The Best Marriage Advice I Ever Got

Women spill the secret words of wisdom that keep their wedded bliss, well, blissful.

No doubt there are days when you feel as though you deserve the Best Wife in the World award: You make sure dates with your mate stay hot, you settle arguments with amazing grace and you don't always go into whining mode when you find his dirty socks next to, rather than in, the hamper. How did you get so smart? You were given some stellar marriage advice from friends and family. Here, the nuggets of nuptial wisdom you've stayed faithful to over the years.

Polite Fight
"On my wedding-invitation RSVP cards, I left space for guests to write their favorite wedding wisdom. The tidbit that rings truest after almost nine months of marriage is: 'Attack the issue, not each other.' How it works: If my husband and I disagree about something, we stay focused on the issue and skip the personal put-downs."
— Melissa Gitter Schilowitz, 31, Metuchen, NJ

Fit to a Tee
"My grandmother insisted that I learn how to play golf. 'If your husband loves to play, you can go along and spend hours together,' she said. So I took lessons, and now my husband and I hit the links once a month. We both love the game and are thrilled to share a hobby, even when we spend half an hour looking for my out-of-bounds balls!"
— Aimee Borders, 27, Houston, TX

Tabletop Trick
"My aunt told me that if I'm running late when it's my turn to make dinner, just set the table. That way my husband thinks he'll be eating any minute, so he doesn't start complaining, which buys me some time. It's a silly trick that sounds straight out of the 1950s, but I have to admit that I've tried it a few times in the three years I've been married — and it works!"
— Dawn Clayton, 34, Holdrege, NE

Perfect 10
"My husband's great-aunt wrote a list of the 10 most important things in a marriage, and she gave it to me at my bridal shower. It read:

10.Patience
9. Kindness
8. Patience
7. Communication
6. Patience
5. Caring
4. Patience
3. Patience
2. Love
1.Patience

"First of all, this couldn't be more true. Second, an 80-year-old woman made up a top-10 list; how funny is that?"
— Beth Power, 26, Arlington, VA

Ratio for Romance
"After my husband and I got together, a close friend of mine told me, 'If the sex is good, it's only 10 percent of the marriage. But if the sex is not so good, it's 90 percent. So do your darndest to make sure it stays really, really good!'"
— Emily Cho-Basco, 28, Los Angeles

Boob-Tube Brilliance
"Because my husband is such a remote-control freak, my mom suggested that we have 'my turn' TV nights. That means three nights a week I get to hold the remote and watch whatever I want, and on the other nights it's his turn to hold the remote and watch whatever he wants. Now when he starts flipping through the channels, it doesn't get on my nerves like it used to."
— Angela Clayton, 27, Odenton, MD

Pop the Question
"My sister-in-law passed this helpful hint on to me, and it has served me well for our five years of wedded bliss: 'Marriage is not mind reading, so ask your spouse what he/she wants and believe what he/she says.'"
— Clare Graca, 27, Dallas

Nix the Nit-Picking
"Before I said 'I do,' my mom (who's been married to my dad for 55 years) told me to take out a piece of paper and write down the top three things that bugged me about my husband-to-be. Then she told me to forget the things on that list and forgive him for not being flawless. Once you make a commitment this big, she explained, you can't let petty things get in the way. In our eight years of marriage, my husband and I have had two kids, tackled cross-country moves and started two businesses -- and so far, so great."
— Rebecca Hart Blaudow, 31, Jacksonville, FL

Space Smarts
"Always have separate closets, my best friend told me. It may seem silly, but I listened to her and made sure to find a one-bedroom apartment with two closets (mine being the larger, of course). Now my husband and I each have our own private space, and we respect that: If he wants to keep his shoes in one huge heap or leave his dirty clothes in a pile on the floor, the mess doesn't bother me a bit!"
— Patricia Bontekoe, 26, Lake Hiawatha, NJ

Agree to Disagree
"Before we got married, my minister told my husband and me, 'You are two imperfect people making an imperfect union, and that's wonderful.' This advice made me ditch my belief that in a happy marriage, the couple always agrees. My husband and I have learned to appreciate our differences (yes, even differences of opinion!); in fact, we encourage them because we realize now that those differences are what makes each of us unique and special."
— Beth Swanson, 28, Chicago

Comic Relief
"Before I headed down the aisle, my stepfather told me to always laugh and never take myself too seriously. After four years of marriage, I know that this trick works. My husband and I often play practical jokes on each other and always try to crack each other up, even in the middle of an argument. Hey, if one person laughs, a fight tends to fizzle, doesn't it?"
— Lisa Giassa, 31, Bogota, NJ

You've probably heard a few of these pieces of marital pop wisdom before. If so, these marriage experts say to promptly forget 'em.

