Touré: How To Get and Stay Married
There’s nothing wrong with you if you reach the age called “marriage o’clock,” and you’re still not married. It’s complex finding someone and getting that relationship to the altar and beyond. I’m no marriage expert, but I’m in a happy marriage with our seventh anniversary around the corner. My parents are in one, too: their 43rd anniversary just passed. The effort to make it work and the problems we have and those we’ve worked through have led me to a few thoughts on what you can do to make your relationship a little more weather-proof. In order to make a couple survive, you must put it ahead of self. Love or destiny or fate simply won’t carry you. If a relationship is a nation, then it’s patriotic to do selfless things that will help the relationship, such as:
1. Know that the grass ain’t greener
Don’t look at other couples and think they have it all together while you and your mate don’t. That’ll just make you feel bad about your relationship and drag you down. Those smiling people who look like they have it all do have it all — including problems. You just have no idea what they are. And don’t look at individuals you’re not with and think you could have a better relationship with them. It’s easy to fantasize that the sexy acquaintance with whom you have a buzzy rapport with would make a hot, fun, trouble-free girlfriend, but she’s just someone whose problems you don’t know yet. Love the one you’re with, and work through the problems you know.
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2. Fight fair!
Every relationship will run into potholes, but the difference between a lasting one and one that runs aground can be the nature of how you fight. Are you using those heavy conversations to work on resolving problems or dumping negative emotion and resentment onto your partner? Fighting fair means those difficult conversations can be more productive and probably last less time. How can you do that? Many thoughts. First, constrain yourself to the specific disagreement and the particular moment you’re disagreeing about. Don’t make it into a referendum on your entire relationship and start linking to other issues you have. Don’t bring up old fights or points of disagreement. Avoid words like always and never which make the problem impossible to address. The more you can segregate each conflict, the more productive the conversation can be.
Every good couple knows how to push each other’s buttons and when your partner makes you mad you mash their buttons to get them back. Work hard at not doing this. It’s easy to agree to when you’re happy and easy to give in to the temptation of when you’re mad. Restrain yourself. It’s horrible for the couple.
Avoid with all your might escalating the conflict. A couple will be discussing something at one tone and then someone will say something — a curse word or a diss or a nasty generalization or an aggressive, leading string of words like “What’s your problem?” or anything said in a tone that raises the anger and the stakes. Any of that elevates the interaction to another level of acrimony. Don’t be an escalator. When couples fight there’s no possibility of an individual winner. Either the couple grows stronger or it doesn’t.
Also, grudges are like relationship tumors so develop couples’ amnesia, i.e., after you address the problem try to forget about it. I was out to dinner with my parents a few weeks ago and my dad said something that really annoyed my mom but within two minutes she had forgotten it and was laughing with him about something else. I’ve seen him do that for her before. Their relationship amnesia helps make sure their good times are not ruined by one wrong note. That’s healthier than holding on to grievances or keeping a running tab of them.