I love marriage advice.
You know why? Because you could be married for six years (or 60!) and still hear a piece of advice that you haven’t heard before; something new and revolutionary and it’s like a lightbulb goes off in your head and you ask yourself, “Why haven’t I thought of that already? Shouldn’t I know that by now?”
I came across this article on Buzzfeed this morning and I immediately found myself pouring over all the marriage advice people submitted, agreeing with some and not with others. That’s another thing about marriage advice: it can be subjective. Of course, there are universal truths we most likely all agree on (communication is important, don’t stop dating, etc.), but when it comes down to it, it’s best to do what works for you as a couple. Reading new outlooks and advice, though, can be beneficial and provide some much-needed perspective.
Here are some of the best submissions:
"Learn to argue well. It’s going to happen, so learn to voice your concerns and opinions in a constructive way. Learn to listen to theirs, learn to compromise, and then put it behind you. Leave everything in the discussion. It’s OK to be uncomfortable, it’s not OK to carry that with you permanently."
"After being married 20 years, the most important thing I've learned is that you need to be ready to marry your partner several times in your lifetime. We all change, sometimes drastically. With children, careers, and aging, your priorities today will not be your priorities tomorrow, and neither will your interests, friends, or politics. But as your partner changes, you need to learn to appreciate and fall in love with the new person they become instead of becoming resentful and hurt. Avoid any thought that begins with, 'You used to...' Those words are poison. Instead, focus on love, appreciation, and getting to know your partner over and over. I like to say that so far I've married my wife three times!"
"Everybody will tell you, 'communication is key!' But nobody ever tells you what communication really is. A married couple could spend five years together and never fight, never argue, but just exchanged pleasantries and talk about their days, and then suddenly, one of them reveals they're unhappy and wants a divorce, leaving the other person very hurt and especially very confused,because they did everything people told them to do in order to have a healthy marriage. They went on dates, they had alone time, they asked each other about their day, and they said 'I love you' every night. So how does a marriage fail when you do all the things everybody says you're supposed to do? Because people told you what you're supposed to do, but they never told you how to do it. This is especially true with communication. If you don't know what it is, you can't 'just' communicate. And talking about your day, discussing the bills, and saying 'I love you' is not communication. That's talking. Talking is just making noises at each other without any real consequence to what you're saying. But communication is relaying your inner feelings to your partner, regardless —and this is the important part — of how you think it will make your partner feel. Communication is talking about the bad stuff, too. It's talking about the stuff you don't want to talk about. Communication is absolute, unbridled honesty. And it requires you, first and foremost, to have the ability to be honest with yourself. You don't communicate in a marriage because you want to, you communicate in a marriage because you need to. A marriage where you never leave your comfort zone is a doomed marriage."
"Marriage isn't always a 50/50 partnership — sometimes, it's 70/30, sometimes it's 80/20, and sometimes it's 100/0. But this isn't a reflection on effort or commitment, that should always be 100%. What this means is that you will sometimes have to work harder than the other for one reason or another."
“It's not your spouse's job to make you happy — it's nobody's job to make you happy. If you're a depressed person who doesn't get help, and you marry someone because a part of you thinks that you will be happy if you get married, that rush of endorphins and the newness of the situation might give you enough to be happy in the short term, but eventually, the depression will come back once things have settled in, and you'll see your partner as a failure because you're married and you're still not happy. You need to know that nobody in this world is responsible for your happiness but you. Even when you're married."
"You're going to get annoyed with each other and get mad over silly things, and sometimes you have to realize that you — yes you — were the asshole."
And maybe my personal favorite:
"Love evolves. It’s not always fireworks."
You can see the rest of the submissions here.