Love means never having to say you're sorry.
"Oh, please! In marriage, love sometimes means having to say you're sorry even if you don't know what you did or you didn't mean to do it."
— Trisha Taylor, psychotherapist, Houston, TX

Always be totally honest.
"What are you going to do, tell him that he's just too short and you can't stand his mother? Sometimes you need to temper the truth."
— Tara Fields, Ph.D., marriage, family and child therapist, Marin County, CA

Children come first.
"This is bad advice if it means your husband always comes second. Of course you should love and care for your kids, but you should never lose sight of your couple-ness. The best thing a child can have is happy, fulfilled parents who are deeply in love."
— Mary Pender Greene, chief of social work services, Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services, New York

Always keep the peace.
"No, no, no. If you don't face a hot issue head-on, you'll stockpile negative feelings. And before you know it, 20 years go by and you're still fighting over the same thing because you never resolved it in the first place."
— Rebecca S. Ward, M.S.W., psychotherapist, Little Rock, AR

Never go to bed angry.
"Forget it. Often a couple needs time to calm down before they can rationally wrap up an argument. And that may take a few days, so in the meantime, get some sleep!"
— Gilda Carle, Ph.D., psychotherapist, New York

My First Day at College

When I first rolled into Trinity Western University in my parent’s minivan on O-Day oh-two, it was only my second time ever visiting the campus. The previous January, I had taken a quick tour in the middle of a snowstorm with a friendly Egyptian named Sam, but all I remembered from that were the hours for the Mail Centre (9 am to 5 pm, Monday – Friday, if you were wondering) . I knew I was showing up for something called “Orientation Week”, but the name didn’t offer many details on what my First Day at College was going to be like.

My first day at college! Well, “university”, I guess, but that sounds too elegant to get excited about. Hometown kids returning from the big city used to spout stories of their time away at college – but from those guys, there are really only two First Days at College stories: the one about beer, and the one about feeling horribly awkward. I’d never heard the one about being surrounded and engulfed by a raging sea of forcefully helpful people in Hawaiian shirts, so I guess that’s why I was a little surprised when Cathy Chapplow led her squadron of SOS leaders to my van, battered the doors down and started carting my belongings away, like an ant colony with guerilla tactics.

Stepping out of the van was like stepping into the Moulin Rouge, except instead of can-can girls and Ewan McGregor, there were a bunch of people in flowery t-shirts telling me how to get to “RNT”. I believe these people were trained to speak only in acronyms. All I really wanted to know was “Where’s my room?” and “Where can I store my boxes?”, but it was like trying to talk to C3PO. They’d all answer my questions with indecipherable strings of nonsense syllables, saying things like: “Go to RSC and ask your RA or SOS leader to get the RD to FUBAR the BQQ with the FHQWHGADS.”

For every new Confused New Person (“CNP”), there were at least three Helpful Happy People (or “HHP”’s, as I believe they prefer to be called), making it impossible to get to know anybody without accidentally being assisted with something. All us freshmen and freshladies got to wear these fancy laminated name-cards ( “FLNC”s) around our neck (“NECK”), which allowed us to introduce ourselves without even speaking out loud. This didn’t stop people from asking questions, though. By evening, I was hoarse from non-stop question-answering, but the only things I’d said all day were my name, major and hometown, repeated over and over again, like I was some strange mix between Jacob Two-Two and that guy from the Aviator.

