Marriage Part II

Marriage Part II

So you want to be married, eh? Well, let’s be frank about this enterprise. You, like everyone else getting married for the first time, have no idea what you’re getting into. Tenet number 1 is that marriage is a journey into the unknown, and if you don’t admit that, you stand less than half of a chance of remaining married for any extended period of time. If you do accept your ignorance, you stand a fifty-one or higher percent chance of prolonging the relationship. And don’t even think about protesting, those of you who have lived together. Spouses and roommates are not of the same species. They may walk and talk alike - to strangers, but they have only superficial appearances in common.


Mind reading, at least the expectation thereof, is a critical component of married life. If you’re the husband, you are supposed to anticipate – and here’s the yoke – and to act upon the projects, chores, and routines that your wife has thought about at lunch. That means that if your wife has a momentary impetus to rearrange the living room furniture, or to clean out the basement, then the only way for you to come out looking good is to have completed those tasks before she gets home. No matter that you go to work, and you get home half an hour later than she does. “Common sense!” your wife will say, should have told you that the job lay in wait for you.

That’s a good thing to know too, by the way: common sense is actually the cumulative opinions that your wife may have encountered in the supermarket, workplace, or at the bus stop. Common sense also entails any and all contact that your wife has had with her mother, your mother, her girlfriends, (but not your girlfriends) and can be profoundly influenced by tabloids, magazines, and Oprah. If, for example, Oprah does a segment on making your kitchen more efficient, common sense would have told your wife that, of course, you need to re-tool the kitchen.

Men, by nature, don’t get to come into contact with common sense. It is secreted in those locations to which only women have full access. A man believes that he’s showing common sense when he goes out to buy the new power drill rather than to borrow the neighbor’s for the thirteenth consecutive project. But if your wife’s family and friends – cathode, periodical, or otherwise – have not stumbled onto this idea, then your purchase is whimsical and foolish. The purchase of the ten-person van, with TV and video arcade in the backseat, is entirely common sensible. After all, there’s an outside chance that you’ll be making a twelve-hour trip with yours and the neighbor’s children sometime before the kids all go off to college.

Another problem to consider is the division of labor in your household. Don’t waste time nor breath trying to pretend that you and your spouse will devise a way to make the division 50-50. Someone is going to do more than the other, and if you’re the one most concerned about the split, then you’re the one who’s going to do the higher percentage. It is a time-proven fact that the spouse who is least concerned about the division of labor is casual about the issue for a reason: s/he has no intention of doing his/her 50 percent. S/he will rationalize, equivocate, and explain, but the last 15 percent of the chores will not get done.

In fact, marriage can be a wonderful estate, for other people that you know, but never for you. And that is actually the largest part of the problem. Married people judge and interpret other marriages so favorably that they always see their own union as falling short. The only good news about this is that other people will misjudge your marriage just as badly. If this happens, and you get the chance to respond, tell them how wonderful everything is all the time. Complaining will put you in a bad temper and make you even less accepting of your spouse’s flaws. More importantly, he or she will find out about your gripes, and then get even.

The truth is that being married to someone, and using your combined efforts to achieve a common purpose or goal, is entirely out of the question. No two people ever see things the same way, so why pretend that love, loyalty, and commitment can alter that? What you must hope to do is to agree on a goal or purpose in theory. Don’t even consider that you’ll approach the objective in the same way. Your spouse should be someone you can have fun with, who will let you tilt at your windmills while he or she tilts at hers. You need only agree that some personal windmills require serious tilting.

Your spouse should allow you your quirks, while you allow him/her his/hers. (Is that right? All that he/she, him/her stuff?) You are supposed to be in a semi-chronic state of individual evolution together. The things you try to accomplish, together and apart, are the glue that holds your relationship together.

Here’s an analogy. It’s like a bed of rocks. Some are igneous and some are metamorphic. Others are sedimentary. The rest are fool’s gold, but that’s another story. Time throws things down onto the rocks, and pressure either pushes them apart or together. Sometimes you pick up these sedimentary rocks that have somehow bonded without losing their individual identities and characteristics. Other times the pressure and the forces of nature (think HEAT!) melt those babies down so they appear to be one rock. In still other circumstances, fiery volcanoes throw up molten rock that has nothing whatsoever to do with this analogy. So you see, marriage is like that bedrock. At least, it should be like that bedrock. You and your partner rock are going to join with identities intact, be melted and compressed into a single entity, or pushed apart until you lose sight and contact with one another. In any case, once you’re in that little swale, you’re not getting out. I mean, you can’t just get up and leave. You’re a rock for Chrissakes!

On the subject of other important components of betrothal, you need only consult Glamour, Cosmopolitan, or Redbook. Of course, if you want to find out the truth, you’ll just continue reading.

At least one other component of marriage should be mentioned. The first marriage chapter dealt with staying married and this one has dealt with daily, married life to an extent. Of course, it was all very philosophical and abstract and general and such. But if you are upset with your spouse, even as you read this, you should consider a few things. You married the person, for crying out loud; are you really so surprised at how s/he is behaving? Or are you upset because you expected to have completed substantial makeovers by now? Seriously, write down the character traits that you have always known that your significant other has. Is he or she impatient, picky, opinionated?

Well, let’s bet last month’s salary that the reason you’re mad right now is directly related to one of the traits you’ve known about all along.

What I’m really saying is that trying to alter someone’s makeup or disposition is another lesson in futility. Sure, you might have some success in getting your spouse to be nicer, more courteous, or more conscious of your feelings, but even these changes take great concentration on the part of your spouse. S/he won’t be more anything without tremendous effort. Why not love the man or woman for all the reasons you originally did? Make a list of what you loved to start, and try to appreciate any efforts being made to accommodate you.

You’re probably thinking that it’s easy for me to say these things, but I assure you it’s not. My wife is emotional, moody, sensitive, and strong-willed: all of the things I am not. (OK, maybe I’m pretty strong-willed too.) But that is not to say that I am any better. I have my own set of negative traits, which I like to call quirks, because it makes me look better. We are polar opposites, and her empathy, sympathy, sensitivity, kindness, and caring are what I originally loved. Sometimes I have to remind myself when she is driving me nuts. What I loved about her is what can make me want to pull my eyes out of my sockets – or hers. And asking for those traits to disappear because I’m in one of my moods? Well, that’s unrealistic and shows a lack of common sense. I read about that in last month’s Maxim.

For better or worse, with only a smidgen of expectation that you and your commitment can change anything substantially, concentrate on having as much fun as possible. Psychologists, who I trust only occasionally, report that our personalities are determined during childhood. What makes us think that marriage will reconfigure what it took ten years to build, and another ten or more to solidify? Again, we can work toward getting some behaviors altered slightly, but genuine personality traits are here to stay.
Love your spouse. It’s more fun and much more productive than the alternative.