Ask yourself this. If you were expected to learn how to fly a Boeing 747 or perform a brain operation with a surgical laser, they would at the very least provide you with a thick manual. Or at least SOME kind of pamphlet!
In the name of fairness, no one has yet offered me a manual on “The Operation of a Marriage.” You will take note that I did NOT say “The Operation of a Wife.”
I am no fool nor suicidal. The first page of any theoretical “manual” would have warned me that words are a minefield. They will bite you in the…
Since this article is the preview of my future manual, it’s free. For the whole book however, you have to pay to learn the Secrets of the Married Universe that I have accumulated over decades of pain and confusion. You can Paypal the $1.15 to my email address plus $375 shipping. (I am up on the latest marketing techniques)
First of all, it’s NOT the big stuff that will wreck the marriage train. Affairs, bankruptcy, fatal illnesses etc. are not good for your domestic bliss, but the most important thing is to LEARN TO LIVE with your spouse’s neuroses and quirks.
And own up to your own.
Oh…YOU don’t have any? Yeah…let me talk to your wife or husband for five minutes.
If you talk to my wife, better reserve six-to-eight hours on your daily calendar.
First, but hardly last, she will tell you that I never ever ever throw ANYTHING away, eating up enormous amounts of space and making it impossible to even move through certain areas of the house.
I have shirts I bought in 1979 hanging in the closet. They are size 15 ½. I am not. Checkbook ledgers detailing my expenditures back into the 1980’s. Old computers that probably ran several of the space shuttle launches. Boxes of snapshot photos of people that I have no idea who they were or where they were taken. Piles of electronic gizmos that haven’t worked since Y2K (Maybe there WAS something to that!) Drives her crazy.
She still complains about it, but hasn’t called a lawyer or a psychiatrist. Yet.
On her account, twice a year she hides the time of day from me.
Not counting watches, we have about 8-10 clocks hanging on walls. When daylight savings comes and then goes, her job is to change the hands on the clocks. My wife will do two or maybe three, then take a break for a few days. Then repeat.
After being late or early for numerous things for a couple of weeks, at some point I will actually know what time it is. Drives me crazy.
I still complain about it, but I haven’t called a lawyer or a psychiatrist. Yet.
My hearing, or lack of, is always a bone of contention. Suggestions that I go to the doctor and get some kind of device (here it comes)…fall on deaf ears.
Decades of very loud live music destroyed that ability a long time ago, but my standard response has become my motto: “Don’t care. There’s nuthin’ I want to hear that much anyway.” On the very rare occasion that we go to a movie theatre, I keep telling her to turn the captions on.
Just for revenge, she tries to talk to me from upstairs or two rooms away. Then I get up only to find she was talking to Bella the dog.
People think that avoiding a fight and not responding is the way to go. No no no.
Get it out. Spit it out. Blow it out. Don’t let it fester. Kill it in the cradle.
At the point of disagreement, we go at it HARD. Snapping, snarling and barking like a German Shepherd chomping on a Secret Service agent’s leg. For about 30 seconds.
Then it’s over and done with and we’re gossiping about our friends and their foibles, trashing those not-so-friendlies and talking about what we’ll have for dinner.
Thom Caraccio ([email protected]) is a retired musician and retired motion picture scenic artist living in West Palm Beach, Florida who hails from Columbus. He graduated from S.D. Lee High in 1968 and still considers Columbus his real hometown.
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