It took a few weeks, but after a while, we all started to settle in. By “settle in”, I mean we started feeling confident and comfortable enough to complain about things freely. We all tried our hardest to make other people see and comprehend who we were and why we mattered, struttin’ around like chickens with our heads glued on, finding dorms and d-groups and teams and parties and girl/boyfriends and other means of proving we were all grown up. The funny thing is – and this is the part that you don’t find out till later – with motives like that, it all only proves the opposite.

Explanation: one day, second year, I visited the Career Centre (I think the actual acronym is CFLCACD) for some help with my resume. Of course, my rez. included a little info on what high school I went to. The lady helping me took one look at it, glanced up at me and said, “Honey? I hate to tell you this, but…high school doesn’t matter anymore.” And with that, she took her black Sharpie, slashed it across the page, and thus obliterated my entire secondary school experience.

So it’s like that. High-school’s done, and so are all the games you needed to play. It’s not that this place is forcing you to change or grow up, it just means you can start again. University’s a new life, and maybe you can take the chance to figure out the person you actually are, rather than just being what people told you to be. Make less time for proving yourself and more time for listening and learning and changing. Or as we like to say around here, “MLFPYAMTFLALAC.”

Days were falling like leaves.

The summer of 1986 brought with it a new warm feeling. On March 3rd, I celebrated my 10th birthday; on 31st of the same month passed my primary exam; moved into a new house and a new neighbourhood; and in the early weeks of April, got admission in a new school which, unlike my previous school, had separate rooms for every class, electricity, fans and most important of all it had chairs to sit in.

New school brought new friends and there started the long history of my making friends. By the time summer vacations arrived, I had learnt that English wasn’t just reciting ABC, it was a language one could speak. During the holidays I formed a Cricket Club in my neighbourhood and… do I have to tell you who became the captain of the team. After a few matches I named it “Ittehad (Unity) Cricket Club” for it was the only thing missing in my team.

At that time of my age I was concrete in my mind that I was to become an astronaut. There was one minor problem though, I just didn’t know how to become one.

One day in 1987, my science teacher caught me squinting my eyes and glaring at the blackboard and informed my father. In the next few days, I was wearing glasses. I shouldn’t have been sitting in the last row I guess. But then I was always a backbencher; you can’t play games in the front rows or can you?

The community of my friends had started enlarging. Asher became my best friend ever. We witnessed countless sunsets together, standing on a dirty footpath of a busy street or sitting on a broken bench in a deserted park; we dreamed of making a difference one day. That day is still to come.

College__ this one word had all the charm in the world and in 1991, I finally got there; Government Gordon College, Rawalpindi. During that stay of four years in the college, I made many life lasting friends, played a lot of cricket, wandered all over the places, started going to cinema, skipped classes, had arguments with teachers, was thrown out of the classroom, stood first in my college in graduation, and in the final year, had my first ever crush.

Once in every three times that I saw her, she was wearing a shade of brown. It was raining the day I first saw her. After that it kept on raining and she kept on appearing like a rainbow from nowhere. Then one day it stopped raining, she disappeared and never came back. I still like rain and adore brown color.

It wasn’t until 1996 I realized that I could write. Inspiration came from Saadat Hasan Manto whose writings made me think and write. And then there were Gulzar, Javed Akhtar, Earnest Hemmingway and Krishan Chander. I particularly admire Gulzar for he writes the language in which I dream. It was a rainy day (again) of that year when I wrote my first ever short story the house. Since then rain has become a vital part of my writing.

And rain looked even more beautiful when in February 1997, I took admission in Quaid_I_Azam University, Islamabad. I became a part of the 1997-99 session of the Department of International Relations. I wasn’t a backbencher any more, now I would sit in the third row. So what if there were only four rows in the class. Again I found good friends there and good teachers as well. Sir Imran Hameed’s viva sessions would always remain in my memory as a pleasant tension.

Looking back at all those years, I find a lot to remember and to cherish. Life has taken many twists and turns but it has always been beautiful. My parents have always extended their unconditional trust towards me. And my friends have always been there for me with their untiring company. I have named this page About Us instead of About Me, as a tribute to all those who have treaded with me even for one step.

Once there was a time where every morning I would ask myself, when would life start? Now, life starts every day. There are so many things waiting to be done, so many stories waiting to be written. I owe a lot to life and to God.

Days are falling like leaves.