The Best Marital Advice You'll Read All Day!
Ask a Middle-Aged Lady Mom because she's gonna tell you anyway!
Surely by now you know I’m crushing it as a parent, but did you also know I’m an expert at marriage?
And don’t ask for a second opinion.
See? Great advice.
It’s not fair to swim in this bottomless pool of knowledge by myself. Also not safe. So you, my gentle angels, shall reap the benefits of my sage-like counsel cultivated from one long-term, healthy-ish relationship and several decades of watching marriages crumble on reality TV. (HINT: Do NOT renew your vows on national television!) Think of me as your marital horticulturist, tilling the soil of your most contentious dirt beds with the enriching nutrients of pithy wisdom, totally unbiased and not at all judgey perspective, and an extra special heaping of middle-aged lady mom fertilizer.
Let’s save some relationships today.
Dear MALM,
My spouse insists on arriving at the airport at least FOUR HOURS early! That’s insane, right? I mean, a couple hours seems like more than enough time. Because of their ridiculous and unfounded belief that we arrive a full day before our flight crew has even woken up, we start almost every trip with a fight. How can I make this person a bit more rational when it comes to traveling.
—Hands UP IN THE AIR
Dear Hands,
Short answer: You can’t. That’s like asking how you can make your partner taller or their ankles less protruding or their eye sight able to track things like a day old oatmeal smoothing running down the face of your bespoke kitchen cabinetry. It simply cannot be done.
I know a man who had a 7am flight and arrived at the airport at 11pm THE NIGHT BEFORE. Why, you ask? Because he had to return his rental car and didn’t know how long it would take for the shuttle to arrive. Who you ask? I can’t tell you that because I don’t want to embarrass him. Oh, okay. You got it out of me. It was my dad. And he’ll do it again. Proudly.
It has been said that people who arrive early for flights and people who arrive 25 minutes before take off, find each other, fall in love, and get into screaming matches before every trip. Like you! You can’t fight your destiny so here’s something you can do: Book separate flights. It’s the only way. You arrive whenever the hell you want to and they can get there a day early and wait for you in baggage claim, camped out on a discarded luggage trolly with a bum wheel next to my dad.
Dear MALM,
I hate the sound of my husband’s alarm. Literally makes me anxious to fall asleep knowing I have to hear that garbage in the morning and puts me in a rotten mood as soon as it goes off. I asked him to change it to something else but he's oddly attached to it. I think it’s just for spite. I can’t keep waking up like this!
—Alarmed and Dangerous
Dear Alarmed,
What a coinsidence. I also hate my husband’s alarm! It’s that song Forever Young. Now, you might be thinking, That’s a great song, Shelly! I’m totally waking up to this tomorrow!
But you are wrong.
The chorus is okay (and honestly “okay” might be a bit of an overstatement), but the lead up to the chorus is god awful takes FOREVER! No grown ass adult can sleep through a shitty song blaring from their nightstand long enough to GET TO THE CHORUS! And then he hits snooze and the cycle continues! So while I may not technically feel your pain, I definitely hear it.
I have an idea!
Let’s reframe the whole anxious before bed/rotten mood in the morning routine by giving you something fun to do. Assuming you know his passcode, get in there after he falls asleep and change his alarm to something really triggering. Baby cries, howler monkey, squeaky sneakers on a basketball court, a dentist drilling a tooth, a truck backing up, loud chewing, a bunch of kids singing Uptown Funk, two pop culture podcasters with really bad vocal fry trying to explain the Blake vs. Justin legal drama. Literally endless choices. Change it every goddamn night until he gives in and agrees to wake up to something you can both agree on. (I give it three days.) I don’t know about you but I’m already super excited for you to wake up tomorrow!
Dear MALM,
Where is the ketchup?
—No eyes, no idea, no clue
Dear NO EYES,
Are you freakin’ kidding me??? GTFO! Look where it always is! Mommy’s working!
