Successful couples resolve their differences in healthy, mature ways. Like duelling.
Try to find someone whose taste in snacks is compatible with yours.
Do not walk ten feet ahead of me, unless you are checking for land mines.
If you keep buying stuff from Amazon ten times a day, even though there’s no more room in the house, you must buy a storage unit. And live in it.
You are allowed to be late twice. After that, if the relationship is to survive, you must move westward, to another time zone.
If you are the Wordmeister in the relationship, don’t correct the other person’s every little mistake. Save it for when you cannot stand it anymore.
You get to kvetch for three minutes, and then your time is up, unless you are in a Chekhov play, in which case you have two hours.
Zoning Laws:
Step 1: Divide house into zones.
Step 2: No yelling from one zone to another.
Step 3: If someone breaks this law, whisper, “You’re not in my zone. I can’t hear you.”
Step 4: Endlessly debate whether the hallway to the bathroom is in the same zone as the bathroom.
If the electricity goes out in the kitchen, and neither of us knows where the fuse box is, it’s time to move to a new house.
Marriage is one of you secretly turning the thermostat up and the other secretly turning it down, and so on, and so on, until one of you dies.
But remember: if you were single, there’d be nobody to watch your luggage in the airport while you go to the rest room.
From “You Can Only Yell at Me for One Thing at a Time: Rules for Couples” by Patricia Marx and Roz Chast, to be published by Celadon Books.
