how to stay married

very serious and accurate advice

limit overlapping interests
this might sound counterintuitive but trust me, it is correct. real conversation from the other night when i foolishly interrupted my lady’s intense, concentrated scrolling with some straight up bullshit:
me “have you seen the tiktok of this diva doing a death drop at his high school graduation?”
her “are you sick in the head? have you seen the invasive plant species that is choking the oak tree next to the compost?”
me (awkward silence)
her (irritated silence)
both (happily return to our separate interests)

befriend their friends but not too too much
i like my lady’s friends, and every time i text one without including her in the thread i feel like i am getting away with something, and that’s how it should feel. those are her people to talk to about how infuriating i am. they are not team me, they are walking encyclopedias of everything i’ve done to piss her off over the last thirteen years, including all the shit that was too minute to bring up to me but not so small that she couldn’t complain about it to someone who doesn’t live with us. fully relax around a friendship cop who has an annotated list of all my marriage crimes? absolutely not!

check the fridge before you instacart so you don’t have to eat six mustards
we don’t grocery shop together because that’s fucking crazy. just imagining the two of us, i don’t know, consulting each other in the middle of the canned goods aisle at meijer? i just burst out laughing. not me sneering at how much cabbage my lady puts in the cart as she attempts to explain to me that zero sugar cool whip also has zero nutritional value! that’s why she goes to the store, and i tip a bored teenager 20% to order [something we probably already have if i would just go look through a goddamn cabinet] on my phone.

if you’re gay put all your stuff in a trust for when they eventually make bumping pussies illegal
the process was so complicated and expensive that i will truly never get divorced because fuck doing all that paperwork in reverse. we had to hire an estate lawyer, a profession i didn’t even know existed until five years ago, and go to her fancy office several times, which i did not like doing. i had to make a will (??) and decide who would inherit my stickers and monster porn. it’s not like we even have a lot to protect, but of course i’m gonna die before my lady and, when i do, imagine her having to fight the federal government to gain custody of my $7.46 warner brothers residual checks because they no longer recognize shared gay assets. my cremains are sprinkled outside of a red lobster just chilling while this bitch is in front of the supreme court asking brett kavanaugh if he knows who miranda hobbes is, ABSURD!!

separate your bank accounts
of course we have one that we share, but that’s not the one i buy my stupid bullshit out of. my lady isn’t even the kind of person who would dig up the receipts like “why did you spend thirty dollars on artisanal incense? that coloring app you like costs nine american dollars every month? do you need to have premium access to the tennis channel? who reads this subscription to the atlantic you pay for?” but i’d still like to make sure she never has the chance. (i signed up for a free trial of the tennis channel like three years ago??? to watch a single coco gauff match and forgot to cancel it and now i can’t figure out how to get out of it, it’s so unnecessarily expensive, see you on the lawn at wimbledon i guess!)

go to bed at different times
one of us likes to get a full night of well-rested sleep (her) and the other likes to stay up until 2am bathed in the cancerous blue light of both the muted television and the phone pressed directly against her eyeballs (not her).

have a real conversation about the temperature at which you maintain your home
I CANNOT BE HOT. we don’t have central air conditioning so that i can “feel a cross breeze” with the windows open, we have it so i can be cold. i spent thirty-six years of my life sweltering in cheap chicago apartments, i have done my penance: please let me live inside a refrigerator in the summertime. if the outside temperature registers above eighty degrees, the windows must be closed and the air must be on, i would love to be able to see my breath while sitting on the toilet!!! in exchange, as a compromise, when it is chilly out i will sacrifice my need to maintain my domicile black people warm (98 degrees F) and wear socks plus multiple sweaters so that my bride can set the thermostat at her preferred sixty-six-degreed caucasian “warmth.” this was in our wedding vows.

get two smaller pizzas instead of trying to agree on one big one
i don’t want fresh corn, i don’t want serrano chiles, i don’t want asparagus, i don’t want roasted cherry tomatoes, i don’t want bacon, i don’t want fig jam, i don’t want buffalo sauce, i don’t want hamburger, i don’t want hot dog (??), i don’t want spinach, i definitely don’t want arugula, i don’t want peas, i don’t want raw onions, i don’t want olives of any variety, i don’t want brussels sprouts, i don’t want prosciutto, i don’t want chives, i don’t want alfredo sauce, i don’t want eggplant, i don’t want avocado, i don’t want fucking pickles, i don’t want fucking beans, i don’t want big ass beefsteak tomato slices, i don’t want almonds, i don’t want pine nuts, i don’t want peanuts, i don’t want literally any kind of nuts, i don’t want clams, i don’t want citrus zest, i don’t want shrimp, i don’t want eggs, i don’t want berries, i don’t want tuna, i don’t want broccoli florets, i don’t want cauliflower florets, i don’t want florets of any freaking kind, what i want is my own pizza.

