Take it from Snee: This is how married life is

Hey, readers. How’s it going? Been working on the novel you talked about? (Rhetorical questions.)

Oh, what’s that? “How’s married life?” you ask?

What a great question that I haven’t been asked since the receiving line five minutes after slipping the priest a fiver. Until now, I’ve been fumbling through it, answering as objectively as I can with less than three months of experience.

However, it’s been three months, so I can honestly explain what married is like now. The past 90 days have turned me into a marriage expert — a marriage Nazi, even — in that anyone else’s advice about marriage is sad, ridiculous and should probably be exterminated in a camp somewhere. (The advice, not the person.)

Characteristics of marriage

The first step to explaining “how is married life” is to identify what married life is. (Bear with me.)

If you cook Hamburger Helper for two, you’re married. If you cook it without hamburger or any burgeresque meat, then you’re in college.

Marriage is also the institution of planning purchases you would never make unless you’re married. These decisions are often between trip to visit friend’s new baby or buy dining room chairs. As a single man, I ate over the sink and babies signaled the end of a friendship. (I said it once, I’ll say it again: I pulled out, Steph, you liar.)

While dating couples argue about stupid things like cheating and religion, married people argue over which long distance carrier invented the cell phone. If you’ve been accused of using Google or IMDB to undermine your wife’s opinion, you’re married.

Finally, if you got married, that’s also a positive, though inconclusive, indicator that you are married.

Married life

OK, so you’ve got a good idea of what defines marriage. Now I can get to the meat of your question.

Married life is what I imagine the afterlife to be: really nice, but you’ve got some things to answer for in your past life.

You see, every married man carries a past lifetime of dating/whatever it is you kids do these days to get sex. During this time, we were wild and carefree and, well, may have taken a liberty or two. Marriage is where you work those abuses off.

You will watch chick flicks. This is partially to balance out that Schwarzenegger* marathon you subjected your wife to, but also to further expose you to all those female emotions you ignored/drank through while dating.

*Fun Fact: “Schwarzenegger” is in Word’s spellchecker.

You will do housework. You know how you got by with a Swiss Army knife and a Phillips-head screwdriver when you were single? That won’t even begin to get married housework done, and there will be plenty. Consider it as punishment for every girl you dumped so she wouldn’t move in with you.

And if you were a real bastard, you will have a daughter. This helps explain why there are slightly more women than men born everyday.

In exchange, you get to do some things you never got to while single, unless you didn’t care about sex. You can grow a beard. (Just beware of the revenge bush.) You can drink wine in a bar. You can even build Star Wars models for the first time since you were 11.

Marriage advice

So, now that you can tell I know everything there is to know about marriage, you’re probably wondering, “Gee, Rick, what I can I do to have a successful married life?”

First off, never marry anyone who doesn’t understand the definition of “anniversary.”

an·ni·ver·sa·ry (a-nə-vərs-rē, -vər-sə), noun. From Latin: the annual (e.g., yearly) recurrence of a date marking a notable event.

If you’re already trying to figure out if two months is the Stuffed Animal “Anniversary,” then you’re in for a long short marriage. If you’re not sure if you can afford a fancy dinner to commemorate the day you walked in that rainstorm back in college, then you can’t.

Go somewhere nice, sunny and expensive for your honeymoon. It eliminates the urgency for travel. (For some reason, people get married to “see the world.”) It’s also the last time either of you will be bikini fit. Most importantly, sunny weather lends a sense of emotional security to marriage: the wedding band tan line.

Be prepared to sacrifice some of your more annoying personal habits. Now is the perfect time to quit picking your nose in public. (Do it in the bathroom while pooping like a normal person.) Or, stop masturbating into the dirty laundry to save on party napkins. After all, you’re now part of a team, the husband-wife team, and husband-wife teams are more likely to win the murder-suicide game.

If you’re going to bring up an ex, make sure to phrase the anecdote so that it proves what a moron you were before you got married. If you bring up a current girlfriend, make sure to phrase the anecdote like it happened before you got married.

Finally, let your wife dress you a little bit. This should delay her need for children for at least three years. In extreme cases, pretend you have difficulty burping on your own and identifying basic geometrical shapes.