Photo by Toa Heftiba of UnSplash
I have been married for just over 30 years (since 1987) so I figure I am qualified to dispense free marriage advice, which I shall be doing so immediately.
I do not have any children, so I cannot give out any motherly advice, but if I think of something along the way, I will not hesitate to dispense that too.
SHOPPING
This is a catch-all phrase that you use when you are going out. You tell your husband that you are going SHOPPING. You can be gone for an hour or for 12 hours. You can come home with groceries, hardware, clothes for him, it doesn’t matter. You were out SHOPPING to get the much needed items that hold the house and family together. If it wasn’t for you, your home would be a smoking crater.
Now, if your husband likes to shop with you, then you must actually go SHOPPING and buy responsible stuff for the home. However, there are times when you will need some space to yourself and those are the days that you will want to try on shoes at your leisure, get new clothes, maybe buy some fabric, and make the day about yourself. Perhaps a mani-pedi can fit in there somewhere. There is nothing wrong with that. The real talent is getting the purchases into the house without him knowing absolutely everything about your personal life. I mean, really. How can we women weave a web of mystery around ourselves if we show our men every single thing we buy? Exactly.
So, just as you are about to enter the house, whether it be through the garage or the front door – grab all of your bags in your left hand and have a fresh hamburger in your right hand. Check first to make sure that the dog isn’t standing right there. This will kill the plan. Oh, and make sure the burger is wrapped in something. Throw the hamburger in the direction of your husband and while he is chasing it down and eating it, you can walk quickly to your closet and divest yourself of your bags and boxes, getting back into the main part of the house just as he is finishing up.
You won’t have to do this in the winter months before Christmas. You can just walk right in with your parcels, put up your hand and state clearly – CHRISTMAS PRESENTS, walking right through to the spare room. He doesn’t need to know that everything in the bags is for you. As long as he gets something for Christmas, by the time the festive day arrives he will have forgotten how many times you came into the house with bags and bags of purchases for yourself.
COOKING
There used to be a commercial on TV for Rice Crispy Squares that showed a woman in a stand-alone kitchen spending the five minutes it takes making Rice Crispy Squares. She yells out pleasantly to her family DON’T COME IN. Then she settles down with a cup of tea and her book for another 15 minutes. She then closes the book, pats some flour on her face, grabs the pan of squares and goes through the door to the waiting family in the dining room.
This is all true and this knowledge must go with every woman to the grave. Cooking some dishes is quite easy. Over the years we women have been able to demonstrate that cooking a good meal has taken our strength and a bit of our minds and our families are all the more grateful for it. We learn this in the womb.
You must never walk with any kind of roasting pan without huffing or puffing and if you have your wits about you and someone is looking, dip your arms once or twice to make it look heavy. No one can take it from you because you are using potholders. They would get burned. You can tough it out and carry the pan wherever you are going. Huck in a wheeze at the end and you may get out of doing the dishes.
Kitchens that are separated from the rest of the house have been a blessing for all women since the beginning of time. This open concept of the kitchen overlooking the living area has come close to blowing our cover many times. That is why you must never argue if your husband wants a big screen TV. This will divert his attention while you are preparing the meal.
An example of what we have been getting away with for years is the Pot Roast. Seriously. Turn on the oven. Get out the roaster. Cut up two onions. Open a bag of carrots. Peel and cut up six potatoes. Remove the plastic from the roast. Put the meat in the roaster. Add the vegetables. Put it in the oven.
Your husband can never see this process. Neh-ver. He has to think you roped the cow. You keep the flour handy and wipe some on your face and your apron. Bang some pots together out there in the kitchen – make a racket. But not enough racket to get him to come and check on you. NO.
Slam the oven door a few times here and there. That always sounds like there is something major happening and it scares them. This is good. Once your Broadway Show is over, stumble out into the living area and croak the words DINNER WILL BE READY IN ABOUT 2 HOURS.
Your husband will have to resist the urge to massage your feet. As you sit resting you can check your watch, check the oven, bang more stuff around, whatever. Just be back in there when the roast is done and get it out of the pan so you can serve it up.
He will practically sob when you place this home cooked meal down in front of him. Throw in some gravy and he might even take his mother off of #1 on his speed dial. You never know.
LAUNDRY
Your husband could be a pilot with a commercial carrier and know what every button and light in the cockpit means, but you must never let him near the washer or the dryer. EVER. There are two reasons for this. Maybe even three.
Firstly, there is the self-preservation angle. Do you really want the same brain that thinks the Three Stooges are funny to put your beautiful clothes in a machine, add soap and then find the correct dial and turn it on. I didn’t think so. Unless you want your sweaters to be passed over to the dog, because that is the only family member they fit now, then tell him to stay out of the laundry room.
Secondly, he may be one of those guys that likes to help in the kitchen and he might even be a pretty good cook. So if that is the case, then you have read the section before this one and you know that he knows. HOWEVER, this is your chance to redeem yourself in the eyes of your man.
