Funnier than your grandma

When you’re ready to get married, your ass is full of sunshine. You know how to do this whole marriage thing, and fuck all y’all who say differently. You’ve split your chores, you’ve mixed your possessions, and you are ready for a life together–forever.

In other words, you are full of bullshit.

There’s a whole gamut of things that no one tells you about marriage. It’s a dark, dirty world in marriage, and no Good Housekeeping article or well-meaning quad-divorced Great Aunt will prepare you for what’s in store.

1. Where’s The Goddamn Training Video?

I will never forget the abject horror I felt the first time Adrian handed me a beard trimmer and asked me to trim his neck. The only time I’d used clippers before was to shear lambs, and that was decidedly more aggressive than what Adrian had in mind. So, I did what any new wife would do.

I accidentally sheared off a huge chunk of his pretty long hair.

When you get married, you have to take on all sorts of jobs and rules that you were never trained for. Adrian once learned how to paint my nails when I jacked up my shoulder. I ‘learned’ to use a socket wrench by throwing all the sockets into the front lawn at 11 pm. I learned that Adrian has 5 different types of spoons, and they are non-negotiably used for different things (God help you if you use an ice cream spoon on Spaghetti-o’s.) Yes, marriage is work, but no one tells you that it’s extremely skilled labor.

2. Negotiaggressive: How Married People Deal

For your first six months of marriage, you negotiate chores and duties within a marriage like the motherfucking Huxtables.

After that point, you move into negotiaggression, the wonderful melding of passive-aggression and negotiation.

• “Jesus Christ. If you will rinse a goddamn dish once in a while, I will vacuum, okay?”
• “If you stop drying your balls in the living room, then I will make the fucking bed.”
• “Stop farting viciously when we argue because it’s weird because we fight naked, and I will not keep 9 jars of pickles in the fridge except in emergencies.”

3. It’s Like That Twins Scene From Hellraiser, But With Sweaters

You think, when you first get married, that the old adage about married couples resembling each other after a time is adorable and quaint. Once again, total bullshit.

Every. Goddamn. Day Adrian and I manage to wear similar, if not identical, clothing pieces totally by accident. We’ll find out when I show up at his office to take him to lunch, and suddenly we’re ‘that couple’ that dresses alike because we love each other so goddamn much.

Even weirder is when you move past finishing a sentence or two of your spouse, and they start saying exactly what you’re thinking. You’ll just be sitting on the couch, thinking about how you’d like to eat some sweet-ass chicken tacos from On The Border, and he’ll say, “I want some chicken tacos from On The Border.”

GET OUT OF MY HEAD, YOU FIENDISH SORCERER.

4. It’s Not Technically Stealing, Except That It’s Totally Stealing

Marriage means shared property.

Legally.

Personally, your shit is yours and my shit is mine. Except when I really need it for whatever reason I have concocted, and then your shit is very conveniently mine as well. Adrian and I play this game constantly. Cookies, pocket change, first bites of meals, his white t-shirts, his soap, my pillows, his gasoline, and USB cords.

It’s a never ending cycle of community property passive aggression, much like living with the roommate who always ate the Thin Mints before you could even have one of them because that one time you ate one of their Yoplaits. Bastard.

5. Mirrors Are A Relatively New Invention ‘Round Here

When you are single, you are alone. When you get ready to go out for the day, you are the only one around who will tell you whether or not what you’re wearing looks okay. In your head, you bought it, so of course it looks good.

When you’re married, you learn that you’re very wrong about that. I am no longer allowed to wear a vest that I thought looked rather smart and cool, and that Adrian declared made me look like a mover. Neither one of us are allowed to wear orange ever again. Adrian is not allowed to wear more than one piece of clothing made of linen at a time. This ban was brought about by the time he left the closet wearing a white linen button down and khaki linen pants, accented with a brown leather belt. He looked like his regular clothing had smoked a lot of weed and tried to sober up before a meeting.

Linen ruins marriages, y’all. Watch out.

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What weird things did you learn from marriage?

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