Healthy Advice: Unsolicited Advice About Marriage

In addition to my blogging, I write a weekly newspaper column for The Times Observer in Warren, PA. This column originally ran on July 3, 2009.

My wife and I were engaged 20 years ago this week. We were pretty young and many of the adults we knew took it upon themselves to set us straight about the sober realities of married life: settling down, the cost of living, responsibility, and child rearing.

I even remember one friend somberly recounting how she saw people on Oprah who divorced because the wife squeezed toothpaste from the bottom of the tube and the husband from the top. "And that's just toothpaste!" she gravely informed us.

Over the last 17 years of marriage my wife and I have discovered that all of these adults with their scare tactics were way off base.

They didn't make marriage sound frightening enough!

Who could have ever prepared us for our first set of wheels: a noisy Omni which had a habit of catching fire at the most inconvenient times?

Some things we just had to experience first hand to believe. For instance, we learned quickly that we couldn't maintain a high society lifestyle on our combined first-year income of $11,000. We never suspected the number of decisions that we would have to make in response to unexpected crises.

Sometimes one of us would joke, "Let's get a grownup to decide." Then the other would say, "Oh wait. We are the grownups!"

I share this piece of completely unsolicited advice with those contemplating marriage: respect each other. Life will throw some pretty crazy stuff your way. You can respond like a team and be brought closer together, or you can blame and mistrust each other and drift apart.

Even when we disagree, I know that my wife has the best interests of the family at heart. I have confidence in her that she will do the right thing, as she does in me. That has helped us through the peaks and valleys of 17 years of marriage.

You might also consider buying a plastic toothpaste dispenser, because you never know...

Thought for the week: Tell your partner what you admire about them.

Ian Eastman, M.A., is a community educator with Family Services of Warren County—a charitable agency that provides counseling, substance abuse services, and support groups.