What you dont know about marriage Jenna McCarthy

every year in the United States alone

two million 77,000 couples make a legal

and spiritual decision to spend the rest

of their lives together and not to have

sex with anyone else

ever he buys a ring she buys a dress

they go shopping for all sorts of things

she takes him to Arthur Murray for

ballroom dancing lessons and the big day

comes and they’ll stand before God and

family and some guy her dad once did

business with and they’ll vow that

nothing not abject poverty not

life-threatening illness not complete

and utter misery will ever put the

tiniest damper on their eternal love and

devotion

these optimistic young bastards promise

to honor and cherish each other through

hot flashes and midlife crises and a

cumulative 50 pound weight gain until

that far-off day when one of them is

finally able to rest in peace you know

cuz they can’t hear this snoring anymore

and then they’ll get stupid drunk and

smash cake in each other’s faces and do

the Macarena and we’ll be there

showering them with towels and toasters

and drinking their free booze and

throwing birdseed at them every single

time even though we know statistically

half of them will be divorced within a

decade

of course the other half won’t right

they’ll keep forgetting anniversaries

and arguing about where to spend

holidays and debating which way the

toilet paper should come off of the roll

and some of them some of them will even

still be enjoying each other’s company

when neither of them can chew solid food

anymore and researchers want to know why

I mean look it doesn’t take a

double-blind placebo-controlled study to

figure out what makes a mare do not work

right disrespect boredom too much time

on Facebook having sex with other people

but you can have the exact opposite of

all of those things respect excitement a

broken internet connection mind-numbing

monogamy and that things still can go to

hell in a handbasket

so what’s going on when it doesn’t what

do the folks who make it all the way to

side-by-side burial plots have in common

what are they doing right what can we

learn from them and if you’re still

happily sleeping solo why should you

stop what you’re doing and make it your

life’s work to find that one special

person that you can annoy for the rest

of your life well researchers spend

billions of your tax dollars trying to

figure that out

they stock blissful couples and they

study their every move and mannerism and

they try to pinpoint what it is that

sets them apart from their miserable

neighbors and friends and it turns out

the success stories share a few

similarities actually beyond they don’t

have sex with other people for instance

in the happiest marriages the wife is

thinner and better-looking than the

husband obvious this leads right it’s

obvious that this leads to

marital bliss because women we care a

great deal about being thin and

good-looking whereas men mostly care

about sex ideally with women who are

thinner and better-looking than they are

the beauty of this research though is

that no one is suggesting that women

have to be thin to be happy there than

our partners so instead of all that

laborious dieting and exercising we just

need to wait for them to get fat maybe

make a few pies this is good information

to have and it’s not that complicated

research also suggests that the happiest

couples are the ones that focus on the

positives right

for example the happy wife instead of

pointing out her husband’s growing gut

or suggesting he go for a run she might

say well honey thank you for going out

of your way to make me relatively

thinner these are couples who can find

good in any situation yeah it was

devastating when we lost everything on

that fire it’s kind of nice sleeping out

here under the stars and it’s a good

thing you’ve got all that body fat to

keep us warm one of my favorite studies

found that the more willing a husband is

to do housework the more attractive his

wife will find him because we needed a

study to tell us this but here’s what’s

going on here

the more attractive she finds him more

sex they have the more sex they have the

nicer he is to her the nicer key is to

her the less she nags him about leaving

wet towels on the bed and ultimately

they live happily ever after

in other words men you might want to

pick it up a notch in the domestic

department here’s an interesting one one

study found that people who smile in

childhood photographs are less likely to

get a divorce this is an actual study

and let me clarify the researchers were

not looking at documented self reports

of childhood happiness or even studying

old journals the data were based

entirely on whether people look happy in

these early pictures

now I don’t know how old all of you are

but when I was a kid your parents took

pictures with a special kind of camera

that held something called film and by

God film was expensive yeah they didn’t

take 300 shots of you in that rapid-fire

digital video mode and then pick out

some nicest smiley ax store the

Christmas card huh no they dressed you

up they lined you up and you smiled for

the camera like they told you to

or you could kiss your birthday party

goodbye but still I have a huge pile of

fake happy childhood pictures and I’m

glad they make me less likely than some

people to get it worse so what else can

you do to safeguard your marriage do not

win an Oscar for Best Actress I’m

serious

Betty Davis Joan Crawford Halle Berry

Hilary Swank Sandra Bullock Reese

Witherspoon all of them Singles soon

after taking home that statue they

actually call it the Oscar curse it is

the marriage kiss of death and something

that should be avoided and it’s not just

successfully starring in films that’s

dangerous it turns out merely watching a

romantic comedy causes relationship

satisfaction to plummet apparently the

bitter realization that maybe it could

happen to us but it obviously hasn’t and

it probably never will makes our lives

seem unbearably grim in comparison and

theoretically I suppose if we opted for

a film where someone gets brutally

murdered or dies in a fiery car crash we

are more likely to walk out of that

theater feeling like we’ve got it pretty

good drinking alcohol

it seems bad for your marriage yeah I

can’t tell you any more about that one

cuz I stopped reading it at the headline

but here’s a scary one divorce is

contagious that’s right when you have a

close couple friend to split up it

increases your chances of getting a

divorce by 75% now I have to say I don’t

get this one

all my husband and I have watched quite

a few friends divide their assets and

then struggle with being our age and

single in an age of sexting and viagra

and harmony and I’m thinking they’ve

done more for my marriage than a

lifetime of therapy ever could so now

you may be wondering why does anyone get

married ever well the US federal

government counts more than a thousand

legal benefits to being someone’s spouse

a lists that includes visitation rights

in jail but hopefully you’ll never need

that one

but beyond the profound federal perks

married people make more money we’re

healthier physically and emotionally we

produce happier more stable and more

successful kids we have more sex than

our supposedly swinging single friends

believe it or not we even live longer

which is a pretty compelling argument

for marrying someone you like a lot in

the first place now if you’re not

currently experiencing the joy of the

joint tax return I can’t tell you how to

find a chore loving person of the

approximately ideal size and

attractiveness who prefers horror movies

and doesn’t have a lot of friends

hovering on the brink of divorce but I

can only encourage you to try because

the benefits as I’ve pointed out are

significant the bottom line is whether

you’re in it or you’re searching for it

I believe marriage is an institution

worth pursuing and protecting so I hope

you’ll use the information I’ve given

you today to weigh your personal

strengths against your own risk factors

for instance in my marriage I’d say I’m

doing okay

on the one hand I have a husband who’s

annoyingly lean and incredibly handsome

so I’m obviously going to need to fatten

him up and like I said we have those

divorced friends who may secretly or

subconsciously be trying to break us up

so we have to keep an eye on that

and we do like a cocktail or two on the

other hand I have the fake happy picture

thing and also my husband does a lot

around the house and would happily never

see another romantic comedy as long as

he lives so I’ve got all those things

going for me but just in case I plan to

work extra hard to not win an Oscar

anytime soon

and for the good of your relationships I

would encourage you to do the same I’ll

see you at the bar