After celebrating our seventh wedding anniversary this month, an acquaintance congratulated me and asked me how we managed to stay married so long. In the two seconds before I answered, a myriad of thoughts ran through my head: Seven years is not that long, but then again, we were 21 and 22 when we got married. Marriage isn’t difficult so why do people always ask that question? We’re best friends and we love and respect each other, that’s why. When I answered I merely thanked this person and said that marriage is easy when you are married to the love of your life. On the way home I thought about my answer and realized that it wasn’t an on the spot answer, it’s the truth. We’ve been together 11 years and I love my husband more today than I did in the honeymoon phase of our relationship. It also occurred to me that all the marriage advice people tend to listen to is not necessarily helpful; in fact, some of those things are downright marriage myths.
Never Go to Bed Angry
Now, my husband and I don’t typically go to bed mad at one another, but I’m known to go to bed with an “I love you” and a glare. While we don’t really have big fights about big things (I wouldn’t have married someone who didn’t have the same values, opinions and beliefs as me, so big issues have never been a problem) I am known to find a handful of little things my husband does more annoying than Lady Gaga’s meat dress. Sometimes he annoys me so endlessly that I can’t help but keep giving him the evil eye when we go to bed. While many people think that I shouldn’t go to bed annoyed with my husband for forgetting to put a pull-up on our three-year old before she went to sleep, John Gottman, Ph.D, professor at the University of Washington agrees with me (really, who forgets to put a pull-up on a kid who drinks 22 cups of water before bed?). When a person is angry, they shouldn’t force themselves to talk about it for the simple sake of going to be happy; arguing in the heat of the moment can actually make things worse.
