Every now and then I dip into Mark Manson’s website on relationships.

He gives straight advice and occasionally uses forthright language to make a point.

In his essay, ‘1,500 People Give All the Relationship Advice You’ll Ever Need’, he explores nearly all the aspects of getting along in marriage. He doesn’t go into sex, but if couples follow what those in long marriages advise, the sex will come naturally.

He starts by saying that he asked for marriage advice at the wedding reception he and his wife had. Some time later, he decided to throw an open forum to his readers who had been married 10 years or more:

This is what I asked: anyone who has been married for 10+ years, and is still happy in their relationship . . . what lessons would you pass down to others if you could? What is working for you and your partner? Also, to people who are divorced, what didn’t work previously?

The response was overwhelming. Almost 1,500 people got back to me, many of whom sent replies measured in pages, not paragraphs. It took weeks to comb through them all, but what I found stunned me.

For a start, they were all incredibly repetitive.

That’s not an insult—actually, it’s the opposite, not to mention, a relief. The answers came from smart and well-spoken people from all walks of life, from around the world, each with their own histories, tragedies, mistakes, and triumphs . . . and yet they were all saying pretty much the same dozen things.

Which means that those dozen or so things must be pretty damn important . . . and they work …

Summaries and excerpts follow, emphases in purple mine.

1. Be together for the right reasons

One of Manson’s readers, Greg, pointed out what not to do when contemplating marriage:

Don’t ever be with someone because someone else pressured you to. I got married the first time because I was raised Catholic and that’s what you were supposed to do. Wrong. I got married the second time because I was miserable and lonely and thought having a loving wife would fix everything for me. Also wrong. Took me three tries to figure out what should have been obvious from the beginning, the only reason you should ever be with the person you’re with is because you simply Love being around them. It really is that simple.

Manson says:

… it’s useful to point out that love, itself, is neutral. It is something that can be both healthy or unhealthy, helpful or harmful, depending on why and how you love someone else and are loved by someone else. By itself, love is never enough to sustain a relationship.

2. Have realistic expectations about relationships and romance

Manson tells us that, centuries ago, parents considered falling in love to be an illness, hence why they arranged marriages:

Parents warned their children against it, and adults quickly arranged marriages before their children were old enough to do something dumb on the back of their out-of-control emotions.

He posted an e-card about Romeo and Juliet which says:

Romeo and Juliet is not a love story. It’s a 3-day relationship between a 13-year-old and a 17-year-old that caused 6 deaths.

Sincerely,

Everyone who actually read it

Of that initial rush of mutual attraction, Manson says:

Unbridled love like that is nature’s way of tricking us into doing insane and irrational things in order to remember to procreate. If we stopped long enough to think about the repercussions of having kids—not to mention being with the same person forever and ever—few would ever do it …

Blind romantic love is a trap designed to get two people to overlook each other’s faults long enough to do some babymaking. It generally only lasts for a few years at most. That dizzying high you get staring into your lover’s eyes as if they are the stars that make up the heavens—yeah, that mostly goes away. Once it’s gone, you need to know that you’ve buckled yourself down with a human being you genuinely respect and enjoy being with, otherwise things are going to get rocky.

On the other hand, true love is less exhilirating but longer lasting:

True love—that is, deep, the kind of abiding love that is impervious to emotional whims or fancy—is a constant commitment to a person regardless of present circumstances. It’s a constant commitment to a person who you understand isn’t going to always make you happy—nor should they!—and a person who will need to rely on you, just as you will rely on them.

That form of love is much harder, primarily because it often doesn’t feel very good. It’s unglamorous. It’s lots of early morning doctor’s visits. It’s cleaning up bodily fluids you’d rather not be cleaning up. It’s dealing with another person’s insecurities and fears even when you don’t want to.

But this form of love is also far more satisfying and meaningful. And, at the end of the day, it brings true happiness, not just another series of highs.

His reader Paula says, in part:

… There will be days, or weeks, or maybe even longer, when you aren’t all mushy-gushy in-love. You’re even going to wake up some morning and think, “Ugh, you’re still here….” That’s normal! And more importantly, sticking it out is totally worth it, because  . . . in a day, or a week, or maybe even longer, you’ll look at that person and a giant wave of love will inundate you, and you’ll love them so much you think your heart can’t possibly hold it all and is going to burst. Because a love that’s alive is also constantly evolving. It expands and contracts and mellows and deepens. It’s not going to be the way it used to be, or the way it will be, and it shouldn’t be. I think if more couples understood that, they’d be less inclined to panic and rush to break up or divorce.

