You’ll never catch me calling my wife a battle-axe at a cookout

Honey Doodle and I are celebrating our twenty-third wedding anniversary this weekend. We were together for five years before that, which means she has been putting up with me for the better part of three decades. I can only assume that means she likes me.

Our life together has not been without its obstacles. Anyone who has read this column for any length of time knows that. But here is what I will tell you freely and without hesitation: the relationship itself has always been the easy part. Not effortless — nothing worth having is effortless — but easy in the way that breathing is easy. You don’t have to think about it. It just works.

In honor of twenty-three years, I thought I’d share a few things I’ve learned along the way. Take them for what they’re worth. I’m a humorist, not a marriage counselor. But I’ve been happily married longer than some marriage counselors, so I figure that counts for something.

Say you love her until she puts down the butcher knife.

I had to. She knows I had to. Moving on.

Find someone you can actually talk to.

Not small talk. Not “how was your day” and “fine” and the comfortable silence of two people who have run out of things to say. I mean real conversation, where you’re still going at midnight and you’ve covered everything from theology to whether a hot dog is a sandwich. Get yourself a spouse who is genuinely your other half. Not your roommate. Not your co-parent. Your other half. The person whose brain you want to live inside for a little while just to see what it looks like in there.

Never talk badly about your spouse. Not to your friends. Not to your parents. Not to your kids. Not to anyone.

When Honey Doodle and I got married, we made a quiet agreement: we were on the same team, and we would handle our business together. Whatever needed to be worked out between us would be worked out between us — not aired out at somebody’s backyard cookout.

I’ll be honest with you. This is one of the reasons I have a hard time at most male gatherings. Because inevitably, it goes something like this:

“Well, hey there, Hank, how’d you convince your wife to let you out of the house?”

“Welp, Stanky, she said she’d let me outta my cage if I agreed to fix the fence this weekend.”

“That’s better than my wife. I didn’t even tell her about this. That old battle-axe has had some burr up her behind for the last three weeks.”

I have never had much patience for the Hanks and Stankys of the world. My wife’s reputation and the integrity of our marriage are worth considerably more than whatever points I might score with the fellas. Yours should be too.

Talk about your dreams before you get married. Talk about your preferences. Talk about the big things.

Honey Doodle and I knew before we ever walked down that aisle how we felt about children, about family, about what kind of life we wanted to build. I have watched couples — good people, people I liked — not make it past five years because somewhere between the proposal and the reception, nobody thought to ask whether both of them actually wanted kids. That is not a small thing to discover on the back end.

If you’re going to laugh about it someday, you might as well start now.

Honey Doodle and I have been in some genuinely dark places over the years. And what I have learned — slowly, imperfectly, sometimes while gritting my teeth — is that the sooner you can find even a sliver of humor in a hard moment, the sooner the hard moment starts to lose its grip on you. Laughter is not denial. It is not making light of something serious. It is a lifeline. Grab it early.

Hold each other.

In the good times and the bad ones. In sickness — and Lord knows we have had our share of sickness — and in health. In the seasons of plenty and the seasons when you’re counting change in the couch cushions. Just hold each other. It sounds simple because it is simple. And it is an easy way to reconnect when the world is heavy.

Support your partner’s dreams. All of them. Even the ones that seem impossible.

Honey Doodle and I would not have a single thing we have today if we hadn’t fought for our dreams and fought for each other’s dreams in equal measure. I have watched couples enter marriage with big plans and bright futures, only to watch one of them quietly become the supporting character in the other one’s story. That is not a partnership. Other half means other half. Not understudy. Not background player. Half.

Home is not a place. It’s a person.

When you find your person, you find your home. Everything else is just an address.

Be flexible. Aggressively, stubbornly, cheerfully flexible.

Honey Doodle and I have a running joke that whenever we make plans, God laughs. The life we imagined when we walked out of that church twenty-three years ago bears almost no resemblance to the life we are actually living. The two would not recognize each other. And yet — the newlywed versions of us, those two wide-eyed and slightly terrified young people — would look at where we are today and say yes. That’s exactly what we wanted. They just couldn’t have imagined the road it would take to get here. Neither could we. That was probably for the best.

Eat ice cream for dinner.

One of the first things Honey Doodle and I figured out as newlyweds was that we were the ones making the rules now. Nobody was coming to check on us. Nobody was going to knock on the door and demand that we eat a balanced meal before dessert. So one night, early in our marriage, we ate ice cream for dinner. Just because we could. Just because it was Tuesday and we felt like it and there was nobody to tell us otherwise.

It is now a family tradition. Once a year, without fail. The boys think it is the greatest thing that has ever happened to them. They are not wrong.

Make your own rules. It’s your house.

You’ve never not made it yet.

Read that again. Every hard moment you have ever faced together — every dark season, every impossible month, every night where you weren’t sure how things were going to look in the morning — you made it through. All of them. Your track record for surviving hard things together is, at present, one hundred percent. That is worth something. That is worth quite a lot, actually. Keep going.

You’re in this together.

Whether you’re well-fed or running on fumes. Whether your pockets are full or empty. Whether the news is good or the news sits on your chest for weeks. You handle it together. You are stronger that way. You have always been stronger that way.

Twenty-three years ago, I married the greatest human being I have ever met. She has been my home, my other half, my partner in every dream we’ve chased and every obstacle we’ve walked through, and my companion whether it’s a fancy meal at a nice steakhouse, or red beans and rice beause there’s no money left in the account.

I don’t know what the next twenty-three years look like. Neither does she. Neither does anyone, really.

But I know who I’m going to figure it out with.

Happy anniversary, Honey Doodle. I’d do it all again. Every single bit of it.

Even the camping.

Actually, no. Not the camping. Everything else.