Marriage is the best decision I ever made. I always wondered if it was for me because it is such a huge decision. I dodged a few bullets dating the wrong women before I met my wife, and I wondered if marrying Lisa would be a huge mistake. Since 2006, we have proven ourselves to be a great match. I have learned that marriage is not marrying the right woman. It's being the right man. Below are some great tips on marriage acquired from various sources...some serious, some funny, and all of them wise.

Wedding Planning

1. Getting married is not about the wedding.
2. Being engaged and planning the wedding is a trial run for the marriage.
3. Original wedding vows are sappy and just one more thing you will forget. They aren't worth the trouble.
4. If you argue about how far your honeymoon suite should be from the beach, you will kill each other over far more important things.
5. On your wedding day, most people offering advice are unhappily married or divorced. Seek out advice from the people married at least 25 years. Ignore everyone else.
6. Wedding day jitters are totally normal; vomiting and not sleeping for the three months leading up to the wedding are not.

Expectations

7. Both of you will give up some independence and that’s a good thing.
8. Spouses can’t read minds any more than high school dates can.
9. Your spouse will never take care of you the way your parents did.
10. The “for worse” may come sooner than you expect.
11. There are no his problems and her problems, only OUR problems.
12. Your partner failing to meet unspoken expectations is YOUR fault.
13. Most marital arguments are about not feeling adored. Sometimes one of you has a point and needs to feel adored. Sometimes the other has a point and you need to get over yourself.

Loyalty

14. Your success as a team is highly dependent on how much you believe in your spouse and your spouse believes in you.
15. Being married is like having somebody permanently in your corner.--Gloria Steinem, 2000, upon marrying for the first time at age 66
16. A recent survey shows that the most romantic words a woman can hear is "I'm not going anywhere".
17. One of the nicest things you can say to your partner, "If I had it to do over again, I'd choose you. Again."
18. The correct order of importance: spouse, children, parents, in-laws, friends, hobbies, siblings.
19. Never ever correct your spouse in public.
20. Never ever take sides against your spouse in public.

Chores

21. When he vacuums, you will get turned on.
22. ”I love you” isn’t always flowers and romance. Sometimes it’s him mowing the lawn every Saturday and you remembering to have a cold glass of water ready when he is finished.
23. The lawn will be mowed even quicker if the water is served naked.
24. Beauty is fleeting, but a good cook lasts forever.
25. Guys need to know that if they make the bed in the morning, they might benefit in that same bed in the evening.
26. If your husband is doing the dishes, don't complain about the way he does them. Thank God that he is doing them at all.
27. Never tell your wife the carpet needs vacuumed, the floor needs sweeping, the toilet needs scrubbing. If you do, be prepared to be doing these things yourself for a long time.
28. Despite the fact that you managed to live autonomously for over a decade prior to marriage (including putting yourself through school, earning a living, paying bills, feeding yourself, clothing yourself, and bathing all by yourself), within a few months of saying “I Do” you will begin to question whether you are competent enough to boil water.

Sex

29. Your spouse might go to great efforts to hide small indiscretions from you, such as the fact that he occasionally eats at McDonalds while he is supposed to be dieting. Or perhaps she bought yet another yellow blouse on sale, meaning she now owns seven yellow shortsleeved blouses. This doesn't mean one of you is having an affair. Some things don't amount to an argument.
30. Twin beds are for college freshmen trying to have a quickie before the roommate comes home. Get a least a queen and a king is awesome!
31. Sex without intimacy is a one night stand. Intimacy without sex is friendship. No intimacy and no sex is hatred. Sex and intimacy together is great sex.
32. A romantic evening can be had by leaving a trail of rose petals down the hall, to the bathroom, where a bath has been drawn, complete with candles, a bottle of wine, and two glasses.
33. A romantic evening CANNOT be had by leaving a trail of dirty socks, underwear, pants, and a tee shirt on the way to the tub where you can be found passed out with a can of beer in your hand.
34. When discussing who is on your respective “lists” (as in, the list of famous people that you have permission to hook up with even though married), it is never a good idea to include someone you ACTUALLY KNOW, on the list. Especially if its one of your spouse’s friends or her sister.
35. Having an affair is a permanent consequence to a temporary problem.
36. While marriage isn’t about sex, a lot of it is necessary to be happy.
37. Scheduled sex can still be really good sex.
38. Open windows + loud sex = embarrassing moments with your neighbors.
39. You might repeatedly brush off your spouse’s sexual advances and think nothing of it. After all, you’re just not in the mood. It’s nothing personal. But when your spouse gives you the brush off? You’ll worry that your spouse is having an affair.

Money

40. Lots of money may get you a better house, better car, but not a better marriage. It only makes things complicated. Simple is good.
41. We always hold hands. If I let go, she shops.--Donald Trump
42. You only need to do three things in this country to avoid poverty - finish high school, marry before conceiving a child, and marry after the age of 20.
43. Only 8 percent of the families who successfully do all three are poor; 79 percent of those who fail to do all three are poor.

