors marriage itself. There is no final understanding. No stable interpretation. Just continued pronouncement, day after day, in different tones.

Sometimes whispered.
Sometimes shouted.
Sometimes laughed.
Sometimes cried.

"I now pronounce you OMG and WTF" is not a condemnation. It's not a celebration either. It's a diagnosis delivered with a smile sharp enough to draw blood.

It says: you will be astonished, and you will be confused. Often by the same person. Sometimes by yourself. And the institution will still call that success.

If you can live inside that tension without pretending it resolves, you might actually be married.

If you can't, no amount of ceremony will save you.

The fragment doesn't tell you whether marriage is worth it.

It tells you what it costs.

And then it steps aside, like an officiant who finally told the truth.