Notes on marriage - to pontificate at the children some day
I was replying to someone else and got all preachy. Never one to waste ostentatious windbaggery, I figured I capture it here.
What qualities do you need in a husband?
1. You have to like him. I'm not talking "be in love with him", I'm saying you have to be friends with him at the core. You admire who he is, you think he's a good guy. You'd be friends with him if you couldn't be his wife.
2. You have to respect him. He's going to do some stuff that looks really really stupid to you. You've got to be able to say, "Looks like he's acting like a dumb shit, but I know he's a man worthy of respect so I figure he must know what he's doing, as odd as it appears to me."
3. You need to want the same future. If the life you're envisioning and the life he's envisioning are different in substantial ways, DO NOT MARRY. If you want to live on a farm and tend goats and he wants to live in a seaside condo and drive sports cars, don't hitch your lives together. Be friends. Be lovers. But don't venture off on the business of building your future together. When you're married you're in the same boat together and you need to row for the same shore.
4. Sex needs to be good. Just don't marry someone if that part's not there. It ends up being a regenerative tool too often in the course of a marriage. If everything else is great, you don't need sex to be great. But when you hit those times when everything else is bad, you've got to at least have sex going for you.
5. It's okay if you have different skills or different points of view, but having different VALUES is a pretty big problem, in my opinion. Spend some time working through that before you marry, because stresses will come in your marriage your whole life long and they'll center around these value disparities. How do you feel about spending versus savings? How do you feel about limits versus freedom in children? (How do you feel about procreating at all?!?) How do you feel about your obligation to take care of elderly parents with dementia? Is it better to own a Mercedes or be published as a poet? Hash these things out.
6. Also: those things you need in a husband? He needs those back. Don't marry a man who doesn't like you, respect you, or doesn't like sex with you, even if he's willing for some bizarre reason.
Be careful, here. Too many people try to fit the guy in front of them into the matrix. If it doesn't work, you've just spent your youth (and child-bearing years) on a guy you'll be divorcing when your child is three.
What qualities do you need in a husband?
1. You have to like him. I'm not talking "be in love with him", I'm saying you have to be friends with him at the core. You admire who he is, you think he's a good guy. You'd be friends with him if you couldn't be his wife.
2. You have to respect him. He's going to do some stuff that looks really really stupid to you. You've got to be able to say, "Looks like he's acting like a dumb shit, but I know he's a man worthy of respect so I figure he must know what he's doing, as odd as it appears to me."
3. You need to want the same future. If the life you're envisioning and the life he's envisioning are different in substantial ways, DO NOT MARRY. If you want to live on a farm and tend goats and he wants to live in a seaside condo and drive sports cars, don't hitch your lives together. Be friends. Be lovers. But don't venture off on the business of building your future together. When you're married you're in the same boat together and you need to row for the same shore.
4. Sex needs to be good. Just don't marry someone if that part's not there. It ends up being a regenerative tool too often in the course of a marriage. If everything else is great, you don't need sex to be great. But when you hit those times when everything else is bad, you've got to at least have sex going for you.
5. It's okay if you have different skills or different points of view, but having different VALUES is a pretty big problem, in my opinion. Spend some time working through that before you marry, because stresses will come in your marriage your whole life long and they'll center around these value disparities. How do you feel about spending versus savings? How do you feel about limits versus freedom in children? (How do you feel about procreating at all?!?) How do you feel about your obligation to take care of elderly parents with dementia? Is it better to own a Mercedes or be published as a poet? Hash these things out.
6. Also: those things you need in a husband? He needs those back. Don't marry a man who doesn't like you, respect you, or doesn't like sex with you, even if he's willing for some bizarre reason.
Be careful, here. Too many people try to fit the guy in front of them into the matrix. If it doesn't work, you've just spent your youth (and child-bearing years) on a guy you'll be divorcing when your child is three.