My new hack for a long, healthy life? Getting married



Admittedly, planning a wedding is a strange time to start reading cancer research. The seating chart had 17 unresolved feuds in it; the oncology journals felt like lighter reading.

Until they didn't.

Public health researchers call this 'social monitoring.' In practice, it means someone loving you enough to be annoying about your symptoms.

A recent American study, drawing on more than 4 million cancer cases, found that adults who never married face considerably higher cancer rates than those who did. Never-married women saw rates dramatically elevated. Never-married men weren't far behind.

The gap widens after age 55, which is when a lifetime of accumulated habits, poor decisions, and missed appointments begins sending invoices.

Settling for less?

Marriage rates in America have fallen steadily for decades. What was once expected is now optional — and sometimes viewed with suspicion. The language around "settling down" carries a faint odor of defeat, as though building a life with someone else were a concession rather than a choice.

The cultural conversation, meanwhile, circles endlessly around diet, exercise, and whatever superfood is currently being flown in from a distant rainforest. Billions flow into wellness industries. Podcasts dedicate entire seasons to optimizing sleep. And yet the data keeps returning to something far less marketable: whether you have someone in the next room who gives a damn.

The researchers are careful to avoid claiming that a wedding ring makes tumors vanish. But the pattern holds and appears across most major cancer types. Cancers linked to smoking, alcohol, and infections showed the biggest gaps between married and never-married adults. That concentration is telling. It points at behavior, environment, and the kind of low-level interference that only someone who genuinely cares about you will bother to sustain.

Buddy system

A man living alone can ignore a cough for months. A wife will drag him to a doctor. A woman juggling everything on her own might postpone a checkup indefinitely. A husband will plead, push, insist, and escalate if necessary. Public health researchers call this "social monitoring." In practice, it means someone loving you enough to be annoying about your symptoms.

Then there's the physiological cost of chronic loneliness. Without someone else setting the rhythm, sleep suffers, meals become erratic, and the basic architecture of self-maintenance gradually gives way. A person alone sets his own standards, and standards, without a witness, tend to decline. Freedom looks like a luxury until it tips into neglect.

The research on loneliness as a health risk has been mounting for years. Chronic isolation produces measurable changes in stress hormones, inflammatory markers, and immune function. The body registers abandonment, and it responds accordingly.

Previous generations were hardly models of healthy living. They smoked heavily, drank liberally, and regarded dietary advice as a personal affront. The average mid-century American male was not tracking his resting heart rate. Yet many of them were embedded in something we have spent decades dismantling: long marriages, tight families, a reliable social unit that caught problems early and addressed them without being asked. The neighbor who checked in. The sibling who showed up uninvited. The spouse who had the kettle on before the door had closed behind you.

Noticing matters enormously.

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The author with his mother and grandmother. Photo courtesy of John Mac Ghlionn

The cure of community

Cancer rates in younger Americans have been climbing. The old assumption — that serious disease waits its turn at the end of a long life — has expired. It is arriving earlier, frequently without warning, and the reflexive response has been to scrutinize diet, sleep, and screen time. All valid. All insufficient on their own.

There are complications worth acknowledging. Marriage has its limits as a medical intervention. As Tina Turner and Johnny Depp demonstrated at considerable personal cost, not all marriages are protective. Some are so destructive that they make solitude look like sensible doctor's orders.

Nevertheless, the directional evidence holds.

Knee-deep in wedding planning, I keep returning to what this whole undertaking actually represents. Families reactivate. Old friendships resurface. Obligations form. The ceremony is a public declaration that someone will be watching, intervening, and on occasion refusing to let you get away with things.

The vows carry legal and emotional weight. They're also a mutual surveillance agreement, entered into willingly, which turns out to be rather good for your health.

We've built an entire cultural vocabulary around independence. Self-optimization. Personal growth. The solo journey. These are not entirely worthless ideas, but they have crowded out an older and more durable understanding. Humans aren’t built for sustained isolation. The people around us, intrusive and imperfect as they are, perform functions that no app, no routine, and no amount of cold-plunge evangelism can replicate.

A culture that treats relationships as provisional and commitment as one lifestyle choice among many is making a collective wager. The evidence suggests the odds aren't favorable. In ways we're only beginning to quantify, permanence appears to be protective.

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Weddings cost money. Marriage costs everything.



There’s an old joke about how things change “after the honeymoon’s over” (in both marriage and work). It’s funny because it’s true. Every couple eventually comes down from the cake, the photos, and the glow. Some land gently. Others crash.

But the principle holds: The real work begins when the music fades.

Newlyweds may still bask in the warmth of vows they barely felt. But life has a way of testing those words sooner than expected.

Are we preparing couples for that moment — especially men — in a culture that rewards detachment more than devotion? In a nation filled with boys, are we raising men? In a society where even those at the highest levels of authority will not clearly define what a woman is, are we preparing men to sacrificially love one? In a world obsessed with sex and gratification, are we preparing men to lay down their lives rather than taking up their desires?

Treasure forged in marriage

I recently interviewed Jay Leno, who’s been caring for his wife of 45 years, Mavis, through serious health challenges. He told me, “This is where you earn your mettle. This is where you find out — do I really love her, or was it just easy when life was easy?”