You are going to be the one person in his life who can take his favorite stuff that he has tossed in a hamper, his stuff that he wants more than ever right now but he can’t have it because even HE knows that to wear it one more day would be a disgrace, and you can bring it back to him from that magical place and it will be clean and new. It will be like he is five years old and he’s getting a new puppy every single time. Guaranteed.
And because you have never showed him how to use the washer and dryer, all of the knobs and buttons are scary and mean, so you, his bride, are a genius, when you exit that room with clean, folded clothes.
Fun Fact – When Bru and I were first married, he kept all of his clothes in the spare room in the basement because he had police uniforms, equipment and so forth, so he just changed down there. Plus it gave me way more room for my stuff on the main floor. He had this favourite grey sweat shirt that he wore all the time. He actually had two of them. One day we were going out and he came upstairs with this shirt on, and a stain on the right side. I said NOPE and sent him back down to change. He came back up, wearing the other one, looking good, until I was following him out the door and saw the stain was now on his back. Motherfu… What is he – 4? And how comfortable was that tag against the front of his neck?
Second Fun Fact – When Bru used to get upstairs in his uniform, I would yell to our dog – DADDY’S A DOG CATCHER. It amused me.
Okay, we’ve covered laundry. Never let him touch the laundry. I cannot stress how important this is and will become in later years when your mystery begins to shed away with your dry skin and your thinning hair. It will be all you have. Trust me. You will be standing there in your skin tight capris, wearing a long, sleeveless cotton shirt to hide your stomach roll, your toenails will need some kind of work, your boobs will be caught in your waistband but you will be holding a laundry basket with clean clothes and all he will see is a Goddess and a Warrior. Show him how to do the laundry and you may as well buy a girdle and start going to Bingo because there’s nothing left for you at home.
THE INTERNET
If you are on your computer and you are searching the Internet for pictures of old boyfriends to see if they got fat or if their partners got fat, wait until your husband goes to bed. Clear your browsing history when you are done.
If your husband should, for any reason, come into the computer area while you are in the middle of a search, demand privacy in a high pitched screeching voice, telling him that you are researching how to wax something. And I don’t mean the floors. He will turn and run – men are scared of the waxing process because at some time in their life they have pulled a hair out of their body and they know the pain. Likely they have caught their mustache in a pop can. If he has a mustache, ask him. He’ll tell you. His eyes will tear up. Trust me again. When they think about waxing anything, they just want to get away. This will give you time to recover at your end and open a new tab on your browser and get some Pumpkin Spiced shit up on Pinterest. You should have had that open the whole time anyway, so you could click right over to it. My bad.
If the two of you have different interests on the Internet, then you are going to need two computers. He may be the kind of guy who likes to watch big trucks on You Tube and you might be dabbling in a sub-Reddit that has a quarantine and requires a mouse-click that you are over 18. I’m not talking porn here – there is just some gruesome stuff out there that may be of some interest to you that may not be of as much interest to your darling groom.
For instance, I am very interested in real crime stuff on the Internet and Bru is not as interested anymore. So one day I said – HEY BRU, THERE IS A NEW REALITY CRIME SHOW COMING ON A&E. He says – REALLY? AND HOW DOES THE HUSBAND DIE IN THIS ONE? Hah – funny guy. (Shit, he’s on to me.) (Why am I whispering?)
CLEANING
The cleaning of the house has to go 50-50, period. Just because vacuum and vagina start with the same letter does not mean they belong together. Everyone pitches in and no one gets a free ride. Now there are a couple of caveats to this and we all know what they are.
Anyone at home raising kids is exempt.
Any partner working hours that are over and above the norm (ranching, police, fire, etc) – the load gets shared but over the week.
And, I supposed, any couple who believes otherwise. That is what marriage is. Combining your beliefs and values to work together. If you both believe that the vagina should do all of the cooking and cleaning on top of working a full-time job, so be it. The penis must rest in case something needs to be grilled outside. Or maybe the truck needs to be buffed here and there in the driveway or on the street – the penis must be ready at a moment’s notice to get out there and make things right once he notices. I have an opinion on this matter but I’m not going to share it here.
OBSERVED BEHAVIOR
I am not actually doing this, but it is a theory I’m working on. It is a fact that women live longer than men. I base this on my observations that where my mom lives in her Assisted Living facility, most of the residents are women. These gals are all in their 80’s and 90’s. There are a few men, but not that many.
I see many women driving around in Cadillacs and other higher end cars and I get the feeling that they didn’t pick the car – they just wound up with it when their husbands died. They just have that look about them that they aren’t all that familiar with the driver’s seat of the vehicle, know what I mean?
So the theory I am working on is that for 30-40 years, we women serve these guys bacon all the time until they keel over, and then we put on red lipstick, a white cardigan sweater, take their cars and go to the Casino.
