When you get married, you expect certain things. Now you’ll have someone to share things with. Now you’re with someone who totally understands you. No doubt you’ll fight, but fighting is healthy, right? Um, sort of. Like having kids, marriage is an adventure without rules or even much guidance. You must try to do what’s best and be committed to making it work, even when it all goes wacky. Here’s some tongue-in-cheek marriage advice for those times when marriage doesn’t turn out to be quite what you thought it would.
Marriage is About Sharing
Marriage is about sharing. So share. Share everything. Sharing it all with your husband will demonstrate to him that what’s yours is his and, more promisingly, what’s his is yours. His comfiest shirt. The very last delicious spoonful of his ice cream. His fast computer—at least, when yours is hung up and his is the only one with an Internet connection. It’s all yours, girl.
The downside, of course, is that his linty laundry, his toilet seat and his dishes are also yours, which is why marriage is something like a pushing, pulling and shoving match. You push on him what you don’t need, you pull back what you do and you shove at him what he’s trying to give you to do. He does the same thing to you–sharing. Marriage is about sharing. But the ability to take and give takes effort to learn.
There’s a New Addition to the Home
Get the extra room ready. No, not for a baby. Somewhere into your marriage, you learn there are four people living in your home: Your husband, as he sees himself; your husband, as you see him (which is, naturally, the right way); you, as you see yourself; and you, as your husband sees you (which is, naturally, the wrong way). The last one’s the tricky one. The moment he slides that ring onto your finger, your husband’s view of you–your personality, your likes, your dislikes, your strengths, your flaws–starts to freeze solid in his mind. You can protest all you want, but it’s a waste of time to try to change his ideas. Only he can change those and he won’t change them during PMS, no matter how much you convince him you’re being perfectly reasonable. Treasure the fact that your husband knows you better than anyone, and–maybe, just maybe–knows you better than you know yourself.
Fighting Clears the Air
Actually, fighting clears the room as often as it clears than the air. There’s a 99 percent chance that one of you prefers to fight it out and the other one prefers to hole up elsewhere until the other one’s wind has blown over. If you’re a talker and a problem-solver and your husband’s a wait-and-see-er, or vice versa, then you’re in for some rocky times until you and he decide whose way prevails when the sparks fly. Ideally, you’ll come to a consensus. Bargaining is part of this process. “I’ll agree to simmer on the issue for 48 hours, if you agree that the next time we fight, you give me the knock-down, drag-out fight I crave.” “It’s a deal.” Compromise is what a marriage is all about. Eventually, as time goes on, you’ll fight less and less. As more time goes on, you’ll look back on the early fights of your marriage nostalgically. But like giving birth, it’s not really something you’d opt to revisit, just to revisit.