Jay’s words reminded me that the cost of marriage isn’t just a burden — it’s a path to treasures only commitment reveals.

What makes marriage better isn’t avoiding the cost; it’s discovering the treasures it brings. You get to see grace do its quiet work over many years. You see joy flourish in places that should be barren. You see how scars — both physical and unseen — can frame a beauty more profound than youth. And you see God’s faithfulness in the unglamorous valleys where most resign.

Marriage is rewarding, and even one with caregiving is not a burden if you understand the calling. It’s not unhappy, but it does mean choosing one person above all others and guarding that choice. Chronic impairments just cause the guardrails to get a bit higher.

Newlyweds may still bask in the warmth of vows they barely felt. But life has a way of testing those words sooner than expected.

Love in suffering

A caller to my radio show once shared what happened when his wife came down with the flu.

“It was chaos,” he said. “Laundry stacked up. We lived on takeout. I missed work. No sleep. No sex.”

“How long did it last?”

“Five days.”

He sounded like he’d survived a war, not a week of sneezes. If five days can do that, what happens when it’s 100 days? A thousand? Ten thousand?

I’ve logged more than 14,000 days as a caregiver for my wife.

Most couples ease into suffering. We started with it. By the time we married, Gracie had survived a car wreck and 21 surgeries. That number has since climbed to 98 — across 13 hospitals. I lost count of physicians after 100. Minor procedures that didn’t require anesthesia easily surpass 150. I’ve collected more hospital visitor badges than some people have church bulletins.

But in that weight, I’ve come to see something sacred.

Our Savior also took a wounded bride. And he offered his body to be broken for her.

To my knowledge, Scripture gives only one direct charge to husbands: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25).

Not when she’s at her best. Not when it’s fair. Not when the load is balanced.

Just this: Love her. As Christ loved the church. At the cost of yourself.

Marriage is deployment

Failure lurks in every marriage, especially in those that include caregiving. My “sanctification opportunities” are like Costco — always in bulk — where my weakness crashes into God’s mercy, usually after frustration hits a wall.

Yet while my performance record is nothing to brag about, my attendance record remains flawless. I’ve discovered faith is often disguised as consistency.

Soldiers understand this better than most.

When you’re deployed, comfort isn’t expected. You have a mission. You stay focused.

Caregiving is deployment.

I didn’t sign up for applause. But I did sign up. And like many soldiers, I’ve learned to travel light, stay alert, and protect what matters: a woman whose scars still reflect the beauty of God’s sustaining grace.

Everything must serve the mission to “love your wife as Christ loved the church,” and that means saying no to jobs, travel, or even well‑meaning voices that pull you off course. Sin threatens the mission, but distraction does it quietly. Even good things, if misaligned, become the wrong things.

The cross Christ carried wasn’t shared evenly. Neither is caregiving. That’s why clarity matters.

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Photo by Andre Taissin/Getty Images

When poetry becomes a battlefield

Churches valiantly try to strengthen marriages, and for many couples, those efforts help. But most of what’s offered assumes shared capacity. Suffering doesn’t always allow for mutual effort. Sometimes it’s just one of you standing while the other fades.

Standing alone doesn’t mean failing. It means standing.

That’s when the vows stop sounding like romantic poetry and become a daily battlefield, often marked by crushing silence.

In caregiving, strength is budgeted. Waste it, and there’s nothing left for what matters most.

Christ’s mission for his wounded bride didn’t trap him. It revealed his glory.

He walks with us

This mission we choose won’t make headlines. It’s not meant to. But God sees. He hasn’t asked us to understand everything. He’s asked us to trust Him. And maybe that’s the point, whether you’re facing five days of sickness — or a lifetime.

Show up. Filter the noise. Decline the distractions. Love the one entrusted to you — you won’t do it perfectly, but you can do it persistently and consistently.

Scripture doesn’t offer husbands “10 steps to a successful marriage.” It offers a cross. Just a path: the Via Dolorosa. And the one who walked it before us and walks it with us.

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“What do you mean you don’t want any furniture underneath the pergola?”

’Tis wedding season, the time of year when nuptial excitement contends with a seemingly endless stream of design choices with a hefty price tag. As a bride-to-be myself, I have been astounded by the pressure to spend beyond my budget, as if not including an ice cream truck and a balloon selfie wall would make or break the entire event. It’s a winning formula for the wedding industry: Heightened expectations plus soaring price tags equal staggering profit margins. And the industry has social media to thank.

Gen Z is proving that a beautiful, meaningful wedding does not have to come with a hefty price tag or the expectation of social media perfection.

In an era when weddings are often measured by their Instagramability, many couples feel pressured to plan a picture-perfect day that meets the aesthetic standards of social media. The rise of platforms like Instagram and Pinterest has turned wedding planning into a high-stakes production, fueling the wedding industry’s ever-growing price tag. But as costs continue to soar, a new trend is emerging — one driven by a generation that is more financially cautious and less enamored with the idea of a fairy-tale wedding at any cost.

