"That married thing you do" to keep a marriage thriving
(Disclaimer: reader must stipulate as fact that the author is, by his own humble reckoning, the luckiest guy in the world, blessed far beyond his deserving. Or so Uncle Howard is fond of telling him on each meeting.)
"I love that married thing you do!" the teen girl bubbled over.
"What married thing?"
Molly, a Bradford senior, grinned at Laura and me. We had been making a private joke in a public place, using the verbal shorthand "vault" for the Seinfeldian "put it in the vault and keep it there." Molly had heard just a few words and saw the smiles pass between us.
"I love the way you say one thing and know exactly what the other person means. It's so cute," she said.
Well, how sweet of her to notice. It's not easy to make a teenager see grown-ups as happy, normal people like themselves. Ahem.
Being happy during the first throes of young love seems easy enough; staying happy is a combination of luck and strategy.
Weekly I and my wife scrutinize the "Celebrations" section of the Kenosha News, looking at the engagements and weddings and wondering about the lives ahead for these couples. The accomplished past master of this newsprint prognostication was my old roommate Dan, who of a Sunday would sit down with a pot of coffee, the Dallas Morning News, and a red pen, working the bridal pages like a crossword puzzle: "Catholic. Good. SMU grad. OK. Marketing degree... hmmm...." until, by combining achievements with beauty through some internal calculus, he could announce, "She's the one I could have married." (He ended up married to a smart woman of distinct beauty, and eleven years later, they're going strong. She later converted to Catholicism. He's very persuasive.)
The best part of "Celebrations" are the Golden Wedding Anniversaries. Together my wife and I admire the beautiful brides of 1956, the self-assured, stolid men of the post-war years. We admire their metamorphoses into Genuine Adults -- "see, that smile never changes!"
Faith in God, love of family, and a sense of humor are cited as primary sources of success. We heartily agree, and take nourishment from those wellsprings daily.
Operationally, though, the key to making each day a success is the bathmats. No lighthouse warns away the ship of marriage from these rocky shoals on which relationships founder. Ignore them at your peril.
Early in our marriage, Laura and I discovered that there are two kinds of people in the world. (Yes, we knew that, and vive le difference.) But I meant something else. Let's start by figuring out which kind you are.
You're in the shower, finished, clean. You shut off the water. You open the door. What happens next?
- You step out onto the bathmat, reach for your towel and dry off. --or--
- You reach for your towel, dry off, then step out onto the bathmat.
Simple, right? Oh boy. If you thought so, you're clearly not yet married. You've got some larnin' ahead. See...
- "I don't want to stand in the hot, steamy shower stall. I want to get out and get dry. That's what the bathmat is for."
- "EEEWWW! You'll get the bathmat wet. You're supposed to dry off first, so you won't soak the mat."
No matter which one you choose, you know that the other way is wrong. (Well, actually, the Innies think that the Outies are wrong; the Outies don't mind what the Innies do. We're a very accommodating lot, we Outies... except in the eyes of the Innies.)
Throughout the course of a life spent together, there are lots of bathmats, things that are not actually wrong -- not objectively, measurably, scientifically, morally wrong. Just different. Personally, annoyingly, purple-ragingly, you-just-don't-listen-ly different. These bathmat dilemmas have other solutions, which are neither compromise nor capitulation, but rather, acceptance of the difference.
Which is why, from the second week of our marriage 'til today, our bathroom has always contained two bathmats.
It's a married thing we do -- that keeps us married.