The families rally round too – OF COURSE YOU GO MOM – YOU NEED TO GET OUT. HAVE FUN. That’s why there are all those little wine glasses sitting around the slots with red lipstick stains on them.
Before you start clicking to close this window and vow never to read any of my stuff again, grow up. He wanted the bacon, he ate the bacon and we women ate the bacon too. We just didn’t eat as much bacon and we warned them.
DON’T GO TO BED ANGRY
This is really just a cryptic old saying to make people think about married life and to make sure that half of the population misses the point. What it means is that as a couple you have to establish a reliable system of personal communication that brings your issues to a close where you both feel you have reaped some benefit.
Benefit does not always mean you got something tangible. It could mean something as simple as compromising more on your part because it feels good to see your partner so happy. Your benefit is more spiritual.
The ‘don’t go to bed’ part is just telling you to deal with your stuff in a timely manner.
Men and women, generally speaking, do not think in the same way. A woman can be standing at the sink, peeling potatoes, planning the schedule for the week and pushing that around in her head, while listening to the radio.
A man can keep his thoughts in little drawers and when necessary, he will pull that thought out, mull it for a bit, and then put it away. Then he isn’t thinking about it anymore.
So if you have had a discussion or an argument with your husband and you are mulling the conversation and are waiting for him to come back to the table and pick up where you left off, you may be shocked to see him come into the kitchen and get a soda from the fridge.
You are a wreck. You’ve been projecting, going back in time and re-hashing, and he walks in without a care in the world and pops a can. What you are looking for is in his drawer.
If you want to discuss it further with him, you have to access his drawer, get him to open it, and pull the issue back out. Only then can the discussion start up again. Remember, this is generally speaking.
The key is not to start a brand new argument about the fact that he hasn’t been mulling over the last argument while you have been doing the same and stressing yourself out. Don’t bother. The last argument you had is in one of the little drawers in his head and if you want to start it up again, you have to get the drawer open and continue on. This is simply his thinking process – it is scathingly brilliant in its simplicity – for HIM. For women, it is enough to prompt her to load a gun.
So now that you have learned the secret of getting past the drawer stuff, just get the drawer open, get the dialogue going again and come to a compromise that is going to suit everyone.
As human beings, we tend to rely on past history and how others have reacted to our decisions so we project that future people in our lives will react the same way.
If you ask the right questions and listen carefully, you can break that pattern and earn the trust of each other immediately.
Men and women are different. Period.
Nothing good will ever come from someone leaving the room during an argument, thus leaving all of the points in the air and the other person frustrated because no conclusion was reached. If someone is feeling overwhelmed with the whole thing that is going on, then take a break but don’t just walk away.
Caveat to this: If one of you is beating the other, we call this Domestic Violence. This is a crime. It is okay to leave that scene and call the police. 911.
Second Caveat to this: If one of you is mentally berating the other and someone feels trapped and helpless, you are not having an argument or a discussion; you are experiencing Domestic Violence. There does not have to be a bruise, a black-eye or bloodshed to imply Domestic Violence. There has to be a partner who is either verbally, physically or emotionally leaning on the other.
And that is the finality of it all. Don’t go to bed angry. Don’t walk away until you can get this thing tamed and worked out to some degree of satisfaction, even if it is only round one.
SEX
You should have sex. It’s good, it’s wonderful, blah, blah, blah. Where don’t you hear all of this advice? You are beautiful. Blah, Blah. Most people aren’t beautiful but they hold a very special attraction to their partner on several levels that makes everything work in the bedroom, more or less. I have never heard of a guy who can fake an orgasm. We women are just that good for them. It’s a gift.
If a woman has to fake an orgasm, then fake it. Isn’t it really like laughing at one of his jokes? You just want to show him some vocal appreciation, right? So do it, get good at it, and confess on your deathbed. It’s the perfect place to tell him because nobody knows what to say on their deathbed and this will be a real conversation starter.
Your sex life should match in terms of your needs and wants and you don’t want to get off on the wrong track right off the bat. So if you are sitting at home in your new nightwear waiting for him to come home with roses, and he’s out front unloading a donkey from a trailer, someone better start talking about your plans for the night. It is important that you are both on the same page as to your sexual activities.
It works the same for the woman. If he is coming up the walk with a dozen roses and you are waiting on the couch with your old boyfriend and a spare loin cloth for your husband, things are about to get really good or go really, really bad.
So remember, if he brings a donkey and you like his donkey, then you are compatible. But if he brings a donkey and you were looking for dinner and a movie, then you are less compatible than you thought. So you might want to chat a bit more before you commit.
IN CLOSING
If you do something stupid, own it and laugh. If you do something funny, own it and laugh even harder.
Keep honor in your relationship with your family and friends by not doing scurvy things to them.
Follow along with some of this stuff and you may make it to 32 years of marriage. I actually did it and hey, so did Bru.