Dear MALM,
My wife snores. It’s terrible. And she denies it! I think there might be something wrong with her because the noises she emits are unholy and inhuman. She needs a check up and I need to sleep. Help?
—Snore No More
Dear Snore,
Earplugs? A sound machine? Couch? Maybe it’s the dog? Whatever it is, let that beautiful, hard-working goddess sleep. In about 3 minutes she’ll be waking up with a hot flash anyway.
Dear MALM,
Ever since she started working from home FIVE YEARS AGO my wife only wears sweatpants. And either she has multiples of the same pair or she wears the same ones many days in a row. It’s depressing. She used to love getting dressed up. Is it wrong to miss seeing her in pants with a zipper?
—Sweat Panting for a Zipper
Dear Panting,
I have a zipper— FOR YOUR GODDAMN MOUTH!
First of all, it’s called althleisure wear and perfectly appropriate for someone who is only visible to other humans on a camera from the kidneys up. Do you even own althleisure wear? Because you sound like someone who needs to relax!
Let me ask you this: Do the sweat pants change your wife’s personality? Do they make her shoot lasers out of her eyeballs or cause her to grow a serpent’s tail like a mythological middle-aged lady chimera? NO, they do not. (I’m guessing.) So what do you care? If you want to see her in something other than sweat pants why not plan something that would inspire her to put on something with a zipper or at least some cute joggers with an elastic waist.
But before you do that, consider this: Maybe she’s wearing sweatpants all the time because her pants with zippers don’t fit. Maybe she’s a middle-aged lady going through THE CHANGE and is plagued with inexplicable weight gain and bloating and doesn’t want to spend money on new clothes because she has no control over her body and might gain another ten pounds before she makes it out of the dressing room. Until you walk a mile in a middle-aged lady’s skin suit, best mind your damn business about how she outfits it.
Dear MALM,
My significant other sheds SO MUCH! Sh leave her hair all over the bathroom, clogging the drain, filling my sink, stuck on my soap, even sometimes wrapped around my toothbrush! I mean, come on! How hard is it to wipe that shit up?
—Hairy Scary in Seattle
Dear Hairy,
Are you same guy who leaves drippy smoothie guts oozing down the cabinet doors and spit gobs of toothpaste all over the damn mirror? Hmm…
Sounds like we have more reframing to do, Bucko! She is not “leaving her hair” around. Those strands are physical manifestations of how much of herself she gives to other people. She is literally losing pieces of herself every day and you’re over here like, “Sweep that shit up! Ewwwies!”
Maybe you could sweep that shit up and while you’re at it clean the floor in front of the toilet, wash those filthy hand towels, and pick up your kid’s dirty sock that I KNOW YOU KNOW IS THERE. Err— sorry. I assume you know is there.
Let’s learn how to count our damn blessings— not how much of her hair got on your toothbrush.
Dear MALM,
You sure seem to take the woman’s side a lot. Feels a bit biased, I have to say. Your advice is not helpful.
—Mansplain in the Ass
Dear Mansplain,
Ya think?
There you have it— simple and rational advice to solve the most common yet aggravating issues plaguing today’s couples. We can’t all be lucky like Bart to have found such an evolved and generous anthropological savant to spend the rest of his life with, but like the hair on a middle-aged lady mom’s head, advice is literally everywhere.
XO,
Shelly
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This all seems like sensible advice to me! Except I'm a big fan of separate bedrooms They solve many issues. (And yes, I get to stay in the primary bedroom and he goes to the guest room!)
Hilarious! How is Bart’s hair these days? I lose a lot of hair around the house which really upsets Andrew because the few strands he has left are barely hanging on for dear life. He’s like - oh you’ve got so much SPARE HAIR you just drop it all over the place like it’s nothing - MUST BE NICE! Well, yes. It is nice. After all I’ve suffered through years of periods, childbirth and soon perimenopause - let me have my abundant, wasteful hair for a while longer!