willathome - Marriage Advice

24th January 2012

Post with 2 notes

Marriage Advice

My friend, Jinksto wrote a whole month’s worth of emails to a couple who were getting married. While all his advice was good advice, Mrs. At Home and I have our own marriage advice.

Mrs. At Home

Mrs. At Home’s advice is sound, and simple:

You’re on the same team.

This means what it sounds like. Many couples seem to be in some sort of a Women are From Venus, Men are From Mars war. While men and women are quite different, that doesn’t mean it’s “us against them” or you against your spouse. And there are lots of important implications of being on the same team:

You never talk bad about your teammates. Ever.
If your spouse does something that could be construed as good or bad, it was probably the good one.
Your job is to encourage and help your teammate for the good of the team, not to be rotten to them to the detriment of the team.
If your spouse says something that could be either nice or ugly, they probably meant it the nice way. (Since Mrs. At Home has this assumption, it’s bailed me out many times since I’m not too good with vocabulary.)

My Advice

My advice can be summed up in two words:

Stay married.

This is largely stolen material from a Sunday school teacher, but he’s got many more years of successful marriage than me, and the way he puts it simplifies what I think we had already figured out.

If you’re going to stay married, regardless of the circumstances, it behooves you to make the circumstances good. Would you rather be unhappily married, unhappily divorced, or happily married? A study on marital happiness and divorce pretty well shows that those are your three options. To summarize the findings of the report:

Those who were unhappily married and chose to divorce were no happier 5 years after the divorce
Those who were unhappily married and chose to stay married were happier 5 years after the initial study
8 out of 10 of those who were very unhappy with their marriage stated they were happy with the marriage 5 years later.

A different study rates marriages on scales like very unhappy, unhappy, happy, or very happy, and it shows that 86% of those who “stuck it out” were happy, and 60% were now very happy.

So, the Sunday school teacher’s advice goes, if you’re considering divorce, take some time and do the most selfish thing you can do. Think of nothing but your own happiness. And stay married.

This has some implications in your marriage that aren’t unlike Mrs. At Home’s advice:

If you’re going to stay married, make the marriage not stink. So stop doing the things your spouse doesn’t like you to do, and do more of the things your spouse likes you to do.
If you’re going to be happy in your marriage, you need to be happy with your spouse. Perception is reality, so compliment your spouse often.
Those things that you tend to think are bad things about your spouse are probably really good. Mrs. At Home likes to make decisions on a whim. And a lot of the things we’ve done as a couple, I never would have done on my own. (Case in point - when she and the girls are gone for an extended period, I actually find that I don’t leave my office for several days - let alone the house.)
Never, ever, ever speak badly about your spouse. If you have a complaint, speak with them directly (and kindly) about it. Never to other people.

So that’s it.

by Willathome

()