01. What is your secret to making marriage work for a lifetime?
I think the biggest and most obvious answer to this is patience and understanding -- but it has to be mutual, and it has to come from both sides. Before I met Daisy, I was not a patient person at all. I was actually a pretty miserable person a lot of the time. Daisy had to work with me, a lot, to get me to where I am today. I had to learn to become a bit more free-spirited, a little bit more go-with-the-flow, and sometimes even now that's hard for me because it's not really in my nature. I also had to learn that Daisy is really not just a carbon copy of me with longer hair -- she has her own quirks and things that irritate me, things she excels at and things she falls short of as a person. She has her own wants and needs that are at times, very different than mine. We all have those things, and learning to understand and accept them in one another, and not immediately write them off as dealbreakers are another really big step in having a successful marriage.
The secondary answer to this is, probably without surprise, trust and communication. I fully trust Daisy, in everything. There's nothing about me that woman doesn't know. She knows stuff about me that I wouldn't tell my parents, her parents, a priest (if I were a religious man, I mean), or say in a courtroom. I'd like to think I know most everything about her at this juncture as well, and I do, but I still learn new things every day. Similarly, I trust her to be honest and faithful, and she trusts me to do the same. Neither of us have to worry about that with one another, which is a definite sign of a fantastically successful relationship. But, trust goes further than that -- it transcends just the relationship stuff to encompass everything. Yes, I trust that Daisy isn't going to go out for a night on the town with the girls from work and start blowing dudes at the bar, but I also trust that she'll pay bills on time, keep gas in the car, think through any and all decisions rationally, and be my safe space when I need to lean on her. Likewise she trusts that I'll do the same, and trusts that I'll keep myself as healthy as I can so we can live a good, long life together, etc.
There are going to be things that your spouse puts a lot of importance on that you don't, and vice versa. Sometimes these are little things, sometimes they're big things. Learn to adapt as much as you can. Try. I promise if you try, even a little -- to make the effort and take the time to prioritize the things your spouse deems important, even if they're not necessarily important to you (or you think they're silly or a waste of time), your relationship will be better for it. Make the effort. Try. So many relationships/marriages end or fall into disrepair because one partner or the other becomes too complacent and stops trying at one single thing, and that becomes a domino effect that takes it down from both sides -- oh, she doesn't care about x, so I'm not going to care about y. He doesn't care about a, b, and c, so I'm going to find someone who does. She doesn't care about d, e, and f, so I'm going to find someone who does. Etc. Just try. Suck it up and act like an adult and a partner. Not everything has to revolve around you, nor should it. It's not about me or you, it's about us.
There is no one secret to making a marriage work for a lifetime. It's a long list of things. It's something that you figure out as you go. Sometimes you'll be better at it than others -- sometimes you'll screw up or fail hard. Sometimes you'll excel at it and be the hero. As long as there's mutual understanding there, as long as both of you are giving it your best, you'll be fine. It's not a light switch or a checklist to mark things off of, nor is it something you should go into with a "well, if this doesn't work out, we'll just get divorced -- no harm, no foul" -- trust me, there is always harm and there is always foul in a divorce. My parents had four previous failed marriages between them (with other people, of course) before they met and have now been together for almost thirty years -- without getting married. Everything is a learning process, and it is a process of unconditional love. If you can't understand that, and I mean really understand it, you're really not ready for marriage.
02. How do you make finances work?
Uh...well, I guess this is likely a good question for some people. It's never really been a huge concern for me and Daisy, but here goes.
When we got married, we opened a joint bank account. I believe we opened it the week before we got married, actually. Alongside that joint account we opened a joint savings account. Both of us have cards, both of us deposit money into both accounts and remove money from both accounts. We both keep track of it -- I keep track of it literally in a handwritten ledger that I meticulously update when any money is deposited into or spent out of the account for any reason, so I always know what we have down to the exact penny.
She pays bills every month of her own out of the account -- her credit cards, student loans, our cellphone bill, etc -- and I pay my own bills out of the account too. We both keep track of every expense, such as when bills are due, when utilities and subscriptions and the like are going to auto-debit, and budget/calculate how much we have left, how much can be spent on food or household stuff or entertainment, etc. When we have an unexpected expense that would wreck our financials for the month, we can dip into savings as necessary -- and when we have a little more to work with, we can dump some money back into savings as well. It is a financial ballet that has worked very well for us for our marriage, and in the almost eight years we've been married we've never overdrawn our account or forgotten to account for a major expense or anything of that nature, even if funds were tight.
