Wedding Bells: Reflections on Love and Marriage

Love, relationships, and marriage are fundamentally mysteries, sometimes delightful, sometimes horrible, but always at bottom conundrums.

All people are gems in the rough, and marriage is one tumbler made for polishing up those stones. Priscilla Du Preez/Shutterstock

Note: Several years ago, I created the characters of Uncle Samuel, a childless widower and an attorney, and his nephew Hobson, a bumbling man in his mid-20s often baffled by life. In 2013, some of Uncle Samuel’s letters appeared in my book “Learning As I Go.” Even then, Hobson was courting Abigail and receiving sound advice on that relationship from Uncle Samuel, who is my fictional self, if I were a wiser and more honorable man. Below is the latest chapter in this story of Abigail and Hobson.

Dear Uncle Samuel,