Anne and I celebrated the tenth anniversary of our first official “date” last month, on Valentine’s Day. We have been married for three and a half years, and spent the remaining time in a number of different phases: dating long distance, living separately in New York, living together (with and without roommates) in New York, and engaged.
Back in 2020, when we got engaged, I was highly influenced by Tim Urban’s concept of “20,000 mundane Wednesdays” from How to Pick Your Life Partner:
From afar, a great marriage is a sweeping love story, like a marriage in a book or a movie. And that’s a nice, poetic way to look at a marriage as a whole.
But human happiness doesn’t function in sweeping strokes, because we don’t live in broad summations—we’re stuck in the tiny unglamorous folds of the fabric of life, and that’s where our happiness is determined.
So if we want to find a happy marriage, we need to think small—we need to look at marriage up close and see that it’s built not out of anything poetic, but out of 20,000 mundane Wednesdays.
As I wrote back then, it was clear since the first weeks we met that Anne fit Urban’s three criteria for a happy marriage:
- An epic friendship
- A feeling of home
- A determination to be good at the relationship
With another four years, two kids and one dog under our belts, those criteria still feel like the right ones. The foundation of a good day with Anne is that we 1) enjoy spending time together, 2) feel comfortable with each other, and 3) are committed to the relationship. Some days might have a bit more romance or excitement, but if those original three conditions are met then the rest is just gravy.
Obviously, we have a long road ahead of us, and I would never pretend to know what the future holds.
The one thing I will say, looking back on the many stages of our relationship, is that How to Pick Your Life Partner has predicted with remarkable accuracy the reasons why Anne and I continue to work well together.
In an alternate universe, if I were looking for a life partner, determining whether my current partner was the right one, or diagnosing an issue in my relationship, Urban’s list is the first place I would go:
- An epic friendship
- A great sense of humor
- Fun
- A respect for each other’s brains and way of thinking
- A decent number of common interests, activities, and people-preferences
- A feeling of home
- Trust and security
- Natural chemistry
- Acceptance of human flaws
- A generally positive vibe
- A determination to be good at the relationship
- Communication
- Maintaining equality
- Fighting well
Reflecting back on our first few months as parents, nothing has been more important than having a sense of humor, staying positive and fighting well. Our experience in the NICU would have been far worse if we hadn’t been able to laugh at the absurdity of our situation, believe everything would work out and quickly forgive each other at our low points.
Unfortunately, many of the qualities on this list are hard to determine from just one date. They require some patience to suss out, and have little to do with physical attraction and a lot to do with personality attraction.
Nowhere on the list is beauty, height or job, some of the primary features used to filter potential partners in a world of online dating. Those may work well to determine initial attraction, but don’t have much to do with getting through 20,000 mundane Wednesdays together.
I won’t pretend to know what this means for dating today, but it feels important. It’s nice to think that I experienced love at first sight, but Anne and I had years of friendship to help us figure out how compatible we really were. Our initial attraction was reinforced by proof that we each met the criteria on Urban’s list, even if we didn’t know that’s what we were evaluating against.
There’s no shortcut to finding an epic friendship or a feeling of home, but a few broad parameters may help:
- Stay open-minded, and don’t do too much “research” ahead of time – treat dating the same as making a new friend, not interviewing someone for a job.
- Resist scorecard attributes and focus more on time spent together – could you do this for another 20,000 Wednesdays?
- Be yourself – texting back too soon or suggesting an unusual date doesn’t matter if you’re ultimately looking for someone who accepts your flaws and makes you feel secure.
As the advice columnist Ann Landers said: “Love is friendship that has caught fire.”
If friendship is what sustains a relationship, then friendship is what should be optimized for.
– Emmett
What I’m Reading:
How James Bond Can Fix the Crisis in Masculinity – Ted Gioia
“A man achieves happiness in life by delivering on his responsibilities. You have no idea how important this one thing will be to your mental health, your sense of self-worth, your relationships, and your ability to find meaning and purpose in your life. I’m talking about your responsibilities to your family, your colleagues, your teammates, your friends, your communities and groups, your country—and even to total strangers. (Yes, you have responsibilities to them, too.) But above all I’m talking about your responsibility to yourself. And when I say you owe something to yourself, I mean your higher image of who you should be.”
What I’m Watching:
7-Step ATG Mobility Routine – Knees Over Toes Guy (Youtube)