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If
someone could guarantee an ideal marriage, he or she would make a
lot of folks happy and likely earn a pretty good living in the
process. I have even considered taking a crack at it myself.
My sole
qualification is that I am long and happily married, but the real
obstacle is that I have no idea why. Well, I do, but I can’t reduce
it to a formula, to five, 10, or 20 easy steps anyone can learn in
their spare time. I have no love secrets, no magic formula for
driving women crazy – unless leaving dirty socks all over the house
counts.
The
quest for a better marriage has launched a thousand careers. Lately
attention has focused on helping couples avoid problems before they
start, and some in the counseling field feel they have uncovered the
astonishing solution: Choose the right person in the first place.
That’s
easy, isn’t it? It worked for me, though I can’t chalk it up to
anything but providence. Since you can’t sell blessings in a
bottle, the next best thing might be a book.
In “Date
... or Soul Mate?”,
Dr. Neil Clark Warren
identifies 29
“dimensions” of compatibility including character, family
background, intellect, spirituality, and humor. Although these are
clearly important, absent from the list is the major battleground
issue of my marriage: Should the thermostat be kept at a
temperature known to sustain human life?
Maybe
that’s covered by “conflict resolution.” To break the 29 dimensions
down to practical applications, Dr. Warren offers an online service
from which one can obtain a free personality profile. I logged on
intending to take the quiz in the name of column research, but
discovered test takers are automatically listed in the site’s
matchmaking database.
While
you must pay to be put in contact with potential matches, I haven’t
stayed married this long by being a complete idiot. The 500 or so
questions are a minor inconvenience if you are looking for Miss
Right, but a heck of a lot of trouble to go through to tick her off
after you have married.
I did
briefly consider asking my wife to take the test with me to see if
the computer would pair us up, but if we are not sufficiently
compatible by now I’d just as soon not know. More to the point, I’d
rather she not know.
That
attitude wouldn’t surprise Corey Donaldson, author of “Don’t
You Dare Get Married Until You Read This!”
Donaldson believes couples “fear disruption of the fantasy of
romance, so they avoid areas of potential conflict.” His book also
offers 500 questions, which in his case grew out of a pact with his
then-fiancée to test their compatibility with revealing questions.
Donaldson’s must-know list includes: “Does my nose
hair bother you? Has anyone ever taken naked pictures of you? How
is your credit rating? What is your deepest, darkest secret? Has
anyone ever had cause to be afraid of you?”
These
sound a little game show-ish to me. Donaldson and his wife are in
their 20s and have been married only five or six years, so perhaps
treating relationships like a reality show makes sense to them. In
any event, their questions read like a bit like a script for “The
Bachelor.”
The
notion of getting to truly know one’s spouse before the wedding
isn’t so much new as lost. It was easier when people were less
mobile, when they courted rather than dated, but “till death do us
part” is still a long time
It’s
even longer for those who make the wrong choice, so maybe a few
questions are in order. It probably wouldn’t hurt to sit awhile in
a room at your beloved’s choice of temperature either.
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