A wedding arms race

Social media has revolutionized wedding planning. With a single scroll, couples are bombarded with curated images of extravagant floral installations, designer gowns, and luxury venues. While such platforms can serve as helpful tools for inspiration, wedding “doomscrolling” has transformed a deeply personal and intimate occasion into a public spectacle, where likes and shares serve as the currency of validation. According to Forbes, social media’s effect of raising expectations — and costs — is making 60% of couples consider elopement over a traditional wedding.

Escaping the pressure of staggering wedding costs is palpable. The average wedding budget for 2025 is projected to be around $36,000 — compared with $29,000 in 2023 — with high-cost areas like New York City pushing that number to $65,000. Unsurprisingly, many couples are turning to loans and credit cards to fund their big day. One survey found that 56% of newlyweds go into debt for their wedding — an alarming trend as 34% of divorcees blame credit card debt and spending as contributing factors to their divorces. Is that really the best gift for newlyweds?

Rebelling against wedding debt

However, unlike Millennials, who embraced the Instagram-fueled wedding culture, Gen Z is showing signs of resistance. Facing economic challenges such as inflation and housing affordability, Gen Z couples are putting cost-effective celebrations over extravagant ones. The Guardian reports that many opt for smaller weddings, alternative venues, and even elopements to avoid unnecessary financial stress.

There is also a shift away from the performative aspect of weddings. While Millennials often sought highly curated, shareable moments, Vogue notes that Gen Zers are less concerned with social media validation. They prefer authenticity and meaningful experiences over staged perfection.

This has led to a rise in DIY elements, intimate ceremonies, and budget-friendly wedding choices. For example, some brides choose to do their own makeup, saving thousands of dollars compared to hiring a professional artist. Others prefer unconventional locations like back yards and public parks rather than expensive banquet halls.

Rethinking the wedding industry

The movement away from over-the-top weddings is not just about finances — it’s about values.

Weddings are meant to be a celebration of love and commitment, not a financial burden that lingers long after the last dance. While the wedding industry thrives on convincing couples that their big day must be grand and expensive, Gen Zers are beginning to challenge that notion. They are proving that a beautiful, meaningful wedding does not have to come with a hefty price tag or the expectation of social media perfection.

As more couples reject the pressures of an Instagram-worthy wedding in favor of financially sane choices, the industry may be forced to adapt.

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Best man ends up with bride after gushing wedding speech professing love for his best friend's wife



Bride Desiree White was clearly moved by the wedding speech of her ex-husband's best man — so much so that when she divorced her former husband, she moved on with with the outspoken best man.

The New York Post recounted on Tuesday White's story.

What are the details?

The couple made headlines after White divorced her husband and married his best man, Bryant.

During his best man speech at White's first wedding, Bryant drunkenly confessed that he was in love with her in front of at least 200 other wedding guests.

“He said, ‘I remember the first moment I saw Desiree, I loved her. I fell in love with her. I knew she had to be mine. I thought she was the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen in my life,’” White recalled of Bryant's toast. “He said, ‘She’s the best person I’ve ever met. I’ve never met anyone like her. Then I found out she already had a boyfriend and I thought I needed to find out a way to get her, but then I met [White’s ex-husband] and we became friends.’”

Bryant concluded the emotional speech, “[Bryant] then just said, ‘Love you both — congratulations.’ It ended there. Everyone was kind of laughing — and then it got quiet.”

Later that night, White danced with Bryant during the reception, where he told her that he would have taken care of her had he the chance growing up.

“I asked him what he meant and he said, ‘Nothing. I love you, I love [White’s ex-husband],’” she recalled him saying. “Then he got quiet.”

White said that she didn't give Bryant's announcement much thought for at least a year — until she began growing apart from her then-husband.

“When [my ex and I] broke up and divorced, I went through a depression and was really secluded myself," she admitted. "I just didn’t want to make an effort for anything.”

Bryant, however, apparently saw his chance and helped her out of her dark place following the divorce.

“He’d ask me to eat with him or hang out and watch a show. He was trying to be there for me. ... It was out of nowhere. When he kissed me, I didn’t stop it, then I kissed him back,” she recalled. “I was shocked that it was a good kiss. It felt good and natural.”

White said that she immediately took to Bryant as naturally as a fish takes to water. She soon became pregnant with their first child, and the two got married.

“[Bryant] said, ‘I always wanted to marry you and this isn’t because of the baby, but let’s start this family right,’” White said. “We were always friends but when we were together [romantically], it was like nothing was hard to do anymore knowing we had each other.”

The couple's history

White added that she was left mildly embarrassed by Bryant's initial public proclamation of love and rather confused, as the two long shared a comfortable, platonic friendship.

“Bryant and I met each other in class at high school,” White explained. “I had a boyfriend at the time and, because of that, I really wasn’t going to talk to other people. Bryant and my ex-husband became best friends and, because they were guys, they did a lot together. They did everything together.”

White added that she and her ex-husband set Bryant up on a variety of dates, but none of them stuck — and she never once considered him as a potential partner.

“I’ve been on double dates with him and I always tell people I wouldn’t have ever dated the person he was then,” White said, “He had a lot of growing up to do. I didn’t really look at him in that way.”

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