Marriage advice sought, received
People have been kind enough to offer me advice on how to have a happy marriage. I appreciate it, as I seem to have lost the marriage handbook we all are issued in high school.
I wanted to share a few of the thoughts I've heard. I won't use names, since that may lead to spouses angrily demanding "why don't you practice what you preach?"
I've decided the topic of negotiation early in marriage is the most important, because several people mentioned it. They spoke with great — and rueful — experience.
They point out that it can be difficult for a mossbacked 37-year-old to accept new habits. Clearly toothpaste is squeezed from the bottom of the tube, and that there's no point in buying pickle relish as long as there's still a half-teaspoonful in the old jar. Spouses-to-be sometimes have different views on such things.
As one person told me, "you have to decide if these things are really worth bringing up. Do you really want to fight over toothpaste tubes?"
The good news, people tell me, is that most of these little things cease to be an issue in six months to a year, as long as you don't keep picking at them. Also, if you don't pick at the little things, then your spouse can better accept the one or two things about which you really do have strong feelings.
Another person told me that most people are more courteous to strangers than they are to their spouse. He said the words "please" and "thank you" are important in a marriage, even though your spouse may shrug them off and act as it isn't a big deal. No one likes being taken for granted. Too often, we don't realize this until it's too late.
One interesting piece of advice dealt with being the spouse of a teacher. "Don't pat her right when she comes home," a friend said. "She's got those little kids running around her all day, tapping her and tugging at her, asking questions. She doesn't want to deal with it at home."
By far the most common comment was "you have to work at it every day." I interpret this to mean you have the make the conscious decision to love another, even when they annoy the dickens out of you.
"Don't get a divorce just because you don't love them," an aunt once said. "There's lots of times you don't love them."
— MATT NEWHOUSE