Compatibility

44. Marriage at times can be like your worst ever experience with a roommate.
45. But, most of the time it's like a really long sitcom episode---entertaining, funny, happy, and solving problems.
46. People change. However, in some ways, people never change.
47. Marriage is compromise. Nowhere is this more apparent than while watching television. Tivo will save your marriage.
48. Marry the person who has flaws that you can stand. Marry the person who can stand your flaws.
49. The five most common reasons for divorce are money, infidelity, in-laws, children, and religion.
50. A happy marriage is a lifelong exercise in patience, acceptance, and compassion. It has very little to do with being in love.
51. When she knows what clipping, icing, three seconds in the paint, and the designated hitter are, you will get turned on.

Humor

52. Your marriage is going well if your spouse high fives you after a good fart.
53. Have inside jokes.
54. Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.
55. A marriage without laughter is like a car without gasoline.
56. Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly.--Rose Franken

Fighting

57. 90% of arguments can be avoided. The other 10% need to be solved, and not ignored.
58. Your spouse doesn’t think like you, and this will never change. Men and women have brains that are biologically wired different. Research shows that a straight woman's brain has more in common with a gay man's brain than it does with a straight man's brain. Just accept it that he or she doesn't make sense sometimes.
59. Your spouse has a skeleton or two in the closet; so do you. There is no need to discuss them. Also, every marriage has a skeleton or two in the closet.
60. If the impossible happens and you are right about something, never jump around the room shouting, “I am the man!” or “I just schooled you!”
61. Doing that crap means you just lost the fight.
62. You WILL fight more in the first year of marriage than you did during your entire courtship and engagement.
63. As a single person, you never imagined you could have a fight over whose turn it is to put new batteries into the remote control.
64. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse of A Bad Marriage: Criticism, Defensiveness, Stonewalling, and Contempt.
65. You’ll spend many years fighting about whether or not to keep the toilet seat up and which way the toilet paper should go. If you stay married long enough, you’ll wonder why you ever cared about these things.
66. On your first anniversary, you will laugh at how little you knew your spouse on your wedding day.
67. You’ll spend many years trying to change your spouse into someone else. Eventually you’ll give up and learn how to love them anyway.
68. Beware the married couple that never fights.
69. Life will throw things at you that you never imagined, and so may she.
70. Picking your battles will save your sanity.

Communication

71. When you ask your husband “How was your day”, stop what you are doing, look him in the eye, and listen. Really listen because sometimes, just like you, he needs to unload. He’ll appear all “I’m fine and I don’t need to talk,” but that’s just a front. He needs to talk, and you need to listen because that listening thing goes both ways.
72. Saying "You're right" is harder than saying, "I was wrong."
73. The first duty of love is to listen. Someone who ignores you and your opinion doesn't love you.
74. When you ask your wife "how was your day", be prepared for sex later because women love talking about their day. As long as you actually listen to her answer, which will take 45 minutes.
75. Don’t nag. Asking him nicely goes a long way to convincing him to do what you want. Fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, a thank you and a kiss go a long way to convincing him to do what you want more and more.
76. All men want to be left alone for the first 30 minutes they are home.
77. "If you loved me, you'd know why I was mad" places ALL of the blame on the angry person. This is not 90210. You have to speak up.
78. All women want to change into comfortable and braless clothes when they first come home.
79. You don't have to recall everything you've said....once you're married someone else will do that for you!
80. Most everything can be fixed with WD-40 or superglue. Flowers fixes the rest.
81. The purpose of conflict is to SETTLE the argument…not to win it! If nothing else, fight naked!
82. It is acceptable to go to bed angry. Or stay up and fight.
83. Unresolved conflict kills relationships of all kinds.

Wisdom

84. They say it takes a village to raise a child. But it takes a lot of solid marriages to create a village.
85. What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility.--Leo Tolstoy
86. Love is the sum of everything that the two of you have been through.--James Thurber
87. Marriage, like a submarine, is only safe if you get all the way inside it.--Frank Pittman
88. The secret is removing divorce as an option.--Will Smith
89. The grass looks greener, but it's Astroturf.
90. A great marriage is a way to show family and friends that you have a successful personal life. It's like the ultimate merit badge.
91. Love is no assignment for cowards.--Ovid
92. Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction. Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. You can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.--Maya Angelou
94. There is no greater happiness for a man than approaching a door at the end of a day knowing someone on the other side of that door is waiting for the sound of his footsteps.--Ronald Reagan
95. The man who puts into the marriage only half of what he owns will get that out.--Ronald Reagan
96. People are often enamored with my Super Bowl ring. But it's my wedding ring that I'm most proud of. And having a good marriage takes even more work than winning a Super Bowl.--Trent Dilfer
97. Let the wife make her husband glad to come home and let him make her sorry to see him leave.--Martin Luther
98. Love means my grandfather painting my grandma's toenails for her because she has arthritis.--Rebecca, age 8
99. Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your french fries without making them give you any of theirs.--Chrissy, age 6
100. To keep your marriage brimming, with love in the wedding cup, whenever you're wrong, admit it; whenever you're right, shut up.--Ogden Nash