read different books
the last book my lady read was wards of the state: the long shadow of american foster care by claudia rowe. i just started a book called the cock down the block about a football player who wants to fuck a fat librarian. we do not recommend books to one another, and i think that’s beautiful.

if you have two cars, never be a passenger in the one that you drive
nothing turns me into the secretary of state faster than getting dropped off somewhere in my own car. i don’t even have a nice car; i have a clicking, clanking piece of literal shit whose interior is blanketed in short, coarse chihuahua hairs, but as soon as i’m not the one behind the wheel the grumpy dad who lives inside my head involuntarily says shit like, “took that corner kind of fast, didn’t ya?” and “start braking sooner” and “don’t adjust my mirrors, i finally got em just like i like em” and i gross myself OUT. call me a lyft.

don’t listen too closely when the other person is talking, then they’re always a little mysterious to you
my lady loves repeating herself because i wasn’t paying attention the first two times.

have a suggestion ready when you broach the difficult question “what do you want for dinner?”
i don’t have it in me to go six rounds of “what do you have a taste for?” at seven pm on a weeknight because i will die. i open the negotiation with “do you want a sandwich?” because i’m actually this grandma and i know my lady literally never wants sandwiches as much as i do, but at least i’ve made a suggestion and now the pressure is off me and onto her, where it belongs, because i would eat dog food if it meant we didn’t have to have a whole ass discussion about a lukewarm meal that takes six minutes to eat.

“where should we eat tonight?” is another fucking landmine so come prepared
of the PLACES WE GO, i will be happy to go to any of them. new spots we gotta strategize for in advance; my obsessive compulsive disorder will not allow me to go to a new place without conducting extensive research beforehand, but if we’re going to a place whose menu i’ve already memorized it’s fine, who cares. so, instead of asking where we should go or answering “hmm, i dunno, what do you think?” when she asks me, which is an invitation to initiate a heated crossfire-style debate over every restaurant in southwest michigan, i hit her with the “want to go to rustica? how about saffron? i love the cocktails at principle. we could go to brick and brine if you feel like putting nice pants on? we haven’t been to chinn chinn in a minute. what about bell’s? i love that chopped salad at martini’s. is dog and the bank too far?” or any other place i know i like to go and just let her pick, who cares, talking about restaurants when you’re hungry is the worst.

decide when you’re leaving before you get to the thing
i never leave the house without a plan for exactly when i will be back. oh, the mansbergers’ annual christmas party starts at seven? we will be leaving at eight-thirty. the florence and the machine show is outdoors and an hour away? let’s be in the car and leaving before the encore. we don’t have that couple telepathy, and no matter what i’m doing i always appear to be under duress so communicating that with my face is nearly impossible, so deciding how the night is going to end before it’s even begun is crucial. no one wants to be the freak desperately trying to point to the door with their eyebrows while their clueless partner is being held hostage by her kid’s best friend’s mother’s wasted father-in-law next to the cake table at a birthday party. that freak wants to be at home.

do not share shower or bath products
you never know what kind of little bitch you can be until someone who is not you uses more than a teaspoon of your $$$ body wash.

vacation separately
people hit me up like “hey, how was your trip to [beautiful natural location to which i would never go]? what’s it like?” because my lady posted a picture of herself and her children happily being misted by the spray from a gorgeous waterfall in the upper peninsula and, my brother in christ………….i don’t know? i do not know where the best pulled pork in north carolina is. i also cannot tell you a single freaking thing about the many beautiful hot springs of central florida. i’m not laughing just out of frame at that dusty alpaca farm in arkansas, I AM IN A LUXURY HOTEL IN CHICAGO. i’ll see that lady at home.

only have low-stakes microfights
a mini-fight a day keeps the maxi-fights away!

don’t move shit that isn’t yours
speaking of microfights, one of my favorite ones is “you ‘put away’ that thing i left in a common area that annoyed you, and now that i can’t find it i have no other choice than to purchase another one.” yes, maybe it’s frustrating to you that i left my sweet nike fleece duster on the chair in the dining room that no one ever sits in, BUT: now i have two. brb fucking up two chairs!

