Not giving relationship advice
This weekend I went to my wife's cousin's engagement party. On the tables they had these little cards with prompts for relationship advice. Like 'always...', 'never...', 'the two most important things in a marriage are...' etc. This is probably a trend.
In that family I'm the longest serving partner of that generation. In a couple of days it's been twenty-four years since I met my wife. I've known the engaged cousin since she was in a pram, which makes me feel very old indeed and I'm not especially happy about that.
Do I have any useful relationship advice? No, I don't.
Which is sort of funny really because I dedicate a lot of my brain power (such as it is) to love, and romance, and relationships, and such.
I'm not convinced about relationship advice at all.
What are the metrics, here? Sheer longevity is no good. Everyone knows couples who have been together forever who make each other miserable. And there are relationships that are transformative and wonderful but briefer, for various reasons, some of which are not within anyone's control (insert grim reaper emoji here).
"How long have you been married?" is not a very useful question now. Many successful relationships do not involve marriage at all. Many marriages are preceded by several years, even decades, of partnership.
I answer these questions, about myself or others, with the word "together." In the thenadays you could take the length of the marriage and add on a few months, to maybe two years max, as the length of the relationship in total and it's not like people were often living together before the wedding. Now, all bets are off.
When my wife and I got together we couldn't get married. We were still years off civil partnerships. I grew up never expecting to be able to get married. It never even occurred to me and I remain extremely ambivalent to the concept of marriage. I'm pretty sure I would not have married a man. (I still struggle to refer to "my wife." I do, but I feel like Borat every time.)
So that's a whole other issue, the concept of marriage generally and the hierarchy of relationships and all that bull.
By other metrics this was a good room of people to ask about marriages because there was a high average number of relationships. Many people had been married many times.
This does not seem to be a preferred metric. More is not seen as better here. I'm not sure, I think an uncle with seven marriages under his belt probably has a lot of valuable insight into the whole shenanigans. Certainly more than me.
The advice, in the room and polite society, tends towards "never go to sleep on your anger" and "the two most important things in a marriage are honesty and commitment" type stuff.
Probably I think, statistically, the best 'how to have a good marriage' advice, in terms of the quality of a relationship is "marry the right person." How to do that? I dunno. Get lucky?
Because people like to say all relationships take work and I just nod politely. Not pulling a sceptical face. I think this is maybe just what people like to tell themselves?
If I had to give relationship advice honestly would probably be "don't think about it too much."
In the end, I didn't fill out the card. My wife did. She put whatever amused her. Which is fine by me. And that seems pretty good relationship advice too.