T.T.: Marriage (Non-) Advice

Today marks 19 years of marriage for A. and me. Since our anniversary happened to fall this year on a Tuesday, I felt it behooved me to make today's tip about how to have a successful marriage.

Look! Here's a photo of A. and I giving advice on our wedding day! 

We went to a Quaker wedding once after we'd been married for six years or so, in which the bride and groom sat in front of all the guests and invited any guest who wished to stand up and give them advice for their married life. Many people stood up and said many things.

And then I stood up and said they shouldn't listen to any of it.

Okay, so I wasn't that rude. What I actually said was this: Marriages are highly individual, because they are a union of two individual people. No one outside that marriage can ever really know what it's like on the inside of that relationship.

There is no universal advice for such a situation. There can't even be a universal agreement on what constitutes a "successful" marriage.

In marriage, as with so much else in life, every person has to figure out what works for him or her. Except in the case of marriage, it also has to work for the spouse.

That's a pretty tall order, and no one should ever expect that to be easy.

Not easy, no. But rewarding and adventurous and lots of other good things. 

So here's to A., 19 years of adventures, and many more to come.

Not taking yourself too seriously might be a useful piece of advice, actually. We started on our wedding day with a Napolean portrait.