Everything the marriage guidance experts don't tell you

The books on marriage don't tell you that the wife gets the lion's share of the wardrobe space, while the husband gets the bottom shelf of the medicine cabinet.

Photo: Marriage

They fail to mention that you don't prove you love your wife by bringing home posies but by taking out the garbage. And you prove you love a man not by going to bed with him but by getting up with him.

What these experts don't know about marital fights could fill more shelves. They offer quaint rules such as "Don't ever go to bed angry".

That doesn't work at all. If you force yourself to contrive a reconciliation with that insensitive, uncaring fool just because it's bedtime, you'll lie awake all night, gnawed by repressed rage.

Whereas, when you go to bed furious, you are lulled to sleep by the certain knowledge that your warming self-pity is justified, inasmuch as you are truly the world's most undervalued wife or unappreciated husband. You'll sleep like a rock.

The experts tell you all the Goodie Two Shoes rules and never mention the well-established "Rubrics of Marital Fighting". So we're all forced to learn them through trial and error, wasting valuable time. Actually these definitive regulations are quite elementary if you just keep in mind that all other rules of conduct between adversaries are simply reversed.

Unlike those guidelines established by the Marquess of Queensberry, in marital fights you must always try to hit below the belt. Unlike legal disputes there is no statute of limitations - no previous infraction is too far back in time to be dredged up and rehashed. Unlike the Geneva Convention, there is no safe zone marked by a Red Cross.

Marital fights are no-holds-barred, go-for-the-jugular brawls. But not free-for-alls. No, indeed, they are as stylized as a Kabuki dance. And all these battles end in a draw. There is no recorded instance of a husband or wife being declared the winner (or admitting to being the loser).

Marital wars are fought along much the same lines as all traditional wars. The initial skirmish may be different each time (although not necessarily, or even usually), but once the battle lines are drawn the war is fought with conventional weapons and predictable tactics until both parties can't remember how it started.

At this point, peace overtures commence, and these are ritualistic and couched in the interrogative, as in, "Can I get you a drink?" "Did you notice I pressed your suit?" Or just simply, "How about it, darling?" And it is at this stage that treaties are consummated, and we who have been there can testify that some of the great moments in marriage involve consummating treaties.

Happily, domestic fights do not require SALT talks because there are no newly perfected strategic arms to cope with - domestic battles are eternally fought with the same weapons. The weapons are words, which can be flung out or aimed softly depending on conditions. The only inhumane weapon that should be outlawed by international convention is silence. Silence is very effective but inordinately cruel.

These fights, distasteful as they are, will go ever so much more smoothly once you know the rules. And more quickly, too, because after enough practice most couples are able to dispense with the preliminary sparring and proceed promptly to the main event. Each partner will eventually hone the whole discourse down to just that one phrase or word guaranteed to set the other one off.

In this regard, it is helpful to remember that there are certain key phrases guaranteed to move the fight along to a swifter if more heated climax. The majority of these phrases are androgynous and can be used by either partner with equal effectiveness, although "nag" is customarily applied to the female and "needle" to the male.

But most are unisex accusatory phrases that begin: "You never...", "You always...", "Your mother...", "Your precious job..." (This, formerly zapped almost exclusively at the male, is lately proving quite effective against the female as well.)

There is "Money. That's all you care about." "That kid gets more like you every day." And the old standby, "Once, just once, can't you admit you're wrong?" These phrases, of course, just skim the surface in the possible litany of marital accusations.

Perhaps some day the Ford Foundation will award a grant to some graduate student with a tape-recorder who will catalogue the prime areas of marital discord, reducing them to numbers. Then we could all save a lot of time by simply shouting, "Numbers two, seven, 11,15 and 43, stupid!"

In case you think your marriage problems are peculiar to our times, look at this admonition to women from a book on homemaking:

"Remember that you are married to a man who may sometimes be mistaken; be prepared for imperfections."

"Every so often let your husband have the last word; it will gratify him and be of no particular loss to you."

"Let him know more than you do once in awhile; it keeps up his self respect and you are none the worse for admitting that you are not actually infallible."

Now, plays have been written and songs sung about great love, about lovers who sacrificed their lives or abandoned thrones for love. We all have our faults, and seldom enjoy being reminded of them. The comforting thing is that, if you can stick it out, after enough years of marriage your vices and virtues interchange. The tardy partner becomes prompt and "vice" versa. Faults become less glaring. Or some of them do.

Source: Should I Ask Him Out

There are all kinds of marriages, and the most unlikely ones often work best. Couples whose future seems to be less than bright muddle through, while couples divorce who appear to be made for each other.

If there is such a thing as a perfect marriage, I've never seen it, but there are good, strong marriages possible to those who would keep some sense of humor and perspective.