Nine Secrets to Staying Happily Married
Currents
In October 2023, my wife Renee and I celebrated 30 years together. We met the first week of college. I held her place in line while she ran to her dorm room for her meal card. She thought I helped her because I’m nice, but I mostly did it because I thought she was cute. We’ve rarely been apart since. We’ve been by each other’s side through job changes, organs removed, family deaths, near bankruptcies, three kids, and over two dozen companion animals. We stayed together through siblings and cousins divorcing, friends splitting up, and so many people we care about never getting married at all. Yet we still start every day happier because we know we’ll be facing it together.
My parents were married for 50 years, and they often told people their best advice was “Always be too poor to afford a divorce.” Well, Renee and I started out on the right path, then. I proposed to her in the kitchen of our first apartment by saying, “If this health problem is chronic, we need to get married so you can get on my health insurance.” Later that week, we tied the knot at city hall. Our honeymoon was one night in a fancy hotel. We still don’t have rings! Every time we’ve had a few thousand extra dollars to spend, we end up going to Disney or the beach.
At middle age, we could probably afford a divorce, but we’re still committed to each other. But if it hasn’t been steady material comfort, a stress-free life, or fairy tale romance, what has kept us together all this time? I’ve thought a lot about the lessons I may have to offer. Along the way, I’ve learned nine of them, and they’re a little more optimistic than the advice my parents gave me.
1. Marry for character. My wife and I met while waiting in line and hit it off immediately. We went from friends to a first kiss in a month, even though we probably never would have met on a dating site. She was a worldly, short-haired NYC club kid, and I was a long-haired punk kid. We weren't each other's type at all. But we soon found we had a lot in common underneath the superficialities. Perhaps most importantly, we each fit the other’s standard for being a good person. If you’re going to trust that person to do the right thing for the rest of your life, that quality needs to be there from the start. It’s easier to find someone who is great with children and convince them to apply for a better-paying job than it is to find someone with a good job and teach them how to be kind to kids.
2. You can change a haircut, but not much else. I convinced her to grow her hair out, and she got me to cut mine. But we didn’t start out with a list of things we thought the other person needed to change. Don't insist on other people changing if you won't change yourself. You're usually part of any problem. My wife has made unbelievable progress in improving herself, and I'm a far better person than the guy she married. And we did that together.
3. Some problems will never be fixed. Some of the things that annoy you about your spouse on the first date will be there when they hold your hand in hospice. My wife and I still argue all the time about why we ran out of mac and cheese. True, she didn't put it on the grocery list, but I also didn't check the pantry to see what we were out of before heading to the store (as Mike Myers’s Linda Richman would say, “Talk amongst yourselves”). You need to have a sense of humor as well as a sense of perspective. As a friend recently put it, it’s important to recognize the difference between “I don’t know if I can put up with this shit my whole life,” and “I can’t believe I have to put up with this shit my whole life.” If your boyfriend regularly drinks too much whiskey, that isn’t the same as your boyfriend having a fussy Starbucks order.
4. Start seriously looking for a spouse when you’re young. Obviously, not everyone is going to meet the person of their dreams in their 20s. But you should really be looking. I asked Renee out the day after our first kiss, and she asked me to open a checking account with her after just one month (It only had a total of $50 in it). We really liked each other, but we also saw in one another people who took relationships very seriously. Finding someone early in life who will love you forever is an incredible timesaver. As they say about saving for retirement, the best time to start is yesterday, and the second best time to start is now. What you lose in the thrill of the chase, you will make up for in more shared expenses, fun weekends, moral support, and bedroom communication. It's the best investment you will ever make. Don't waste time investing in someone that's not going to invest in you the same way. Avoid dating someone who thinks it would be crazy to get married anytime soon, even if you fall in love.
