cockfog

It’s exciting times… two of my friends will be getting engaged to each other soon! (If all goes as planned, of course.) I’ll have to keep their names from the blog so as not to ruin the surprise.

The reason I mention it here: my friend (the male) asked my opinion on how much to spend on the engagement ring.

Having purchased one myself two years ago, I had to go through this same decision process. And having a engineering background, I had a very exact answer for him.

Minimum Price of Ring = 7,000 + [(2,000p + 100s + 1,000r)(y)(m)] / 3f where r is >= 1.

He didn’t like my answer very much since he was never good at math, but then I explained it to him.

In this day and age, I think $7,000 is the least someone should spend. If you think you should be spending less, then you shouldn’t be asking my opinion on how much to spend. You’re not looking for a real answer, you’re looking for someone to justify your choice to be thrifty.

From here we add on what I call the penalties or rewards for the life you’ve led thus far.
p = number of previous engagements which cost you an extra $2,000 per engagement.
s = your promiscuity scale, i.e. the number people you’ve slept with. This isn’t really a penalty but more of an amusement tax.
r = number of previous SERIOUS relationships. Basically the people you almost asked to marry you or at the very least you still think about when you have “alone time.” If this happens to be zero, then you must put 1 in honor of your mom.
y = number of years you have been dating the girl rounded to the next year. So if you’ve only been dating for 4 months (not sure why you’d get engaged that fast, but…) then you would count that as 1 year. If it’s been 1 year and 2 months, then that’s 2 years, etc.
m = age of guy buying ring
f = age of fiancee to be.

After explaining everything, he seemed to understand the math, but still exclaimed, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Nope.” Because it works. Here are some examples:

A “good boy” who has never had sex, no previous engagements, no serious relationships and is so excited to get married that he proposes within the first year and is marrying someone his own age…

Minimum Price of Ring = 7,000 + [(2,000*0 + 100*0 + 1,000*1)(1)(30)] / (3*30)
Minimum Price of Ring = 7,000 + 30,000/90
Minimum Price of Ring = $7,333.

Now let’s say you’re someone like Hugh Hefner marrying one of your ladies…
Let’s make previous engagements 5, past sexual partners 3,000, serious relationships is 1 (for his mom), years dating is 3, his age is 85 and her age is 21.

Minimum Price of Ring = 7,000 + [(2,000*5 + 100*3,000 + 1,000*1)(3)(85)] / (3*21)
Minimum Price of Ring = 7,000 + [311,000 * 255] / 63
Minimum Price of Ring = $1,265,810

How Hugh got away with buying a $90,000 ring is beyond me. It’s probably one of the reasons she called off the wedding.

So now for my friend…

Previous engagements = 0. He’s off to a good start. Sexual partners = 50… not bad but that’s a $5,000 tax. He seems to think it was worth it. Previous serious relationships = 2, which I think is average. Number of years dating fiancee-to-be = 5 which will hurt a bit. When you start to get above 3 years, you’re going to feel it in the wallet. His age = 32 and her age = 28.

Minimum Price of Ring = 7,000 + [(2,000*0 + 100*50 + 1,000*2)(5)(32)] / 3*28
Minimum Price of Ring = 7,000 + [(7,000)(5)(32)] / 84
Minimum Price of Ring = 7,000 + [(7,000)(5)(32)] / 84
Minimum Price of Ring = $20,333

He was expecting something a little cheaper. I told him if hadn’t waited 5 years to propose he could have saved some dough. At 3 years, it would only have cost him $15,076.

Now you’re probably wondering what I spent on my wife’s ring. The answer is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. This is my blog – I set the rules. Besides, I don’t need you running reverse calculations to figure out my sordid past. I will tell you this, I spent more than the minimum required according to my calculations… and making Anna happy was worth every cent and more.

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I never thought I’d fall in love. Scratch that… the truth is I ALWAYS thought I’d fall in love. I just lost faith along the way that I would find the right person.

I grew up with two parents that loved each other immensely. They never divorced and they helped each other through some really difficult times. That helped shape my relationships in a positive way, but it sort of messed me up, too. Lots of high expectations for what a relationship should be… But that’s not the point right now. I’m sure I’ll touch on that more in the future, but for now, just know my parents loved each other and I learned a lot from watching them.

