The Marriage Pact

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.

I hate chitchat, small talk, getting to know people in that fake way that guarantees you'll know less about them at the end of the conversation than you did at the beginning.

It’s the direction the feet are pointing—not the hands—that indicates a person’s true interest.

The guilty always find a way of rationalizing their behavior, making it sound as though they’ve done you a favor.

when a woman is content in her marriage, her husband is much happier; a man’s level of satisfaction within the marriage, however, appears to have no bearing on his wife’s happiness.

I expected marriage to be a door that we went through. Like a new house, you step into it, expecting it to be an unchanging space to inhabit. But, of course, I was wrong. Marriage is a living, changing thing that you must tend to both alone and together It grows in all sorts of ways, both ordinary and unexpected.

Marriage is inefficient!” she proclaims. “The whole construct is a model of wasted resources. The wife often stays home to care for the children, or even a single child, abandoning the career she worked so hard for, losing years of creative output. Beyond the wasting of talent, think of the physical waste. For every home, there are so many redundancies. How many toasters do you think there are in the world?” “I have no idea.” “Seriously, just guess.” “Ten million?” I say impatiently. “More than two hundred million! And how often do you think the average household uses its toaster?” Once again, she doesn’t wait for my answer. “Just 2.6 hours per year. Two hundred million toasters are sitting unused, statistically speaking, more than 99.97 percent of their active lives.

Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.

And a bride who needs a fifty-thousand-dollar wedding, with a hairdresser and a wedding planner and a five-course meal and all the rest, is probably high-maintenance.

The longer something remains a priority, he said, the more it becomes second nature, hardwired in our minds and actions.

Did you know that bridesmaids’ dresses were traditionally white?” I say. “How could anyone tell the bridesmaids from the bride?” Ethan asks. “They couldn’t. It’s the whole reason the concept of the bridesmaid came about. In tribal times, the bridesmaids, clad in white bridal dresses, served as decoys. If the wedding was raided by a neighboring tribe, the hope was that the invaders would be confused and would accidentally kidnap a bridesmaid instead of the bride.

The boy is surrounded for miles on all sides by millions of scattered, dying starfish that have washed ashore with the tide. The boy is picking the starfish up and throwing them back into the water. The academic approaches and asks, “What are you doing?” And the boy tells him that the tide is going out and the starfish will die. Confused, the academic says, “But there are so many, millions even, how can it matter?” The boy leans down, picks one up, and throws it far out into the ocean. He smiles and says, “It matters for that one.

Try to enjoy every day, but know that you will not. Try to forgive others and yourself. Forget the bad stuff, remember the good. Eat cookies, but not too many. Challenge yourself to do more, to see more. Make plans, celebrate when they pan out, persevere when they don’t. Laugh when things are good, laugh when things are bad. Love with abandon, love selflessly. Life is simple, life is complex, life is short. Your only real currency is time—use it wisely.

Strive to be all good, but know that you are not,” I said. “Try to enjoy every day, but know that you will not. Try to forgive others and yourself. Forget the bad stuff, remember the good. Eat cookies, but not too many. Challenge yourself to do more, to see more. Make plans, celebrate when they pan out, persevere when they don’t. Laugh when things are good, laugh when things are bad. Love with abandon, love selflessly. Life is simple, life is complex, life is short. Your only real currency is time—use it wisely.

I've thought far more about marriage in recent months than I ever did before. What is the marriage contract? The general assumption we have about marriage is that it involves two people building a life together. But what I wonder is this: Does it require each person to give up the life they built before? Must we shed our former selves? Do we have to give up that which was once important to us as a sacrifice to the gods of marriage?

Whenever I feel old—which seems to be happening more and more often these days—Alice tells me to imagine taking a picture of myself, then to imagine myself twenty years in the future looking at that picture, thinking how young I looked, hoping that I had enjoyed or at least recognized my youth. That usually does the trick

Me kõik harjume nii hästi ära selle inimesega, kelleks me end peame. Kanname oma mõtetes mingit kujutlust iseendast, oleme naiivselt kindlad oma moraalsetes piirides, selles, mida me teeksime ja mida ei teeks.