MARRIAGE ADVICE FOR FREE, DAVE IS EXTRA

Marriage advice from the never married, or multiple married, is like writing your weight on a restroom wall.

Why write your weight on a restroom wall?

So, in case you fall in, they’ll know how much to take out.

How much is thirty six years? No one knows.

After politely listening to someone who’s never been married or had kids explain what it’s like being married and having kids, something clicked.

They’re probably not the only one with such informed opinions on things they have no direct experience with.

Why didn’t I step in at the time?

I shut-up because it seemed like the person talking was working through a few things, like her parents and brothers and sisters.

I didn’t know, didn’t want to find out, and felt like being a good audience was the best choice.

Besides, how long can someone complain about their life choices?

As it turned out, a long time.

I’m not the official Married With Advice guy. If that’s what you’re looking for, keep looking.

But I am the How To Stay Married guy.

And I’ve got the marriage advice rules handy.

Daily Activities Of Married Life

Remember when your mother told you to clean up your room?

But you didn’t think it was messy enough to clean so you told your ma to go pound sand?

Yeah, me neither.

The only reason she didn’t enforce her own orders is because you were big enough for her to say, “Wait until your father comes home,” and he’d tell you what’s what.

Except that never happened in my happy home.

My Mom was 5’10” with a mean streak and wasn’t afraid of anything, especially some smart mouthed kid.

The only reason she’d say, “Wait until your father comes home” is so he could say, “Why didn’t you listen to your mother?”

My grandma stood six foot even. Women in the family got their share of respect.

Or else.

2

When you get married and your wife asks you to clean up whatever mess you made, it’s important to remember it’s your wife, not your momma.

It bears repeating: Your wife is not your mother.

Even though President Ronald Reagan called his second wife Mommy, and former Vice President calls his wife Mother, you still should keep the roles of Mom and Wife separate, like Church and State.

No one, no normal person, wants any confusion on those roles.

Pence wouldn’t be the first man at the highest rungs of the executive branch to call his wife “Mother,” or some variation of it, according to Carl Sferrazza Anthony, a historian of first ladies.

Abraham Lincoln called Mary “Mother” (or Molly), and Calvin Coolidge referred to wife Grace as “Mamma.” More recently, Gerald Ford referred to Betty as “Mother” (after they had children) and Ronald Reagan called Nancy “Mommy.”

A website called New Jersey Bride posted ‘The Best Marriage Advice We’ve Ever Read.’

It comes from a blog written by a guy named Dave. Hmmm?

Post titles include:

How Wives Should Prepare for Sex

How Wives REALLY Want Husbands to Prepare for Sex

Treating Your Spouse Like Jesus

When your wife asks you to clean up your mess, and it’s really her mess, she’s asking for help after cooking you dinner.

Show some appreciation. Help her out.

She’s not your mom telling you to clean up your room as a measure of her progress as a parent.

It’s your wife measuring how you were raised.

Backtalk your mom and see what happens when you’re grounded for the next month or two.

Ignore your wife’s request and you’ll learn how to open a can of spam.

And like it.

Marriage Advice: Clean Up Your Mess Without Being Asked

Unless you met cute and got married in Vegas a week later, your wife knows a few things you’d like her to forget.

We have one that won’t go away:

My last single-man apartment rented out at $155 / month. And it wasn’t a dive.

It was The Burgess on NW Lovejoy in Portland between 20th and 21st.

The manager at the time was a free wheeling Cadillac driving pimp who kept a few rooms open for his business.

One of his neighbors said he was the inspiration behind Gus Van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy.

Well, to begin with, nobody, and I mean nobody, can talk a junkie out of using. You can talk to ’em for years but sooner or later they’re gonna get ahold of something. Maybe it’s not dope. Maybe it’s booze, maybe it’s glue, maybe it’s gasoline. Maybe it’s a gunshot to the head. But something. Something to relieve the pressures of their everyday life, like having to tie their shoes.

He’d heard me play my guitar and invited me in for a lesson. His shoes were untied.

The guy was playing guitar while nodding out on a chair in the middle of the room while his wife hit provocative yoga porn poses in an overstuffed chair in the corner.

It wasn’t a messy room, just messy lives. I scoped it out, played a few chords, and left.

Other neighbors told better stories.

2

One winter day the sash cord in my big window broke. The glass broke when the window slammed shut with no counter weight.

No one wanted to fix the broken rope or glass. It was winter and cold, so I fixed it by taping a sheet of black visqueen over the window.

In the middle of the night the wind pushed the visqueen in and it broke loose. I woke up to the flapping.

I nailed it to the window frame and ran twine across it from nail to nail. The wind pushed it in and sucked it out like a big lung, but it didn’t rip loose.

Since it looked a little shady, I hung the rest of my apartment in black visqueen for a designer feel.

That’s how I explained it to my future wife.

She said it looked like a psycho’s lair. Score for me, but the stuff had an unhealthy stink after a day so I took it down.

She didn’t have to ask.

Don’t Ask, Do

A big part of giving any kind of marriage advice is believability.

Too many times we hear great things from unreliable narrators.

History has proven that a man can confess to sexual assault / Hollywood career counseling and not miss a step in the Bible Belt. He can even sell ‘Grab My Pussy’ t-shirts to the faithful.

I don’t own one, but my credentials for marriage advice goes much further.

A girl in junior high invited me to her house and I never wanted to leave.

Her older sisters were babes and her brother was a varsity athlete. Things were lively as hell.

Later I visited another girl’s home. The curtains were down, air thick with cigarette smoke, sisters with babies smoking on the couch, little kids running around.

Between the two I’ve found the sweet spot between exciting and dangerous for over a third of a century.

What kind of excitement?

Being with kids and their in-laws excitement. Now that you know I’ve seen the edge, imagine my thrill.

Show me a Baby Boomer who feels like life has passed them by and I’ll show you how they can catch up.

Better yet, I’ll tell you right here:

Be A Good Listener

Start with a kind word to your husband or wife.

I did:

W: Watch your drinking today.

Me: Honey, it’s five in the morning.

W: No slurring.

Me: I’ve got morning dry mouth.

W: I mean later.

Me: I’m drinking later, just like the other day when you said you’d drive and changed your mind.

W: Why do you need to drink?

Me: Because it’s Thanksgiving, my birthday, Christmas, Oregon football, the Cowboys, doing yard work, cooking, cleaning, in the shower, in the garage.

W: Do you even hear what you’re saying?

Me: Do you? You asked a question, I gave an answer. It’s called normal conversation, or as normal as I expect.

W: That was some answer.

Me: Yes is was. Since you brought it up I wanted you to know I had my limits.

W: You do?

Me: I don’t drink with my girlfriends, your girlfriends, anyone’s girlfriends, or with the fellas struggling to live up to their low expectations, or the dregs of society, the backwash of civilization, the cons, the slicks, the momma’s boys, or swinging dicks. 

W: You sound like a rapper.

Me: So we’ll take it easy today. Cup of coffee?

W: Yes, thank you.

Me: You’ve never heard me slur outside the house.

W: But you have here more than once.

Me: You’re welcome.

W: What?

Me: Coffee?

W: Okay.

Me to our Thanksgiving dinner hosts last night:

“I’ll apologize ahead or time if my wife goes on a bender and starts slurring her fiscally conservative and socially liberal propaganda.

“And I’m apologizing now if I slur out a pro-abortion, women’s health, pro-choice screed I memorized from the fake media. That’s right, I’ve done my own research.”

And hilarity ensued.