Sarah Marshall’s previous work for The Toast can be found here.
Never talk about politics.
Talk about politics, but only about Nixon. Specifically, only talk Nixon’s final years post-resignation, how his pallor grew grey and his body wracked with phlebitis and his mind consumed with sad tales of the death of kings. Work on your Nixon impression. Remind yourself that real love means loving decrepit, angry failure and no one embodies this principle quite like Nixon, with the possible exception of most other politicians.
Sing your entire marriage, based on the score to John Adam’s Nixon in China.
Speak entirely in quotes from HBO’s John Adams.
Treat yourself to a manicure every once in a while!
Adopt all your partner’s tastes as your own. Better yet, adopt their memories. Laughingly describe your sister’s antics at Six Flags the summer you were ten. When contradicted, keep your face perfectly still and say “But I wouldn’t make a mistake about that, now, would I?”
Cardio!
Don’t have children.
Do have children.
Have as many children as you can physically stand. Grow a row of teats like a she-wolf. Stand at the front gate with a baby hanging from each nipple and watch with hungry eyes as the mail carrier passes by.
Instead of having children, buy one hundred Boston ferns and call them your children. Shove candy bars into their soil. Let the rasp of their spores caress you in a way no one else ever has.
Gradually lose your hearing.
Cosplay Hetty Green every day for an entire year.
Never do your spouse’s laundry.
Never do your own laundry. Wear only a series of yard debris bags that slowly fill with your juices. Then shuck them off and leave them out on pickup day.
Do laundry constantly. Scrub your delicates until the soap peels your skin away. Buy a washboard and feel so incomplete without it in your arms that you are compelled to join a bluegrass band.
Forgive everything.
Forgive nothing. Become La Llorona. Roam the streets in a spectral fog and a Stevie Nicks gown, searching for bloody justice.
If the secret of a happy marriage eludes you, stuff yourself with other secrets: melt belly fat off in three weeks with a secret new plant recently discovered in the pristine rainforest that once concealed the Tasaday people; order pretzel-banana-croissantaccinos off the secret menu at Starbucks; wear Secret deodorant.
When your partner gets into bed beside you, do not look up, but instead slowly, heavily underline a passage in the true crime paperback you have been reading, one full of ground sheets and unlabeled Betamax tapes.
Become the heroine of a French softcore film in which you discover that obedience is the greatest erotic thrill of them all; make fourteen sequels, move in with Udo Kier, and forget how this sentence originally started.
Remember the Alamo.
Tags: humor, marriage, relationships, sarah marshall
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“Adopt all your partner’s tastes as your own. Better yet, adopt their memories.” Oh my god, my husband did this; he tells one of my stories like it happened to him. IT DIDN’T. “I could swear it happened to me too!” NO. IT REALLY DIDN’T. The worst part is, it really even isn’t a great story but goddammit, you sonofabitch, it’s mine.
Welp, A* husband programming though, what other thoughts have you implanted. DANCE PUPPETS DANCE!
My siblings and I have had this happen. We argue now and again about whose memories they are.
I feel delightfully creeped out by this. Thank you!
Samesies this is perfect. Celebrating 14 yrs tomorrow. All of these things work.
“Become the heroine of a French softcore film in which you discover that obedience is the greatest erotic thrill of them all; make fourteen sequels, move in with Udo Kier, and forget how this sentence originally started.”
I had to reread that 3 times because I actually kept forgetting how the sentence started
I am SUCH a sucker for these dumb articles. I have probably clicked on every single “8 habits of highly successful people!” and “The secret to a happy relationship!” and “9 things all superheroes do first thing in the morning!” article and every single time I think “why did I click on that list of inanely obvious observations about how juice and sleeping and communicating are good for you?” Maybe the next one will truly unlock the key to happiness, though.
I’ve been with my partner since we were both 19 years old and people always assume we have some kind of super secret key to romantic relationships. They invariably seem nonplussed when I’m like “you could try talking? to the other person? instead of me?”
Oh DITTO, I have also been with my partner since 19. I always have to remind people that I know only Relationship With Significant Other, I have no idea about relationships in general, but yeah talking is good. We also say please and thank you to each other, which seems to help.
Also together since 19! (Well, partner was 18.) I remember one conversation fairly early in our relationship, in which I was asked by an acquaintance (in her 30s, so you’d expect her to know better), “So, can you talk to him?”. Why on earth would I want a boyfriend I couldn’t talk to?
You should write “9 Things all superheroes do first thing in the morning!”
Aroo.
“Adopt all your partner’s tastes as your own. Better yet, adopt their memories” – shades of Upstream Color.
…It’s acceptable to do your laundry and your laundry alone, right? Because I’ve been married for five and a half years, and we still haven’t merged.