gossip a lot
all we do is talk about everybody else’s shit, because we literally don’t do anything worth mentioning to each other. i’m not gonna try to pretend i had an interesting day when the only words i’ve spoken were to the man at trader joe’s who told me the rosemary marcona almonds i was purchasing were a “really solid choice.” occasionally at the end of a day i’ll have something exciting to tell her like, “dan and i went to breakfast at greenhouse this morning” but even then all dan and i did was gossip about other people who aren’t us (i love a best man friend who is a fucking BIRD), so i just pass that gossip right on to my lady in lieu of telling her something she’s already heard me say yet again.

only one of you can get fucked up during a night out
this doesn’t even happen that often but as soon as i see my lady flag the bartender down for her fourth dry white wine of the evening i pop a couple excedrin and immediately switch to water.

know what they want from the drive-thru
i don’t really have a convenient food kind of wife, BUT: i could tell you what she wouldn’t want from any gas station or drive-thru in america, which means i can always find something she would. nothing is more offensive to me than being brought the wrong thing by someone who should really fucking know better.

get some pets so you can always say “hey look at the dog” if you need something to say to the person you’ve been talking to for over thirteen years
i don’t have anything new to say. what is even important to me? i don’t have a job, my lady doesn’t care about collision sports or reality television, and if i ever found myself attempting to losersplain a meme that made me laugh to her i would go lie down on the highway. saying “look, i put shoes on the dog!” is a perfectly acceptable way to break up the dead air between us that my lady might otherwise fill with fantasies about someone more exciting.

one jokester is enough! there is only one clown allowed in this circus, someone has to be the ringmaster!
everyone hates the “funny” couple.

turn the fan and an obnoxiously loud noise machine on when you’re in bed and also do not touch each other if you can help it
here’s how to sleep for ten years with another moody, hot-flashing, night-sweating hormone monster: turn on the overhead fan, and point a tower fan on its highest setting directly at the bed; get in the cool and crisp cotton percale sheets, snuggle in and rub your feet together cricket-style, adjust your adjustable pillow (we were gently pressured into buying these by the charming salesman at mattress firm but they are so good, i should tell yelp), turn on your white noise machine (i absolutely will not live without one), scooch to your opposite bedsides with a clear yet invisible line of demarcation between you, then sleep peacefully for the next 2 to 3 hours max if you are a woman drowning in the depths of perimenopause who can no longer sleep throughout an entire fucking night.

MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS
i do not know what this bitch does at work. i don’t know where her job is located; i do know she is a social worker in the public schools and that she does not remove children from their homes, but other than that i don’t know shit else about her occupation or her education (i know she got a master’s degree from the university of chicago but other than that? who can say) or literally anything about her life outside of this house. conversely, she couldn’t begin to tell you how i write a joke or how i put my ideas together or when i’m sitting at my desk writing versus when i’m sitting at my desk anonymously scrolling gay romance subreddits, and she doesn’t read my work until it’s published. neither of us has any idea what the other one does all day, and this is the key to our marriage.

get yourself a trustworthy florist
my florist is named suzi and she owns and operates an heirloom flower farm (a what), and even if i wait until thirty-two minutes before mother’s day (i don’t have human children?? why would i track that) i can enter my credit card into her website and know that she will put together a beautiful arrangement of gorgeous seasonal (??) blooms and leave it at my door, therefore giving me the appearance of a thoughtful spouse who is thoughtful and generous and appreciative and, you know, who really thinks. she does not have to know that i have never in my life considered the color of a flower or its texture or filler greens or what’s in season or what gets paired with what. i don’t want to know what colors are appropriate for an anniversary. i don’t want to know about all the different flower breeds. imagine me?? learning??? what a ranunculus is???? PLEASE. that’s why i have suzi!!!!!! (i don’t ever need flowers, just grab me a twix and some boner pills next time you go to the gas station)

concede first and quickly if it’ll shut down a conversation you don’t want to have
you know when you have a talk that’s not necessarily a fight, but is definitely not a casual chat? like, it’s serious but not deadly serious? i never want to have those, there’s always something stupider and more fun i could be doing. so as soon as i feel a “hey, can i talk to you for a sec?” brewing i’m heading it off at the pass like, “you’re right, i’ll do that, thank you” or “you’re right, i didn’t do that, i apologize” or “you’re right, whatever you want to do about that is fine, you know best” and then the shit is over and i can go back to doing whatever i want to be doing, which is never ever talking about whatever this bullshit is!!!!

happy ten years to my beloved, thank you for letting me continue to do this to you, i apologize for buying more ginger paste without checking to see if the last ginger paste i bought a week ago was all used up, please don’t move my jacket.