I've come to realize over the years that for a lot of couples, this isn't the norm, and that surprises me. I've known quite a few couples that are like "what I make is mine, and what you make is yours, we have separate accounts" and "this month you pay the rent, next month I will" or stuff of that nature and...I can't really fathom that. Daisy calls that being financially divorced and to an extent, it's actually sort of shady. Marriage is not a what's-mine-is-mine, what's-yours-is-yours sort of scenario. If you go into marriage believing that, your marriage will likely fail sooner rather than later, generally because one party or the other will be much better at managing money, and the party who isn't will be underwater because there's no shared safety net.
So, that's my advice for handling/managing finances in a marriage -- don't be financially divorced. Share everything. Mutual respect and responsibility, mutual knowledge and accountability.
03. Is it normal for us to argue?
Yes. Yes it is. About any number of things big or small, at pretty much any given time.
Never believe someone who says "our marriage is perfect, we've never had a single argument or fight in over twenty years" or some other bullshit like that. That is not real, that does not happen. If you believe that, you are living in a fantasy world.
The thing that everyone has to realize about marriage is that it's not an exact science. It's not perfect. No relationship or marriage ever can be perfect, and making perfection your goal will set you up for the worst kinds of relationship failures that you could ever possibly experience.
When someone tells me they never argue or have never had a yelling match or fight with their partner, my first question is "Why not?" Because I am genuinely curious.
They usually shrug and say "we just never have anything to fight about."
Well, I'm here to tell you that's wrong. Good marriages are work, they are jobs that require attention to detail and actual care. Think of it like buying a '72 Chevelle new, and then driving it hard every day for the next thirty years without ever changing the oil, spark plugs, brakes, coolant, etc. In the beginning, even for the first few years maybe, it'll run wonderfully with just regular fill-ups of gas. But sooner or later it's going to blow a tire. Sooner or later it'll overheat and crack the block because the radiator has run dry and the oil has taken on the consistency of southern gravy. What I'm saying is that you can't ignore maintenance on your marriage any more than you should ignore maintenance on your car.
In the cases of the couples who "just never have anything to fight about" I usually later find out that one partner is terrified of the other, usually the woman being terrified of the man, and just goes along with everything he says and does out of fear. That's not a relationship, that's owning a slave he gets to fuck (or not fuck) whenever he wants and who cooks all his meals for him. That's not a marriage or a partnership.
Your spouse doesn't always have to agree with you and he/she certainly doesn't have to follow your orders or edicts. Yes, it is perfectly normal to get irritated or angry with your spouse and to have an argument. Daisy and I fight all the time. Sometimes it's small spats, sometimes it's big blowouts. More often than not, it's over something stupid and inconsequential. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes the fault is on me, sometimes it's on her, sometimes it's on both of us. My point is, if you're married and it's a true partnership, you're still going to have disagreements and you're still going to fight. It's part of being human, and it's part of being partnered with someone. However, I will offer this very solid piece of advice about fighting with your spouse...
Pick your battles. Read that again, but more slowly. Pick your battles.
Not everything is worth a fight or argument. You can be irritated and just deal with it and brush it off. There are so many things I've stopped myself on and just remained silent, because I knew if I'd spoken the next sentence we'd be in a three-hour fight. I'm sure Daisy has felt the same way as well from time to time. There's a lot of give and take to successful marriages. If you feel that you're not being heard, or being ignored, by all means make sure you speak up so that your partner knows there's something wrong. But, as hard as it may be at times, sometimes you just have to let anger go. If there's nothing else you take from this post, take this advice to heart. Sometimes you just have to let it go. Sometimes you just have to brush it off.
Along those lines, realize that when you do fight, there are some fights that you will win, and some that you will lose -- and realize that sometimes, you need to lose. You can fight, you can make yourself heard, but you can never force your partner to agree with you, see eye to eye with you or obey you. And moreover, you should not expect that -- not out of your partner or spouse, or out of anyone you have interpersonal connections with. Sometimes, you need to lose in order to realize that your point of contention wasn't that important in the grand scheme of things, and sometimes you need to lose in order to realize you're being an asshole.
