Relationship advice I'd give to my younger self
5 min read
Let me start by saying happy belated anniversary to Absurd Pirate (opens in a new tab) and Mrs. Pirate! I enjoyed reading their post, What I Learned About Relationships After Being With My Wife For 8 Years (opens in a new tab), which got me thinking about my own relationship advice.
I'm in my 50s, and I'm on my 3rd marriage, so I've had a few bites at the apple, as it were. This is the relationship advice I'd give to my younger self.
Start your life before you start having kids #
My daughter was born when I was 17. Our pregnancy wasn't an accident, but we had zero idea about what that actually meant. This single decision shaped much of my early adult life. I now had to do my best to try to provide for my family!
The perfect age to have kids is early 30s, in my opinion. Hopefully the career is firmly established, but you still have lots of energy for chasing kids around.
Do not marry your high school sweetheart #
You should date. You should be in relationships. You should have lots of sex. Don't get pregnant and don't get anything that a shot can't take care of, but I'd say 26 and under is literally the time to be wild and crazy. Experience all the things.
This matters because you don't want to be in your late 30s, feeling like you missed out on that part of your life. You want to get all of that out of your system and know how all that feels. Then later in life you can make informed choices, because you actually value stability and peace. You already know what the party lifestyle is like, and that's just not for you anymore.
If you don't get that out of your system, then I think the imagination builds it up into something it's not.
'The One' is a myth #
I think we have this idea of what love and relationships are supposed to be like. Movies and stories inform it, but I'm convinced the idea of The One leads many people astray. Dan Savage (opens in a new tab) often says that there is no 1, but there are many .8s and .9s that can round up to be your 1.
That means that being in a relationship is a choice. It's not some magical feeling that you're supposed to feel. It's not a sign from the universe that this is your person (🤢). You're physically attracted to them. You have things in common. Your pheromones match. Shit, idk what causes people to fall in love, but that feeling cannot be the only deciding factor for being in a long-term, serious relationship.
That is, don't stay with Steve because it's the best sex you've ever had and there's a very strong physical connection, but he's a deadbeat with a drug problem.
Once you make a choice, then do everything in your power to make it the right choice. I think this is the bit that many people get wrong. If your partner is your choice, then other people can't tempt you. There are 8.2 billion people on this planet, and I promise you will meet other .8s and .9s. But you've already had all the crazy random sex. You've already had several serious relationships, so you understand NRE (opens in a new tab), and while those initial feelings are great, they're also fleeting. I honestly think people chase NRE thinking that's real love and that if you're not feeling that, then well, it's time to move on.
You've made a choice. Lean in and grab on for all you're worth. Don't just look for a great partner, be a great partner.
Consider values and personality #
Values are really important, of course. As a liberal progressive atheist, I don't think I could make it work with a conservative Christian. I mean, I could for a while, but then the wheels come off!
Rachelle is my best friend. We're both homebodies, and we have similar interests in movies, shows and reading, but we don't have a big unifying hobby. If I want to go hiking or camping, Rachelle will happily send me on my way and then enjoy her alone time.
Have a joint expense account but keep your own #
I've gone through several iterations of this, and I think the best setup is to have joint accounts that we use to pay for household bills but to retain individual accounts. We determine how much we contribute to the joint accounts based on our means.
For example, if our shared expenses are $1,000 but Rachelle makes 50% more than me, then she contributes $600 and I contribute $400.
This is the best of both worlds as we're both contributing to the shared expenses, according to our means, but we don't have to ask for permission to spend our own money. This is important for me personally because it helps me keep my sense of self.
My experiences #
Looking back, I think my first marriage failed because we got together so young. Neither one of us had lived life yet. We didn't know what we wanted or what the possibilities were. We also had different views about important topics. We were together for about 20 years, and the people we started as were very different from the people we were at the end.
My second marriage failed because we were just not a good match, and I was too inexperienced with relationships to realize until it was way too late. My second wife was only the 2nd person I ever had sex with or was in a relationship with, so I didn't know how to handle the attention. External validation feels very good, especially after being in a relationship for so long where things got stale and boring.
And now my 3rd marriage is the one! Rachelle is a .9 who I've rounded up to my 1.[1]
Wish me luck.
Who squeezes the toothpaste tube in the middle?! ↩︎
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Love that you've written this. Great sharing.
I was also pleased with your note about finances. What you're doing - income-proportional contribution - is exactly what my polycule and I did for many years. We've since switched, though, to a... I guess "even more socialist" approach to our household finances. The problem with income-proportional contribution is it suffers the same regressive side effects that income-proportional taxation does: it gets thrown-off at the extremes. (It also has a problem with assuming that free market economics produces a good measure of the "worth" of a person's job, but that's a different problem.)
Nowadays we aim for equal-remainder-after-settling. For things that we pay communally (mortgage, utilities, insurance, childcare, food, savings, holidays... almost everything these days except stuff specific to our individual hobbies and interests!), we pay out of our combined incomes, retaining sufficient that we all retain the same amount.
By way of explanation: if A earns £1000, B earns £2000, and C earns £3000, and household costs are £3000 -
In practice, we don't settle everything on-the-fly like this; that would be pretty absurd and complicated! We settle-up at the end of each month, just asking our spreadsheet what needs to be moved-around to achieve our aim: usually this involves two people sending different sums to one person, but sometimes it ends up with one person sending different sums to each of two other people.
We like it because it embodies our philosophical and political outlook and it keeps us all mindful of the differences of our financial situations. Me and my partner each earn over double what my partner's husband earns, so this approach feels kinder and safer to all of us.
(Incidentally, we've also tried other systems over the last decade or two, including ones that are proportionally-weighted at some level BETWEEN other systems! We're experimenters!)
Anyway; just wanted to share, and thanks again for this excellent post!
Liked by Mike
I think at some point in our lives we've all entertained the "what would I go back and tell a younger me" thought experiment. Because did I ever make the mistake of getting married when I was too young. Don't do that at 21. So there's some desire to correct that.
But, and here's the life kicker. Had I not made that mistake, I never would have emigrated to the US. And I certainly never would have met my current wife.
Liked by Mike