Here is where those quick to break up or divorce go wrong:

Most people never reach this deep, unconditional love. They get addicted to the ups and downs of romantic love. They are in it for the feels, so to speak. And when the feels run out, so do they.

Some people get into a relationship as a way to compensate for something they lack or hate within themselves. This is a one-way ticket to a toxic relationship because it makes your love conditional—you will love your partner only as long as they help you feel better about yourself. You will give to them only as long as they give to you. You will make them happy only as long as they make you happy.

This conditionality prevents any true, deep-level intimacy from emerging, and chains the relationship to each person’s internal dramas.

3. The most important factor in a relationship is … respect

I hadn’t thought about it like that, but looking back, my far better half and I have long considered ourselves as a team. We do nearly everything together.

So, while mutual respect enters into our relationship, I would not have said that off the top of my head, or even thinking about it further. For us, it’s teamwork, and people within our circle do comment on it.

But let’s look at respect, or, put another way: don’t air your dirty laundry in public.

Manson says:

… the thing people with happy marriages going on 20, 30, or even 40 years talked about most was respect.

My sense is that these people, through sheer quantity of experience, have learned that communication—no matter how open, transparent, and disciplined—will break down at some point. Conflicts are pretty much unavoidable and feelings will always be hurt.

And the only thing that can save you and your partner, that can cushion you both to the hard landing of human fallibility, is an unerring respect for one another. It’s crucial that you hold each other in high esteem, believe in one another—often more than you each believe in yourselves—and trust that your partner is doing his/her best with what they’ve got.

Without that bedrock of respect, you will begin to doubt each other’s intentions. You will judge your partner’s choices, and encroach on their independence. You will feel the need to hide things from one another for fear of criticism. And this is when the cracks in the edifice begin to appear.

Reader Olav says:

Respect yourself and your wife. Never talk badly to or about her. If you don’t respect your wife, you don’t respect yourself. You chose her—live up to that choice.

These two points, among four, are crucial:

• Respect that they have an equal say in the relationship, that you are a team, and if one person on the team is not happy, then the team is not succeeding.
• No secrets. If you’re really in this together and you respect one another, everything should be fair game. Have a crush on someone else? Discuss it. Laugh about it. Had a weird sexual fantasy that sounds ridiculous? Be open about it. Nothing should be off-limits.

This section on respect ties neatly into the next one.

4. Talk openly about everything …

This section has to do with trust, and, speaking personally, this was the main thing that kept going through my mind when I got married over 30 years ago.

Trust, for me, was the biggest factor before the big day. And it wasn’t about fidelity; it was more about marital decisions. Fortunately, all worked out well.

Manson says:

… trust goes much deeper than whether or not someone is cheating or not. Because when you’re really talking about the long haul, you have to get into some serious life-or-death shit. If you learned you had cancer tomorrow, would you trust your partner to stick with you and take care of you? Would you trust your partner to care of your child for a week, or longer, by themselves? Do you trust them to handle your money or make sound decisions under pressure? Do you trust them to not turn on you or blame you when you screw up?

These are hard questions, and they’re even harder to contemplate early on in a relationship. It’s like, “Oh, I forgot my phone at her apartment, I trust her not to sell it and buy crack with the money… I think.”

But the deeper the commitment, the more intertwined your lives become, and the more you will have to trust your partner to act responsibly and take care of you …

Trust is like a china plate—if you drop it and it breaks, you can only put it back together with a lot of work and care. If you drop it and break it a second time, it will split into more pieces and it will require more time and care to put back together again. But drop and break it enough times, and it will shatter into so many pieces that you will never be able to put it back together again, no matter what you do.

5. A healthy relationship means two healthy individuals

This is so important. This is the main issue surrounding marriage today.

Manson’s reader Mandy says:

Understand that it is up to you to make yourself happy, it is NOT the job of your spouse. I am not saying you shouldn’t do nice things for each other, or that your partner can’t make you happy sometimes. I am just saying don’t lay expectations on your partner to make you happy. It is not their responsibility. Figure out as individuals what makes you happy as an individual, then you each bring that to the relationship.

Manson elaborates:

A healthy and happy relationship requires two healthy and happy individuals. Keyword here: “individuals.” That means two people with their own identities, their own interests and perspectives, and things they do by themselves, on their own time.

This is why attempting to control your partner (or submitting control over yourself to your partner) to make them “happy” ultimately backfires—it allows the individual identities of each person to be destroyed, those very identities that attracted each other and brought them together in the first place.

This ties into the next principle.

6. Give each other space

This is also very important for the longevity of a marriage.