One last thing -- when you fight, always apologize when you make up afterwards. Especially if you were being an asshole, and even more especially if you "won" the fight. It doesn't matter if it was your fault or not. It doesn't matter if you were right or not. You apologize and move on, and learn from the argument. Both sides need to do this, and both sides need to admit fault for their part in it. Any arguments you have should be learning opportunities. They should make your relationship stronger, not tear it down -- as long as your relationship is not a toxic one.
04. How do you successfully practice work-life balance?
Personally? Actually quite poorly, but part of that is due to our work schedules/circumstances.
Allow me to explain. Any of you who have been longtime readers of this site know that I work overnights, from home, five nights a week from 10pm to 7am. Daisy works an 8am to 5pm day job, most of the time in an office and not at home. There are times where I have to start work an hour or two early in the evening, and there are times where I work an hour or two late in the mornings. Similarly, there are times where Daisy is stuck at work an hour or two late, and by the time she gets home we each have about an hour of real downtime together for dinner and light chatting before she has to go to bed and I have to start my shift.
So...making a work-life balance happen for us is really difficult. Saturdays are usually our day together where we can go out, run errands, have a "date day" sort of thing -- stuff along those lines. Sundays we spend most of the day together too before I work in the evening. Basically, what I'm saying is that our work-life balance right now is not ideal, but we do what we can. When Daisy says she wants us to go to an event or do something together, I may not always want to, but most of the time I do it with her and go along with it because I know it's quality time together, and we tend to have so little of that.
Here's the other thing they don't tell you about working a different shift than or having a different sleeping schedule than your spouse -- you will almost never occupy the bed at the same time while both of you are asleep unless one of you has an extra day off here and there. I'm not talking about sex (that's an entirely different category), I'm talking about sleeping together. If you do, it's either for a short overlap period before one person or the other gets up, or it's for a random nap on occasion. So, if you work different schedules, you'll just have to get used to sleeping alone, and that sort of sucks.
My advice, because not every couple sleeps together successfully -- problems with this are far more common than you think (one person or the other gets too hot, or snores, or can't get comfortable/stretch out with the other in the bed, pets get in the way, etc) -- do everything you can, when you can, to make it happen. Savor every moment of it. Sleeping together, sharing a bed, is one of the greatest parts about being married. It is incredibly intimate. It is a safe space. It will do far more for your mental health and your shared psychological needs than you know, trust me.
05. How did you decide on how to split up holidays?
Split up holidays?
My parents live over 1,000 miles from here. Daisy's parents live about five miles from here. Her sisters are not in town; one lives in Denver and the other in Canada, respectively. There's no holidays to split up for us. We spend them with her parents. I haven't been home for Christmas in ten years.
But that's just us, so let's go with a more idealized scenario. Say you and your spouse are from the same town, and your families both live in the same town, and both do holiday gatherings/dinners/what-have-you. I'm sure this covers most of you reading this who are married or are possibly going to be married in the future.
So, in most scenarios, it really depends on the size of the family. If you're both only children, it'll be far easier to do dinners and events and the like with both sides of the family. You can attempt to do both sides in one day, but I can tell you from experience that is very tiring and very hectic. You can coordinate between families -- say, one does Christmas Eve dinner/celebrations and the other does Christmas Day dinner/celebrations, something like that...or, if you have a decent-sized house and/or living arrangements (plus, well, money) you can just say fuck it, everyone comes to our place and do everything there. That would, of course, mean that everyone has to be on good terms and get along with one another, which is sometimes easier said than done, but it is generally the easiest scenario if you have the space, the means, and the idealized local family.
Otherwise...well...alternate? I guess? You're both gonna have to make some compromises here and there for family gatherings or you'll likely run yourselves ragged and burn yourselves out. I only wish that all of our collected family members lived relatively close to us so that we could gather on the holidays for dinners and presents. If you have the ability to do so with your own families, compromise with your spouse and make it work; do everything you can to make it work and be mutually satisfying to both of you. These memories will last a lifetime and opportunities to have everyone in one place are few and far between as all of us get older and older, and as our elders begin dying off. You won't realize how important it is to you until you can't do it anymore.
06. How did you figure out the household chores?
Honestly? Sort of organically, really. It's basically based upon our skills, knowledge, desires, and quirks.
I lived alone for a long time where it was just me and the cats -- almost three years. In that time, I learned or otherwise taught myself how to do a lot of things that in marriages or cohabitations would generally be split between partners. I taught myself how to cook (somewhat), I did all my own laundry, I cleaned up after the cats, did my own yard work, worked on my own car, vacuumed, dusted, scrubbed down toilets and sinks, etc. I didn't have anyone else to do it for me or to help out with it, so I had to.
