Relationships Talk

Another of my nieces is planning a wedding. When my wife asked what kind of shower the extended family should give — thinking maybe kitchen gadgets or china — my niece answered: “Advice.”

“Oh boy,” I thought. “Is this going to be a shower or a tsunami?”

Given that I have four brothers and a sister and we’ve all logged decades of marriage, and that my mother would be there still in deep reflection over the 60-plus years of marriage she had with my late father, that some of the cousins are just far enough into their bringing-up-baby marriages to have fresher perspective, and that other cousins are in their late teens and early 20s and marriage is not even on their radar yet, the event promised to be interesting, perhaps enlightening, maybe hilarious.

My niece (let’s call her “Eve”) is clearly not a material girl. She has long demonstrated a distinct family love and loyalty; her choice for an “advice shower” is consistent with her nature; nobody doubted that she could roll with the punches. Most of us are still just getting acquainted with her “Adam,” so we didn’t know how he would perform under a little pressure. There were lots of ways this could go badly.

My sister threw in a new twist: We would pass the book of advice around the room and each read an entry but not our own. Adam and Eve would have to guess whose advice they were hearing. My wife kept score.

A lot of the advice boiled down to, “Don’t keep score.”

Of course, that’s part of the fun in a game, necessary in business and much of life but potentially disastrous for relationships of love. Experience spoke. The temptation is ever-present and strong — we said to Adam and Eve — to reach for that one fact that will put your spouse in his or her place. Our failures on this front made excellent fodder for humor.

Some advice was ironic: “Beware of marriage advice from your family.” Some was odd: “Always neuter your pets.” Some was not particularly good (in my opinion): “Don’t go to bed angry.” (I’ve found that a good rest and the work the mind does during sleep is way more constructive than a late-night harangue.) And then there were recipes, the most practical kind of advice, full of the wisdom of experience.

I tried to tailor my words to the couple, who are both brainy and headed for grad school in biology (her) and nuclear engineering (him). Here’s my “Marriage Advice from Uncle John.” It’s a top-10 list of things I’ve learned from marriage (and Google); as I said to Adam and Eve, take any of it you like and discard the rest.

10. Most advice about marriage is discarded — until much later when you find yourself saying things that your old gray uncle told you years before but you couldn’t take him seriously because he had hair growing out of his ears.

9. The human body, like all matter, is mostly empty space; for example, a hydrogen atom is about 99.999999999 percent empty space. This reality is not what you see when you gaze lovingly into one another’s eyes. Some realities are very difficult to perceive.

8. Studies have shown that most people do not actually know themselves very well; spouses are crucial correctives to this. Speak up. Listen up. Some realities are very difficult to accept.

7. Never mistake truth for love.

6. Always distrust words such as “never” and “always,” particularly when describing the shortcomings of your spouse. You will eat those words one day.

5. Actual eating is more important than almost anything. Meals together — especially when you share the preparation and cleanup — are sustenance for the soul as well as the body. Take this communion often.

4. Your spouse’s soul and body are not yours, which may be the main reason they are so delicious. The best marriages honor the distance between two people and nurture the full flowering of each.

3. A full flowering marriage is like a biome. I have read that biomes are complex adaptive systems in which macroscopic patterns reflect the collective dynamics of individual units at lower levels of organization and feedback to affect those more microscopic dynamics. This is a pretty good definition of a marriage. It takes love to keep it healthy.

2. Love is made. You may think it is a miraculous gift from above, and it is, but the gift is actually your capacity to make love — by making the bed, making a meal, making your spouse’s day in any way small or large. (Sub-point: Lovemaking is not sex, but it is sexy and adds enormous heat.)

1. All marriages fail. Your marriage will fail — it will fail your expectations. But I trust it won’t end. The difference is in your commitment to make love even when you don’t feel like it. Happily ever after is actually today. Carpe diem! This is the day the Lord has made! If you, with word and deed, pronounce one another husband and wife each day, love will never fail.

Now, get this: Out of about 30 bits of advice, Adam and Eve, correctly identified the giver nearly every time. They have been watching us more closely than we knew. There is a lesson in that for all of us.

John Styron is a freelance writer in Granby.