James says:

Be sure you have a life of your own, otherwise it is harder to have a life together. Have your own interests, your own friends, your own support network, and your own hobbies. Overlap where you can, but not being identical should give you something to talk about . . . and helps to expand your horizons as a couple.

Manson tells us that this includes financial independence, among other things:

One of the most regular things people who got in touch said was to do with the importance of creating space and separation from a partner.

People sung the praises of separate checking accounts, separate credit cards, having different friends and hobbies, taking separate vacations from one another each year (this has been a big one in my own relationship). Some even went so far as to recommend separate bathrooms and separate bedrooms.

Warning bells should go off for the partner of someone who wants everything done together all the time:

Some people are afraid to give their partner freedom and independence. This comes from a lack of trust and/or insecurity that if we give our partner too much space, they will discover they don’t want to be with us anymore. Generally, the more uncomfortable we are with our own worthiness in the relationship, the more we will try to control our partner’s behavior.

Even more importantly, this inability to let our partners be who they are is a subtle form of disrespect. After all, if you can’t trust your husband to have a simple golfing trip with his buddies, or you’re afraid to let your wife go out for drinks after work, what does that say about your respect for their ability to handle themselves appropriately? What does it say for your respect for yourself? After all, if you believe a couple after-work drinks is enough to steer your partner away from you, you clearly don’t think too highly of yourself.

7. You and your partner will grow and change in unexpected ways — embrace it

I have noticed this from Christmas letters we receive from our friends in which we have seen incredible personal transformations, for lack of a better word. Some we like, others we don’t.

Manson says:

I’m not talking about the small stuff—I’m talking some pretty serious life changes. Remember, if you’re going to spend decades together, some really heavy shit will hit (and break) the fan. Among major life changes people told me their marriages went through (and survived) were: changing religions; moving countries; death of family members (including children); supporting elderly family members; changing political beliefs …

His reader Michael says something that also rang true on my wedding day:

When you commit to someone, you don’t actually know who you’re committing to. You know who they are today, but you have no idea who this person is going to be in five years, ten years. You have to be prepared for the unexpected, and truly ask yourself if you admire this person regardless of the superficial (or not-so-superficial) details, because I promise almost all of [those details] at some point are going to either change or go away.

I am happy to say that our friends have changed but that we have not. Or have we and we just never noticed?

8. Get good at fighting

Oh, dear. Fighting is the thing we are told to avoid.

Here Manson discusses Dr John Gottman, a psychologist and researcher who also happens to be an Orthodox Jew. He is a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle.

He bursts all the received bubbles of wisdom about resilient marriages, as one can read at the Amazon page for his 1994 book, Why Marriages Succeed or Fail: And How You Can Make Yours Last:

Psychologist John Gottman has spent 20 years studying what makes a marriage last. Now you can use his tested methods to evaluate, strengthen, and maintain your own long-term relationship. This breakthrough book guides you through a series of self-tests designed to help you determine what kind of marriage you have, where your strengths and weaknesses are, and what specific actions you can take to help your marriage.

You’ll also learn:

More sex doesn’t necessarily improve a marriage
Frequent arguing will not lead to a divorce
Financial problems do not always spell trouble in a relationship
Wives who make sour facial expressions when their husbands talk are likely to be separated within four years
There is a reason husbands withdraw from arguments–and there’s a way around it

Dr. Gottman tells you how to recognize attitudes that doom a marriage–contempt, criticism, defensiveness, and stonewalling–and provides practical exercises, quizzes, tips, and techniques that will help you understand and make the most of your relationship. You can avoid patterns that lead to divorce, and Why Marriages Succeed or Fail will show you how.

Manson tells us:

In fact, when it comes to “why do people stick together?” he dominates the field.

What Gottman does is he gets married couples in a room, puts some cameras on them, and then he asks them to have a fight Notice: he doesn’t ask them to talk about how great the other person is. He doesn’t ask them what they like best about their relationship. He asks them to fight—they’re told to pick something they’re having problems with and talk about it for the camera.

Gottman then analyses the couple’s discussion (or shouting match) and is able to predict—with startling accuracy—whether or not a couple will divorce.

Now on to Gottman’s advice about fighting and what he calls the Four Horsemen of the relationship apocalypse. Manson says:

He found that successful couples, like unsuccessful couples, fight consistently. And some of them fight furiously.¹

Gottman has been able to narrow down four characteristics of a couple that tend to lead to divorces (or breakups). He has gone on and called these “the four horsemen” of the relationship apocalypse in his books:²

1. 1. Criticizing your partner’s character (“you’re so stupid” vs “that thing you did was stupid.”)
   2. Defensiveness (or basically, blame shifting, “I wouldn’t have done that if you weren’t late all the time.”)
   3. Contempt (putting down your partner and making them feel inferior.)
   4. Stonewalling (withdrawing from an argument and ignoring your partner.)