I learned a lot watching my sisters, too. I have two older sisters and they always got into bad relationships. It was the typical situation – they liked the guys way more than the guys liked them. And the guys treated them like shit. You see, my sisters were in constant relationship cockfogs. They either didn’t realize they deserved better, or the mystique of the “cool guy” overwhelmed them, or they just wanted to settle down so badly that they tried to fit a square boyfriend into the round hole of what they truly wanted and deserved. Whatever the reason, I learned from their relationships. I learned how not to treat women.

From my dad, I learned how TO treat women. He was a complete and utter romantic. He would do absolutely anything for my mom from the moment he met her. In other words, he was in a cockfog over my mom.

In the house where I grew up, we had boxes of poems and songs he wrote for my mom. We heard the story of their courtship many times – never getting tired of it.

Dad and mom met in college. Dad was sitting in the back of a lecture hall waiting for the first class of the semester to begin and my mom walked in. Now, my mom actually noticed my dad first, sitting all by himself, and she recognized him as the guy she had a long time crush on. So my mom marched straight to the back of the classroom and plopped herself down in the seat next to my dad. Rows and rows away from anyone else in the class. She quickly realized something… since she had forgotten her glasses that day, the man she thought was her crcush turned out to be someone totally different. Someone she was not nearly as attracted to. But she didn’t have the heart to change seats, so they sat together all semester.

My dad took this as a sign… she was the one.

Semesters came and went and my dad attempted to weasel his way into my mother’s heart. He constantly changed his class schedule to be in all of mom’s classes. He often stopped by my grandmother’s house while my mother was out and wait for her to come home. It got to the point that my grandmother would invite him in and they would talk for hours until my mother arrived. This went on for years until they graduated from college and lost touch.

After college, my mom traveled the world for several months and soon after returning from France, she ran into one of my father’s friends and casually asked, “How’s Jerry?”

This was immediately reported back to my dad and it was another sign for him – game on! He called my mom and asked her out. My mom decided to finally give my dad a shot and they’ve never separated since.

Growing up, I could close my eyes and I always saw myself with someone, married with kids. I knew I was meant to have a family. I knew I’d make a great husband and father, but I could never see who that person was. No solid idea of what I was looking for. I went through years of crazy dates and relationships that lasted much longer than they deserved to. I was fitting many square girls into my round hole, so to speak, until one day I realized that maybe it just won’t happen for me. Yes, I COULD be a great husband and father, but that doesn’t mean I’m GOING to get married. Love at first site exists – it happened for my dad – but statistically it’s impossible that it exists for everyone. And the more I thought about it the more comfortable I felt with the fact that it just may never happen.

It was actually a huge relief. Now it was easier to end relationships when they deserved to be ended. Easier to be single. Who needs to date when you’re okay with being alone?

Then I met Anna.

And it was just like my dad’s story. I saw her and I knew she was someone I had to meet or I would always regret passing the opportunity. I finally asked her out, after a few weeks of scoping the situation, but she wasn’t available. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise because over the next year and a half, she and I became close friends. I got to know her better than anyone I had ever dated. I would do anything for her – I was deep in a I-know-we’re-friends-but-it-would-be-great-if-we-were-more cockfog.

Then one day, something changed for us. Most likely because of the beer and tequila we had over Mexican. We just looked at each other and we knew we wanted to spend our lives together. And from that moment on we were truly inseparable. After one week, I told her over tapas in Santa Barbara that I was going to ask her to marry me one day. And she told me that she would say yes. (This was coming from someone that never wanted to get married.)

One year later I proposed on the Malibu cliffs. And she said yes.

The whirlwind, amazing romance continues still for us. And I’ll write more about it in future blogs, for sure.

I learned a lot by trying to find love, giving up and then falling head over heals… I discovered the cockfog. It’s everywhere.

Now Anna’s in a cockfog for me. It’s typically the only time when a cockfog is good… when it’s evenly shared. I hope everyone gets that lucky.

But until then, enjoy reading the rest of the blog. I promise it will not all be mushy, gushy stuff.

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