When Daisy and I first got together, I insisted on cooking a bunch of meals and insisted on cleaning a lot of things my way, taking care of the cats/cat pans my way, doing the dishes my way, etc -- because that was what I was used to. After a few months of being married, though, we organically began to share the workload of things around the house. Daisy is a far better cook than I am, so I let her do almost all of the meal planning and cooking. I do laundry far better and more quickly/efficiently than she does, so I have always handled that. I used to take care of the cat pans, but she asked to take them over -- she added three more pans to the household and changed the litter we use, and now most of the time they don't stink and our male cat doesn't pee on things outside the box because he's mad at the pans.
When we bought the house, I was originally the one who did most of the yard work. We began alternating more on that, and now it's Daisy who does about 70% of the yard work outside the house -- this shift happened when Daisy built the backyard garden. When it snows, most of the time I will attempt to shovel first, even if I don't want to, but we tend to alternate on that too, or do it together to save time and energy. Daisy used to do/took over all of the dishes and loading/running/unloading the dishwasher, but these days it's recently become something I do more often than she does. I do the dishes almost exclusively during the week now, since I can do it in the overnight while working/while Daisy sleeps.
I still handle all of the mail, keep all of the finances in check (see above), and do everything I can to keep the household stocked in supplies and groceries we both use. Daisy does get a good bit of groceries on her own, but it's usually from places like Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, and Natural Grocers, and that stuff is usually specialty stuff for her or for meals she plans to cook. I, in turn, do the bulk orders of household supplies and other foods (including about 90% of the cats' supplies) from places like Amazon and Walmart.com.
Daisy almost always takes it upon herself to clean the bathrooms and to clean/organize the kitchen, though I have been known to scrub down toilets and sinks from time to time as well, and have cleaned/reorganized the kitchen on numerous occasions over the past few years.
These are just examples. I suggest that you come to an understanding or mutual agreement on chores and responsibilities one way or another. It can happen organically and with a fluidity like it does for Daisy and myself, or you can both sit down with lists, draw straws, pick chores from a hat, etc. The main thing is that you need to find a balance of sorts and split things evenly. If one spouse or the other does consistently more than they should be doing, it's going to breed resentment and bad vibes.
07. What kind of boundaries protect your marriage?
Daisy and I have some spoken boundaries and some unwritten ones, and for the most part they're pretty obvious ones. No infidelity or physical violence of any sort are quite obviously the big ones. No screaming. No putting ourselves in toxic situations, or into toxic friendships with toxic people -- in fact, we don't really have people we'd call "close friends" that she and I don't equally share. Daisy and I both have people in our lives that we've known and have been close with for 20+ years, but of that small number of people that we see and/or interact with on a fairly frequent basis, none of them are solely my friend or solely her friend -- when Daisy and I married, his and hers became ours. That doesn't mean we share all friends, but the most important ones are definitely shared friendships that we both invest time and emotional energy into. There's also a secondary rule/boundary here though -- we don't get involved in other peoples' fighting or petty drama or what have you as it's not worth our time and it does nothing to serve us.
Along those lines, another boundary is that nobody gets more time or energy from me than her, and she gets more time and energy from me than anyone or anything else in my life. This is a big one. We can have some separate friends or acquaintances or hobbies, yes, but nothing is more important than time spent with one another. Time is very important in our relationship, both the concept of it as well as closeness/bonding/intimate time together.
Another boundary/rule we have is that -- not that we don't trust one another, but for peace of mind's sake -- there is never a time where she doesn't know where I am and what I'm doing, and there's almost never a time where I don't know where she is and what she's doing. It's a scary world out there, and while we're both safe and cautious in it, we also tend to do most things together. When we don't -- such as when she goes out for drinks with her work folks on Friday nights or what have you -- she always checks in with me to let me know she's safe and okay. That sort of reassurance goes a long way. If I ever left the house or had actual interpersonal friendships outside of my computer screen, I'd do the same for her, of course.
Daisy and I also have a rule that if we're in an argument and either she or I needs to walk away to cool off before the relationship is damaged and come back when cooler heads prevail, we get to do that. I have to tell you that I am very bad at keeping this boundary, because when I'm heated it almost feels like a complete cop out for her to be able to pull the "I'm walking away now" card, and I absolutely do not like it, but I am working on it. We also have the rule/boundary that we don't say anything out of hate or spite or with the intention of hurting the other person, even if/when we're at our angriest point in a fight.
