Marriage Advice

I just returned from Jenkins Lobby (formerly Jenkins Theater) in Daniel Hall, and a wedding shower for alumna Sandi Tatum, who is marrying Tim Suda, also an alumnus of the mass comm department. Those of us in attendance who are married were asked to give the new couple our marriage advice. Here is mine (I've been married 21 years):

1. Keep each other’s secrets. Married couples who are very close know intimate details about each other. It’s powerful to trust someone else with your insecurities, and feel he or she loves you anyway. It’s damaging when someone breaks that trust, even if the confidante is another family member or friend.


2. Don’t ride the complain train. I don’t know what men talk about when they get together without their wives. But I know what women talk about, and sometimes they complain about their husbands. If I have a problem with my husband, I work it out with him, not with my friends behind his back.

3. Express yourself. You can’t read each other’s minds. It’s a romantic idea that your spouse will know exactly what to buy you for your birthday without your having to say a thing. It’s thrilling in a perverse way to employ the silent treatment until he/she figures out what he/she did wrong. But it’s detrimental to your marriage. Say what you’re feeling and what you want and you’ll avoid misunderstandings.

4. Listen. The other person has just as much right to a point of view as you do. Sometimes you can agree to disagree.

5. Don’t criticize. I learned early on in our marriage that if my husband offered to clean the kitchen after dinner, I should leave the kitchen and leave him to it. If I suggested he wasn’t doing it right, he’d quit, and rightly so.

6. But know when to speak up. Encourage your spouse to do important things that are beneficial, like apply for a promotion or get more exercise.

7. Don’t keep score. Do nice things for your spouse when the opportunity arises. Avoid doing things that are hurtful. Do them for their own sake, and not for rewards or retaliation for things he/she did in the past.