The reader emails you all sent back this up as well. Out of the 1,500 I received, almost every single one referenced the importance of dealing well with conflict.

Gottman would no doubt approve of Manson’s readers’ rules of engagement for fighting successfully. The second one is extremely important. When an argument is over, it’s over:

• • Never insult or name-call your partner. Put another way: hate the sin, love the sinner. Gottman’s research found that “contempt”—belittling and demeaning a partner—is the number one predictor of divorce.
  • Do not bring previous fights/arguments into current ones. This solves nothing and just makes the fight twice as bad as it was before. Yeah, you forgot to pick up groceries on the way home, but what does him being rude to your mother last Thanksgiving have to do with that, or anything?
  • If things get too heated, take a breather. Remove yourself from the situation and come back once emotions have cooled off a bit. This is a big one for me personally—sometimes when things get intense with my wife, I get overwhelmed and just leave. I usually walk around the block 2-3 times and let myself seethe for a bit. Then I come back and we’re both a bit calmer and we can resume the discussion with a more conciliatory tone.
  • Remember that being “right” is not as important as both people feeling respected and heard. You may well be right, but if you are right in such a way that makes your partner feel unloved, then there’s no real winner.

But all of this takes for granted another important point: the willingness to fight in the first place.

When people talk about the necessity for “good communication” all of the time, this is what they should mean: be willing to have the uncomfortable talks; be willing to have the fights; say the ugly things and get it all out in the open.

9. Get good at forgiveness

After you argue, perfect your ability to forgive.

None of us is perfect. None of us is inherently good. Mote, meet plank, and all which that entails.

Manson shares more of Gottman’s research:

Perhaps the most interesting nugget from Gottman’s research is the fact that most successful couples don’t actually resolve all of their problems. In fact, his findings were completely backwards from what most people actually expect: people in lasting and happy relationships have problems that never completely go away, while couples that feel as though they need to agree and compromise on everything end up feeling miserable and falling apart.

This comes back to the respect thing. If you have two different individuals sharing a life together, it’s inevitable that they will have different values and perspectives on some things and clash over them. The key here is not to change the other person—as the desire to change your partner is inherently disrespectful (to both them and yourself)—but rather it’s to simply abide by the difference, love them despite it, and when things get a little rough around the edges, to forgive them for it …

I’ve written regularly that the key to happiness is not achieving your lofty dreams, or experiencing some dizzying high, but rather finding the struggles and challenges that you enjoy enduring.

It’s the same in relationships: your perfect partner is not someone who has no problems in the relationship. Rather, your perfect partner has problems that you feel good about dealing with.

Manson’s readers made the following three points about forgiveness, which rather tie in with the aforementioned art of arguing, especially the first one:

When an argument is over, it’s over. Some couples went as far as to make this the golden rule in their relationship. When you’re done fighting, it doesn’t matter who was right and who was wrong, it doesn’t matter if someone was mean and someone was nice, it’s over. And you both have to agree to leave it there, and not bring it up every month for the next one hundred years.

There’s no scoreboard. No one is trying to “win.” There’s no, “You owe me this because you screwed up the laundry last week;” there’s no, “I’m always right about financial stuff, so you should listen to me;” there’s no, “I bought her three gifts and she only did me one favor.” Everything in the relationship should be given and done unconditionally—that is, without expectation of reward or manipulation of feelings.

When your partner screws up, you separate the intentions from the behavior. You recognize the things you love and admire in your partner and understand that he/she was simply doing the best that they could yet messed up out of ignorance. This happened not because they’re a bad person; not because they secretly hate you and want to divorce you; not because there’s somebody else in the background pulling them away from you. They are a good person—that’s why you are with them. If you ever lose your faith in their goodness, then you will begin to erode your faith in yourself.

Manson adds a fourth:

And finally, pick your battles wisely. You and your partner only have so many fucks to give, make sure you both are saving them for the real things that matter.

His reader Fred elaborated on that final point:

Been happily married 40+ years. One piece of advice that comes to mind: choose your battles. Some things matter, [and are] worth getting upset about. Most do not. Argue over the little things and you’ll find yourself arguing endlessly; little things pop up all day long, it takes a toll over time. Like Chinese water torture: minor in the short term, corrosive over time. Consider: is this a little thing or a big thing? Is it worth the cost of arguing?

Fred’s advice ties in with the following principle.