5. Don’t keep score. Who makes more money? Who does the dishes more? Who says no to sex more? Whose parents are more annoying? It’s your house, your marriage, and, if you have any, your kids, and you should be doing as much as you can — as should your spouse. I don’t know many other men who spend as much time cooking, shopping, vacuuming, or doing laundry as I do. I never think my wife is getting off easy, though. I see her collapse into bed every night as tired as me. Plus, I really like cooking and shopping. If something urgent isn’t getting done, it has to be discussed. However, you have to trust that the other adult in your house is doing as much as they can. The score will never be exactly even, especially if you have more and more kids, and insisting on everyone contributing their full, mathematical share means important things will never all get done. No one is perfect, and people are pulled in a million different directions. Just do your best and assume your spouse is doing their best, too.
6. There will be bad times. Accept that. You are going to fight over money and housing and your parents. Loved ones are going to die. Eventually, it will be one of you. Sometimes, hardships will be the result of your actions, but most of the time it will just be life happening around you. Take refuge in each other. A few years ago, I was caring for my mother as she died. I slept away from my family for a bunch of nights, and my wife picked up all the slack. It was Christmas, and money, time, and patience were all in short supply. She pulled off small miracles every day. She never said one unkind word to me because we knew that even when we weren’t physically together, we were in this together. The situation will always try to crowd out talks and hugs and sex, but you need more time for those in a crisis, not less.
7. Forget about privacy. This one is hard. You don't have to give someone your iPhone password on the third date, but secrets will corrode any romantic relationship over time. Privacy matters early, but just know it will eventually go out the window. The longer you are together, the more opportunities there will be for hospitals. If you think sex is intimate, wait until you see a baby come out. You don’t have to force your partner to know your “body count”, but it won’t seem that important or embarrassing when you’re injecting them with a syringe. How are you going to discuss a kidney transplant with someone who won’t admit what they paid for their leather jacket? Sure, your childhood traumas, work disasters, and kinks are embarrassing to face head-on. But if you’ve followed all the rules to this point, you’re with someone who truly wants to know the real you.
8. You don't have to solve every problem. You don't have to always know the right thing to say. Sometimes, it’s enough just to be there, present. Sometimes, it’s enough just to offer a sympathetic ear, a shoulder to cry on, or a comforting touch, and to communicate, either through words or actions, that you’ll get through it together. A spouse isn’t always an expert fixer who can take in a situation at a glance and begin immediately solving every problem. But a good spouse is always there to offer their partner the assurance that whatever difficulties they might face, they won’t have to do so alone.
9. Choose love. This is both the most important piece of advice and also possibly the hardest to follow. People get exhausted. Money gets tight. Kids can have big problems in school or their social life. (Also, there’s nothing like watching your wife shout a lecture at your teen daughter about her clothing choices, only to realize she’s using some of the exact same phrases your parents used on you when you were 16.) The house gets messy. Dinners are eaten over the sink. Weeks can pass without sex. In any of these situations, and in too many others, it's easy to decide the other person is the problem. That's the beginning of the end. If the bank account is low because your spouse overspends, a divorce becomes the easy solution. You have to choose to solve problems as a team, even when only one of you caused the problem. If you start working against each other on anything, the world will rush into that rift and push you further apart.
Someone once asked me for advice on speedrunning to divorce. It’s basically the opposite of this list: Talk smack about your partner in public. Keep separate bank accounts. Get married just because you’re embarrassed that you’re not married yet. Start your relationship by cheating with each other. Stop doing anything that makes you attractive or fun to be around. Party all the time. Control your partner’s actions, including whom they’re allowed to socialize with. Call your kids “their kids” and your time with them “babysitting.” Bail as soon as it gets hard.
Like anything worthwhile, marriage takes a lot of work. The forces of life, happenstance, and bad luck will conspire time and again to drive the ship into the ground, and the ship doesn’t steer itself. It needs a conscious, willful hand. There are no perfect human beings out there. Even the most favorable match will bring its fair share of headaches. The key is finding someone you feel at home with — someone who accepts you with all your blemishes, and whose foibles you can get used to. The old adage is true and applies whether you’re straight, bisexual, or gay: marriage is finding someone you can be annoyed with for the rest of your life. And few things in life could be more beautiful.
Published Feb 19, 2024
