Marry your best friend

I met my husband online. This wasn’t how I dreamt about meeting the man I was going to marry. Actually I was completely against online dating. I had just gone through a messy divorce and was done with marriage, forever. I had a good friend that was on multiple dating sites, after months of trying she finally convinced me to sign up for a three month trial. I was matched with four people and went on four dates. Three were total flops, we weren’t definitely not right for each other. The fourth though, he was different.

There was one thing this dating site did well – they made you talk to each other first before you could date. They made you talk to each other a lot. This wasn’t a quick hookup site, you had to be committed to really wanting to meet someone to go through all the steps. We started talking through the site and eventually emailing and calling each other in April, our first date wasn’t until June. Because of both of our schedules our second date wasn’t until August. What happened between April and August when we really started dating? We talked a lot! We talked about our families, our respective careers, our hopes, our dreams, and our desires. We talked almost every single night for hours at a time. No subject was off limits and we didn’t judge each other for past decisions or mistakes.

We respected each other, cheered for each other, and became really good friends. That friendship has continued in our marriage, we still support each other and cheer for each other. He is still the person I complain to, the person I want to call with exciting news, and the person I need to talk to at the end of a long day. Marry someone you enjoy spending time with, marry someone you want to talk to, marry someone you trust to tell your deepest, darkest secrets to.

Just starting out as good friends isn't enough.  You have to stay good friends.  How do you do that when you live with an imperfect person?  You will both do things that will frustrate and annoy each other.  You will get into arguments, you will probably fight.  John Gottman talks about four things or horsemen to avoid during these heated discussions so that you can remain friends.  

"The first horseman of the apocalypse is criticism. Criticizing your partner is different than offering a critique or voicing a complaint! The latter two are about specific issues, whereas the former is an ad hominem attack: it is an attack on your partner at the core. In effect, you are dismantling his or her whole being when you criticize.

The second horseman is contempt. When we communicate in this state, we are truly mean – treating others with disrespect, mocking them with sarcasm, ridicule, name-calling, mimicking, and/or body language such as eye-rolling. The target of contempt is made to feel despised and worthless.

The third horseman is defensiveness. We’ve all been defensive. This horseman is nearly omnipresent when relationships are on the rocks. When we feel accused unjustly, we fish for excuses so that our partner will back off. Unfortunately, this strategy is almost never successful. Our excuses just tell our partner that we don’t take them seriously, trying to get them to buy something that they don’t believe, that we are blowing them off.

The fourth horseman is stonewalling. Stonewalling occurs when the listener withdraws from the interaction. In other words, stonewalling is when one person shuts down and closes himself/herself off from the other. It is a lack of responsiveness to your partner and the interaction between the two of you.  Rather than confronting the issues (which tend to accumulate!) with our partner, we make evasive maneuvers such as tuning out, turning away, acting busy, or engaging in obsessive behaviors. It takes time for the negativity created by the first three horsemen to become overwhelming enough that stonewalling becomes an understandable “out,” but when it does, it frequently becomes a habit."

When you look over these things, you would never treat your coworkers or your boss this way if you were having an argument, at least I wouldn't.  So why do we use these tactics on our spouse?

I have teenage daughters; I tell them all the time, don’t date someone who only wants to date you because of how you look. Date someone who wants to date you for who you are. I think I need to add, date a good friend, because good friends make good husbands and then make sure you keep treating each other like friends!