Things like this I think are good examples for relationship boundaries, but this is but a baseline framework. It's up to you as a couple and you two alone on how to set and apply boundaries. Some people have open relationships, some people don't need or want to know where their partner is at all times and couldn't care less as long as they come home at night, some people don't have any "rules" whatsoever when they fight, and to some people marriage is just a piece of paper that you both sign that allows you to file joint taxes and get joint health and life insurance. But, I will stress, it is very important that before you get married, both of you work together to set some hard-set boundaries and red flags, because once you're married...like it or not, you're stuck with that person and all of their flaws as well as their strengths. While I didn't have one myself, I am a proponent of the "long engagement" and of cohabitation before marriage. You will never get to know the ins and outs of someone if you don't live with them first and if you don't have an engagement period of at least a year or so.
I do have an example of a boundary in our marriage that I wanted to put into place, but Daisy wouldn't allow it -- and that is the use of the "hard no." I've asked Daisy before -- begged her at times, in fact -- to allow its implementation on both sides of the coin. The "hard no" is a simple rule, and either of us would get to use it, if only as a nuclear option -- if one of us wants something or wants to do something or get something or go somewhere or etc etc, it doesn't matter, and if the other is vehemently opposed to it, they get to utilize the "hard no" and there's just no more discussion on it after that point, it doesn't happen, full stop, period, it doesn't ever get brought up as a possibility again, the end.
In the entirety of our almost eight-year marriage, I can only think of about three times offhand I would've ever thought about using the "hard no" to end a discussion or a fight. It's not like it would be an everyday thing.
Mind you, I didn't just want this power for myself -- I wanted Daisy to have it too. She wouldn't allow it, stating something along the lines of "why would I ever want to deny you something that's important to you?" Which to me is not a great argument, because I believe in any relationship -- not just marriages, but friendships, at jobs, etc -- you should be able to draw a proverbial line in the sand at any time that doesn't get crossed, that lets people know that this is your stopping point. Anyone should be able to do this. It is the definition of a boundary. It doesn't matter what your reasoning is. There are just some things you should be able to stand up for yourself on and say that you will never do or you will never allow to happen.
I guess that brings me to the final boundary I'd suggest you set up in any relationship before marriage -- you still get to be your own person. Within reason, of course. Yes, a marriage is a partnership and what you do in life reflects on your partner once you're married. But that doesn't mean you get to give up your freedoms or change who you are just because you took some vows. Don't say no to everything, but also don't say yes to everything. Set the boundary for yourself that you're going to be who you are, and make sure your partner knows that as well -- if they can't accept you for the real you and for the person you really are, they are not someone you should be marrying. If your partner is a smoker and you hate smoking, you either accept it or you move on. If you're a vegetarian or vegan and your partner is an unabashed carnivore and hates vegetarians and vegans, it might be time to move on. If you're intelligent and your partner is a Republican and/or Trump supporter, it is definitely time to move on. Don't go into a relationship or a marriage thinking you're going to be able to change someone or "fix" them, or that one day they'll have an epiphany and will decide to see things from your point of view. You've probably heard this before, but people only change things about themselves if they actually want to. You have to be able to accept one another without judgment if you want a relationship to work. The previous examples I've made are common ones for the most part, but some more serious ones include extreme differences in religious beliefs or political/social ideologies, and more minor ones even come down to taste in music, movies, or pop culture as a whole. When you hear a cause of divorce as being "irreconcilable differences," this is why. Don't go into a marriage without that acceptance.
So yeah, there you have it -- there's my thoughts on relationships and marriage. I will tell you, I am not a perfect husband or person. I am, in fact, far from it, and I don't believe anyone can ever achieve true perfection. Everyone has flaws and foibles, pitfalls and perils to navigate. I feel that I am a better husband than most, and I feel that Daisy is the best wife I could've ever asked for. If there's nothing you take from this post (other than the "pick your battles" section above) understand that everything in a marriage is a learning experience. You will make mistakes. We all do. But you learn from them, and then you move on. If you don't learn, if you don't apply your gained knowledge, your marriage is destined to fail.
Don't take what I say as gospel, though -- what works for us may not work for you, and vice versa.
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