Marriage Requires Amnesia

Failure is part of being human, and it is definitely part of being married. It’s part of what being alive means, occasionally screwing up in expensive ways. And that’s part of what marriage means: sometimes hating this other person but staying together because you promised you would. And then, days or weeks later, waking up and loving him again, lo

Whether we realize it or not, this consumerist expectation gets attached to just about everything we get involved in, including marriage. When you view marriage as a product or commodity, you are trying to make it define you in some way. You are saying, “I expect marriage to make me look better, to make me feel better, to make me happier, right now

This always seemed nonsensical to me: Why, of all the people on the planet, would the person you married be the one you always have to be singularly critical of? Why hold the person with whom you signed a lifetime commitment to such a specific and unreasonably high standard? How come we’re encouraged to give our friends a break and understand that

As married people, we dwell on a spectrum between happy and unhappy, in love and out of love, and we move back and forth on that line decade by decade, year by year, week by week, even hour by hour.

How do you stay married?

‘Right. Here are some survival tools: The enemy of love is impatience and eye rolling. Even gentle mockery is corrosive. Learn how to defuse the other’s ticking bomb. Notice what the beginning of a negative spiral looks like. Prioritise snoring remedies. Don’t exaggerate hurt feelings. Have more morning sex than night sex. Identify which of your pa