Don't marry an addict.

Forget the dictionary definition: an addict is someone so devoted to something that he or she is going to have a hard time giving it up. It might be drugs or alcohol, which lots of men suffer from, or it might be pain-killers or shopping, which lots of women suffer from.

In any case, your marrying this person is not likely to inspire a change in your intended.

Take it as a warning sign. Most addictions just get worse. Sorry about that.

If the guy or gal you're head-over-heels in love with insists on taking drugs or brings home items he/she can't really afford, on a regular basis, the red flag should be up.

You, however loving and attentive you may be, will likely not change that person you have decided to spend your life with. Before he/she met you, he/she developed an irresistible taste for something potentially destructive: drugs, alcohol, gambling, or whatever.

He or she is in love with you and will promise you anything because you're having sex. When a couple is having sex, not much else matters. You're in bed naked together. Not much hidden.

But maybe there is. Once the reality of life sets in -- back to our work schedules, etc. -- and sex gets to be something we have to plan for, then the real person emerges.

That's when we know who we married. There are lots of studs who turn out to be bum husbands, just as there are hot wives who end up being takers, not givers.

If you married someone who was addicted to something -- drugs or alcohol or sweets or shopping -- that person is going to re-emerge and is going to be him or her forever. You signed the contract, and you are bound. Married. Congratulations.

To be fair, many marriages last forever, and God bless those lucky -- or resigned -- couples. But agreeing to spend the rest of your life with another person is risky business (and divorces are nasty and messy and to be avoided if you can).

There are danger signals all along the way, to be sure, but one of the most prominent is whether your intended is addicted to something.

The reason, not to sound repetitive, is that the addiction started before your love did and, in the mind of your loved one, may have precedence. His/her addiction precedes his/her commitment to you. Not consciously: he or she loves you and wants to make it work, but that previous commitment to something you don't know about might make him or her at least conflicted. You may have married a wonderful person who had baggage he/she hadn't checked with you.

I don't think it's necessary to screen your soon-to-be for every infraction going back to childhood, but I do think it's important to know if that charming person who swept you off your feet -- and really is a superior human, at least in your eyes -- is addicted to something. That should be a basic question on the "So You Want to Marry Me" questionnaire.

What if the dude is into hang-gliding? Or loves to shoot guns? Or . . . fill in the blanks with anything he/she forgot to tell you. What if your lovely can't stay off the phone to her gal pals? Is on it for hours every day? Or sneaks sweet bites at night when she thinks you're asleep? (She lost weight to land you but is gaining it back.) And how many beers did you have today?

The possibilities are endless, but the message is pretty simple. Don't marry someone who is addicted to something unless you know about it ahead of time and either accept it or believe that your beloved is going to stop it -- which is highly unlikely.

Love between two people is as close to magic as we humans get in this life. But it's a dream that we eventually wake up from to find that we're living with someone we hardly know because his or her kisses (and more) blinded us. Uh oh. Real life is breakfast and work and maybe kids. And it's every damned day. (Unlike dreams, which only come every now and then, at night -- or when we let ourselves daydream, which can be dangerous.)

At some point, all of us married folk look at "the other" and think, "Oh shit, what did I do?"

Often, as I said before, it turns out fine, and we're glad we're sharing the rest of our life with that person we chose on so little evidence. But sometimes it doesn't, and we have to face the awfulness of separating from that person we've been sharing our life with. Many times it's because there was something our mate didn't disclose -- maybe a past, maybe an addiction -- that made impossible a union that looked pretty permanent.

All we need is love, the Beatles sang, but it's one of those concepts that is as rife with footnotes as any treatise ever published on any subject. We humans are addicted to love and have no way to fend it off or resist its charms or free ourselves of it. But we don't have a clue how it works.

And that's what makes marriage so hard. Love, at least in its early stages, triumphs all other addictions. A drug addict or an alcoholic or a binge-eater will promise anything to who she or he is sexually connected to. In those early days or years of love-addiction, he or she will swear off of anything and everything.

But it won't last, if the addiction came before the love.

Eventually real life sets in, and we find out who we're with.

Do your homework before you fall in love. Do I think you will? No, of course not.