1. Know in your heart that you’re right but don’t insist on public acknowledgement.
2. If you can’t say anything nice, write it down for future reference.
3. Plan more for the marriage than the wedding.
4. At one point, you will consider murder, but a slow death is less noticeable and who wants to put him out of his misery anyway?
5. It doesn’t work to threaten taking half in the divorce because he may take you up on the offer to have control over more of his income than usual.
6. Imagine starting all over to train a new husband, or even harder, retrain someone else’s ex-husband.
7. Holding it all in, carrying grudges, tit-for-tat, keeping score—it’s not healthy. Wipe the slate clean every once in a while.
8. Count on those pheromones for a strong chemical attraction to help overcome the days when you don’t even want to see his face.
9. Limit home renovations as much as possible.
10. Find a partner who makes you laugh out loud because you’re gonna need it.
11. Have compatible skills, like a business partner: one can fix things while the other knows how to fill out the paperwork.
12. Unite against the children.
13. Have a short memory for the bad times and a long memory for the good ones.
14. Let a spender show you how to enjoy daily life and a let a saver prepare you for the future.
15. Forget the following five words: All you need is love.
16. Remember the following five words: patience, tolerance, empathy, humility, earplugs.
17. If one’s an early riser and the other a night owl, that’s all the better for some alone time.
18. The same disposition toward social interaction helps because whether you're both social butterflies or homebodies, it’s about being together.
19. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time. It’s a marathon not a dash. Don’t lower your standards but maybe your expectations. Don’t give up too easily.
20. Mix together a lot of love, loads of laughter and whatever life has in store, then let simmer and savour for another twenty years, at least.
