- Marriage is an equal partnership. Also, it’s not 50/50.
- Happy wife, happy life.
- Don’t have kids right away. Don’t wait too long to have kids.
- Don’t have kids 20 minutes after eating.
- Work all the time so you can save money.
- Make friends with other couples. Don’t abandon your single friends. Make friends with your neighbors. Make friends with your postman. Do not make friends with Chet.
- Happy wife, happy life. Happy breadknife, happy wife.
- Make time for each other.
- Give yourself space when you have a fight—visit a friend! Get a hotel room! Enroll in a strenuous two year training program at NASA and rocket yourself to the moon!
- Never go to bed angry—sleep in a hammock so you can be soothed by the swaying motion as you flail through various REM cycles in a burning haze of nuptial rage.
- Find someone who likes the same thermostat settings as you—or marry someone who likes it cold but hasn’t seen Batman and Robin so you can take the credit for Mr. Freeze’s puns.
- The husband is the bear and the wife is the honeypot and the bear will do anything to get to the honeypot. (Yep.)
- Always communicate with your partner. Never Chet.
- Keep some things to yourself.
- Buy his and her blankets. His and her salt and pepper shakers. His and her eyebrow tweezers. His and her underwear. His and her Vitamix blenders. His and Chet’s MuscleTech Whey Protein for Men Who Bodybuild.
- Happy wife, happy life. Happy man, happy Tajikistan.
- Take time to travel. Travel time.
- Always know where you are going because he won’t stop and ask for directions. Otherwise he’ll give up and drive to Arby’s again.
- Make sure to have two weekends in a row where you are not visiting family or travelling.
- Put your money in a savings account. Put your money in index funds. Have a joint checking account. Put your money in an IRA. Put your money in a Roth IRA. It’s tax free. Have separate checking accounts. Put your money in the water fountain in the park by Arby’s, then once a year on the spring equinox dig a hole behind the ‘No Parking’ sign and find a trove where it will have doubled. If you give a dollar to the homeless man on the bench near the park entrance, good fortune will follow you for 7 years.
- When you cook rice, make sure to use enough water.
Bios: Dana Eckstein Berkowitz’s work has been in Words Apart Magazine, The Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle, and Aerie Magazine. Her short story “En Pointe” won the Alumni Epsilon award at the International English Honor Society 2018 Convention. She works at Yale University Library and plays the ukulele. She can be followed on Twitter @DanaBWitz.
Ryan C. Bradley’s work has been in The Missouri Review, The Rumpus, Dark Moon Digest, Entropy, and others. He’s a regular contributor to Wicked Horror. You can learn more about him at https://ryancbradleyblog.wordpress.com/. Follow him on Twitter @RyanB4890.
Dana and Ryan are married, but not to each other.