Marriage

Hey, I just celebrated my 25th wedding anniversary!

How did we do it? Well, it hasn’t always been easy.

My wife and I met when we were 15 years old at a gifted and talented summer program in 1989. Though we didn’t exactly meet. I saw her sitting on a couch across the room, so ran over, jumped on the couch, put my head in her lap, and asked for a kiss. And she kissed me! Can you imagine kids doing that nowadays? The 80s were freaking awesome.

I lived in Connecticut, and she lived in Pennsylvania, so we kept up a long-distance relationship for two years, but that’s hard to do when you’re a kid, when you’re only seeing each other every six months or so, so we broke up our senior year in high school. But that didn’t last long, and we found each other again our sophomore year in college, and we’ve been together ever since.

But like I said, it hasn’t always been easy.

When we first moved in together, we fought like cats and dogs. Nothing serious—we were both on our own for the first time, and getting used to living with each other. I used to make myself a thermos of coffee in the morning, and my method of putting sugar in my coffee was to take the 5-pound bag of sugar and pour it directly into the mug, getting sugar all over the kitchen, of course. Then we had ants. My fiancée couldn’t figure out why I was such a dope about it, and we’d be yelling at each other about sugar. Finally, she got a plastic container with a spout for the sugar and that solved the problem. But we used to bicker a lot back then, mostly about inconsequential bullshit.

The wedding was fun. A little bit of family drama, but the wedding was fun.

One source of tension in those early years was our career goals and aspirations. She was going to be a career academic, and I thought I was going to be a career Coast Guard officer. Those two goals were incompatible. Moving around every 2-4 years was not going to be possible. So I sacrificed my Coast Guard career and applied to business school, and went onto get my MBA. My wife was finishing her PhD at the same time. Then she made a sacrifice by moving to New York with me, so I could pursue my Wall Street career. She taught at both Rutgers and Princeton while were there. And then after Lehman went tits up, and I started my newsletter, I was able to move anywhere, so I willingly moved to South Carolina for her next academic job. And we’ve been there ever since, and now we’re staying for good. It’s amazing that we’ve been able to make it work over the years, but we have.

There was a period from year 6 to year 9 of our marriage where things were not going well. I was in full-blown undiagnosed bipolar disorder, and not an easy person to be around. Not going to go into detail, for privacy’s sake, but our marriage almost didn’t survive. I got help, and things began to get better over time. The one consistent piece of feedback I got from my memoir Street Freak was that people were amazed that my wife didn’t leave me. In sickness and in health, right? The story had a happy ending, but most of the time, the story does not have a happy ending. Sick people want to stay sick, remember? I wanted to get better.

Today, we have a very good relationship. Lots of fun, lots of laughs, and we don’t take ourselves too seriously. We’re a team. We say that to each other all the time: we’re a team. Now, we’re building a house so big we’re calling it the Dill Mahal. There is a lot of stress associated with it. We’re doing it together. They say that people get divorced over building a house. I doubt it will happen to us.

Here is a short list of tips for a happy marriage. Not rules, tips. Just our experience, not intended to be gospel.

·      Communicate, which is another way of saying argue effectively. All couples will argue. Arguing is healthy. The key is to keep it about the thing and not the person—no personal attacks. For example, this is the correct way to argue: “You did x and it made me feel like y.” Not, “You’re an asshole.” Many years ago, there was a marriage counselor who could predict with 100% accuracy which couples would stay married and which ones would get divorced. The ones that got divorced treated each other with contempt. Even when we’re really, really angry with each other, we treat each other with respect.

·      Along those lines, one thing that we’ve gotten really good at over the years is defusing an argument by turning it into a joke. Years ago, we had the idea to put in a pool at our house. I wanted the pool in the back of the house, and my wife wanted the pool on the side of the house. We went back and forth on this for a while, and things were getting heated, when I finally said, “Are we really having an argument on where to put our imaginary pool?” And then we both had a good laugh. The best way to stop an argument in its tracks is with humor.

·      Pick your battles. My wife says things that annoy me all the time. I say things that annoy her all the time. 99% of it, I let slide. 99% of it, she lets slide. As a general rule, the best thing to do in any situation is usually nothing. That applies throughout life, too. But in marriage, if you went to war over every difference of opinion, it would be a very short marriage indeed.

·      Strike when the iron is cold. The wrong time to bring up a grievance is in the middle of an argument, when tensions are high. Save it. Sit on it for a few days, a week, or a month. Bring it up when there is no tension, when things are calm. Have a real conversation about it then, when everyone is ready to be reasonable and listen. Don’t strike while the iron is hot—your day will go downhill pretty quickly.

·      Keep your money separate. I’m not joking. I’ve seen too many couples fight constantly over trivial amounts of money. Couples will get into a knock-down, drag-out argument over $20. I have seen it. And the reason these arguments are possible is because people combine their finances. Once you pool your money, then it becomes community money, and I get to say how you spend your money, and you get to say how I spend my money. If you keep your money separate, all of those arguments go away. We have kept our money separate for all 25 years of our marriage, and never, not once have we fought about money. People get divorced over this stuff, and it’s totally unnecessary, and easily solvable.

·      Define responsibilities in the marriage. In our marriage, I pay for everything, and my wife does most of the work around the house. Though I do clean the litter boxes. Kind of a traditional example of gender roles, but it works for us, because I work a lot more hours than my wife. Some might criticize, but neither of us care. The problem is where you’ve defined your responsibilities and someone isn’t living up to their responsibilities. Like the fact that I’ve been saying for three days that I’ll clean out the litter box on the porch and still haven’t done it. Actually, my wife grabbed my laptop and put that last sentence in there.

·      Sleep in the same bed. We swore a solemn oath when we got married that we would always sleep in the same bed. And we have. Well, over the years, I’ve started to snore pretty heavily (which is a gross understatement) so we’ll go to bed together, but around 2 in the morning, my wife will go downstairs to get away from the snoring. But we still make sure we go to bed together. And we cuddle. The intimacy is important. We actually slept in a double bed up until around 2010. I miss it. The intimacy has gone down with the king-size bed.

·      Make boundaries with family. I’ve seen marriages that have been totally screwed up by the persistent presence of family and in-laws. A marriage must be protected from malignant outside influences. My mom actually lives about 40 minutes away from us, but one rule that we made early on was that there would be no unannounced drop-ins. I can’t emphasize enough how important this is. I’m friends with a guy who got divorced because of his in-laws. I asked him recently if the marriage would have succeeded if it were not for the in-laws. He said unequivocally, yes.

·      Be friends. We aren’t the best lovers anymore (getting older being what it is), but we remain best friends. We’re pals. We do things together. We make each other laugh. I’d say we’re better friends than at any point in our 25-year marriage. And it just keeps getting better. There’s no other person I’d rather spend my time with, and she feels the same way.

·      You can do things alone. But even though you’re friends, it doesn’t mean you have to do everything together. You’re individuals, too, and you’re allowed to have your own friends and do your own things and have your own interests. I take trips by myself and she takes trips by herself. We don’t have to be together all the time.

And of course, remember Pat Sajak: the king of not blowing yourself up. Stay away from the prostitutes and the cocaine and you’re halfway there.

Go fuck yourself,

Jared

Music Recommendation: The Shamen – Move Any Mountain. Going all the way back to 1991 for this one. This was my jam my senior year of high school. I used to use it to get fired up for competitions.

P.S. We’re Gonna Get Those Bastards will always be free. Please forward to whoever you like.