10. The little things add up to big things

Manson explains:

Of the many responses I got, I’d say about half of them mentioned one simple but effective piece of advice: Don’t ever stop doing the little things. They add up.

Things as simple as saying “I love you” before going to bed; holding hands during a movie; doing small favors here and there; helping with some household chores. Even cleaning up when you accidentally pee on the toilet seat (seriously, someone said that)—these things all matter and add up over the long run.

The same way Fred, married for 40+ years, says that arguing over small things consistently wears you both down (“like Chinese water torture)”, so do the little favors and displays of affection add up. Don’t forget them.

This becomes particularly important once kids enter the picture. The big message I heard hundreds of times about kids was, put the marriage first.

His reader Susan offers this pearl of wisdom:

Children are worshipped in our culture. Parents are expected to sacrifice everything for them. But the best way to raise healthy and happy kids is to maintain a healthy and happy marriage. Good kids don’t make a good marriage. A good marriage makes good kids. So, keep your marriage the top priority.

11. Be practical and create relationship rules

Manson emphasises the importance of being realistic and pragmatic in marriage:

… how relationships actually work: Chaotic. Stressful. Miscommunication flying everywhere so that both of you feel as though you’re in a perpetual state of talking to a wall.

The fact is relationships are imperfect, messy affairs. And it’s for the simple reason that they’re comprised of imperfect, messy people—people who want different things at different times in different ways.

The common theme of the advice about the logistics of running a relationship was be pragmatic …

It’s economics 101: division of labor makes everyone better off. Figure out what you are each good at, what you each love/hate doing, and then arrange accordingly. My wife loves cleaning (no, seriously), but she hates smelly stuff. So, guess who gets dishes and garbage duty? …

On top of that, many couples suggested laying out rules for the relationship more generally. To what degree will you share finances? How much debt will be taken on or paid off? How much can each person spend without consulting the other? What purchases should be done together, or do you trust each other to shop separately? How do you decide which vacations to go on?

Have meetings about this stuff. Sure, it’s not sexy or cool, but it needs to get done. You’re sharing a life together, so you need to plan and account for each person’s needs and resources.

12. Learn to ride the waves

Marriage, like life, is far from simple. There are highs and lows.

Manson says:

Out of the hundreds of emails I received, one stuck with me. A nurse wrote to say that she used to work with a lot of geriatric patients. One day, she was talking to a man in his late-80s about marriage and why his had lasted so long, and he said, “relationships exist as waves—people need to learn how to ride them.” The old man went on to say that, just like in the ocean, there are constant waves of emotion going on within a relationship—some waves last for hours, some last for months or even years. The key to success is to understand that few of those waves have anything to do with the quality of the relationship—people lose jobs, family members die, couples relocate, switch careers, make a lot of money, lose a lot of money. Your job as a committed partner is to simply ride the waves with the person you love, regardless of where they go. Because ultimately, none of these waves last. And you simply end up with each other.

Manson’s reader Kevin wrote about a low point in his marriage and how happy he was that he hung in there:

Two years ago, I suddenly began resenting my wife for any number of reasons. I felt as if we were floating along, doing a great job of co-existing and co-parenting, but not sustaining a real connection. It deteriorated to the point that I considered separating from her; however, whenever I gave the matter intense thought, I could not pinpoint a single issue that was a deal breaker. I knew her to be an amazing person, mother, and friend. I bit my tongue a lot and held out hope that the malaise would pass as suddenly as it had arrived. Fortunately, it did, and I love her more than ever. So, the final bit of wisdom is to afford your spouse the benefit of the doubt. If you have been happy for such a long period, that is the case for good reason. Be patient and focus on the many aspects of her that still exist that caused you to fall in love in the first place.

Conclusion

Manson says:

I’d like to take a moment to thank all of the readers who took the time to write something and send it to me. As always, it was humbling to see the wisdom and life experience out there. There were many, many, many excellent responses, filled with kind, heartfelt advice. It was hard to choose the ones that ended up here, and in many cases, I could have put a dozen different quotes that said almost the exact same thing.

Exercises like this amaze me because when you ask thousands of people for advice on something, you expect to receive thousands of different answers. But I’ve done this on another subject, and in both cases, the vast majority of the advice has largely overlapped. It shows you how similar we really are. And how no matter how bad things may get, we are never as alone as we think.

All of this advice is excellent.

For anyone getting married any time of year, but especially in August, which happens to be my wedding anniversary month, I wish you all the happiness in the world.

Read this advice, absorb it and follow it. You won’t go wrong.

And if you’re the parent of a bride or groom, please share this advice with your young couple.