Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This weekend, we talk about scrolling Instagram and picking the right spouse.
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My husband has been out of town for the past two weeks. One of his coworkers got sick, and he had to take over a big project. The loneliest part of him traveling always comes at night, after I’ve finished all of the girls’ various activities and everyone is in bed. I try hard not to scroll on my phone, but I can’t fall asleep without him here, so I usually end up on Instagram watching reels until I do.
This week, a video series came across my timeline that genuinely made me hopeful. I speak a lot about the state of dating in our modern culture. The divide between men and women is so vast that the dating scene is extremely depressing for most singles, which made this series so inviting.
A new dad who trains for races broke from his typical content focused on different long-distance running techniques and equipment to make a plea for his wife’s sister. He’s on the hunt for a cool brother-in-law. For the last 30 days, he’s posted a video of himself that always starts the same way: “Day X of me running until I find a cool husband for my sister-in-law so I have someone to hang out with for the next 30-40-50 years.”
He films himself running, talking about her best qualities, and tells interested guys to DM her and him. He is also pretty straightforward about the qualities that won’t make the potential match a good fit. Most of the specifications are about what she is looking for, but he doesn’t hide the fact that he wants his sister-in-law to meet someone he actually likes hanging out with. Anyone interested has to fit well in the family.
It was like a modern-day family-arranged marriage, only the point wasn’t a sterile partnership so much as finding a built-in buddy. He wants another man who will, of course, love and cherish his sister-in-law, but also someone he will be excited to travel with and will fold into a family that already knows how to have fun.
It’s actually so genius and something that a lot of people don’t really think about when they are picking a spouse. I certainly didn’t worry about whether my husband would get along with my sister’s potential husbands. We got super blessed, but it could have been very bad.
Before I tell this story, let me calm your nerves: as soon as I saw Andy’s video series, I thought of one of my sisters and her boyfriends, who thankfully never made it over the line. I have already warned her that I would be talking about the experience from our side of the relationship, and she agreed to let me tell it.