Re:Forget the books (Score 1)

I agree that books that claim to have a "recipe" to follow to make your marriage work aren't worth your attention.

I'm a geek (redundant, perhaps -- I'm commenting on Slashdot) and my wife of 10 years is too. We're very happy together. I don't really know why. I only know a couple of things.

1) Only one of us wears "the crazy hat" at a time. From time to time, one of us is under stress, to the point where we're barely hanging on and need the support of the other. It can't be both of us. Fortunately, whenever one of us is clearly losing it, it actually has a calming effect on the other. This is indispensable. It took us a while to realize it was happening. Now we have a vocabulary around it ("I'm going to need the crazy hat for a while").

2) Especially once you have kids (we have a six-year-old), set up a regular date night. It's the kind of thing where it won't happen if you don't do it deliberately. You don't know how important this is until you don't have it.

Finally, there is one book we read and found valuable: "The Good Marriage," by Wallerstein and Blakeslee. It isn't a how-to: it's a study of several long-term successful marriages, and finding that there was more than one way for them to work. They identified five different types. You may find yourselves in there, you may not. You'll realize it doesn't matter.

You'll also realize that advice from other happily married couples may not apply to you. We know happily married polys. It wouldn't work for us. We know happily married traditional/biblical types as well.

Find your own way.