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I picked up an eye-opening book a few years ago called In an Average Lifetime. Compiling data from a variety of sources, author Tom Heymann provides a wacky list detailing the amount of time that a "normal" American spends on certain activities throughout his or her life.

For example, if you are an average American, during your lifetime you will eat 1,483 pounds of candy, including 801 pounds of chocolate. You will buy 47 boxes of Girl Scout cookies, drive 413,226 miles, sit in traffic for nine months, change TV channels 325,893 times and spend one year looking for misplaced items and a total of five years waiting in line. You'll spend $6,881 in vending machines, have three flat tires and lock yourself out of your car twice. That is, of course, if you're normal.

But we all know people who defy the averages. There are those who lock themselves out of their car twice a year, buy Girl Scout cookies by the case and are up to seven figures on the remote control. Having grown up driving through fields and brush country while working on a farm and hunting, I have long since stopped counting the number of flat tires I've changed. That makes me think that for the national average to be three, there must be swarms of lucky guys out there who have never had to struggle with stuck lug nuts on a cold winter's night. I guess all those guys just aren't normal—and they're probably okay with that.

When it comes to what is and isn't typical in marriage, however, we tend to be much more concerned about being normal. We don't worry if our vending machine expenditures to date don't even approach $500—hey, we're healthier than most. But to hear that average couples have sex 2.3 times per week while our frequency is 1.8 begins to make us feel like, well, somehow we're just not normal.

Or you observe couples who always seem to be involved in myriad activities around the church, frequently go out with other couples, and both the husbands and the wives seem to have strong best friends outside the marriage. It looks exceedingly normal, but you and your mate find that you benefit more from being involved in only one church ministry, going out together, alone, and having each other for a best friend. You both like it this way, but others give the impression that your approach to marriage somehow isn't quite normal.

The list of comparisons and the quest to find what's normal goes on and on. How many kids should we have? How often do other couples fight? Does everyone struggle with finances? Just what is normal? Well, the short answer is: it doesn't matter.

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