I’m all about separate laundry… we create dirty clothes on different schedules, and I don’t want his gross soccer stuff in with my lightly soiled work clothes! We both do our kids’ clothes (which is also separate because poop) but he’s on his own with his dirty drawers, hah.
I’m happy to merge laundry and will even fold his if I’m feeling magnanimous, but I will. not. put his clothes away. Why do I draw the line there? In the immortal words of Nico & Vinz, that’s just how I feel.
I feel like, if one person has particular requirements with clothes washing that the other doesn’t share, it is not only acceptable but basically mandatory to only do your own laundry. Even if you don’t have special requirements but might one day. Even if those requirements are ‘I do my own laundry, dammit’. Essentially, I am pro not merging laundry because I’m a laundry control freak.
This is true. I mean, we went to combined laundry within a few weeks of living together mostly out of convenience, since the neighbors with whom we shared a washer/dryer had stuff in there almost literally 24/7 and we had to get as much in during our windows of opportunity as possible, but when I was in full-on marathon training over the summer, my laundry DEFINITELY went in separately. Because it turns out I am a stinky sweater, and he is not, and my sweat stink contaminated several loads before we learned about Tide Sport Wash.
My boyfriend’s clothing is covered in machine oil and grease and grossness, and I am all about washing things on the most delicate cycle that will still get them clean. I consider it a triumph that we can use the same washing machine let alone do joint loads.
My husband and I do separate loads but we do them at the same time, because our laundry room feels very murdery to me and because he’s really big on togetherness.
It’s the only hope my poor sweaters have of survival.
The greatest source of tension in my marriage is my tendency to make demands requests to my husband in my head without actually speaking them out loud.
“Honey, where’s my tea?”
“What tea?”
“I asked you to make me a cup of tea like half an hour ago.”
“No you didn’t.”
“Yes I did!”
“No, you didn’t.”
“… well, I thought it.”
We’ve been together for almost 7 years, you’d think by now he’d be able to anticipate my desires without my actually having to voice them.
My husband has learned to anticipate the tea demands, at long last.
Not to sound totally creepy, but I think you and I have oddly parallel lives, and it is so much fun being pen pals. Thank you for the snowflake card! I loved it!
The flip side is that sometimes I absent-mindedly say things out loud without realizing it, and then he materializes with a cup of tea and I’m like “… how did you know??”
I’m glad you liked the card! There’s also a postcard from Switzerland on its way to you; I think it has bears on it but I’m not entirely sure.
INTERNATIONAL POSTCARDS! WITH POTENTIAL BEARS!!! You are the best.
My husband does this, constantly. I’ll be like, “oh, your sister just texted, she’s coming for dinner?” and he’ll be like, “yeah, I told you this three days ago,” and I’ll go, “no, no you didn’t,” and he’ll pause and go, “well, I thought about telling you.”
(Luckily I love his sisters and they have all learned to confirm with me separately when making plans.)
“Where are the french fries I did not ask for? You guys need to anticipate me!”
I’m already losing my hearing, so I feel like I’m well on the way to a successful marriage. I will let my girlfriend know we should be wed at once!
A+ article!
Never do your own laundry. Wear only a series of yard debris bags that slowly fill with your juices.
ewwwwww
Most horrifying use of the word “juices” that I’ve ever seen.
On my thirtieth birthday, my sister decided to get me really drunk, since I’d never been really drunk, which idea I was fine with until I overdid and spent my birthday night puking my guts out and crying. My husband, to comfort me, sat beside me and told me all about Nixon and Haldeman because that is what marriage is all about.
Have as many children as you can physically stand. Grow a row of teats like a she-wolf. Stand at the front gate with a baby hanging from each nipple and watch with hungry eyes as the mail carrier passes by.
Thanks for giving me a goal to work for.
I want to start a web site where only one article is published every day: a list of Good For You things and a list of Bad For You things, with no explanations. Then everyone can spend all day arguing in the comments.
We talk about Nixon a lot in my marriage. Our future dog will be named Checkers.
In a tweet to Jinxx about My Own Private Idaho I referred to Udo Kier as “the scary looking dude w husky eyes from Lars Von Trier movies”.
I don’t adopt the memories of others, but I do read film and television guides so obsessively that I begin to think I’ve seen things that I haven’t. Namely, I read the second to last tip and thought, “Sounds like Emmanuelle” and then thought,”Which, NO, you haven’t seen, Emma, you’ve just read Roger Ebert’s review of it 60,000 times.”
You should write "9 Things all superheroes do first thing in the morning!"
I’ll talk about Nixon if it’s about his second presidential term on Futurama. “WHO HAS THE COJONES TO PARTY WITH NIXON?? AROOO”
I'll talk about Nixon if it's about his second presidential term on Futurama. "WHO HAS THE COJONES TO PARTY WITH NIXON?? AROOO"