Marriage – The facts you need to know - 35
· You need to know to look at each other with the same passion and interest as you did ten years ago. The looks of "Did you pay the mortgage?" and "I'm stumbling over your shoes" do nothing for romance.
· You need to know therapists recommend talking to your spouse about being attracted to another person before you do something stupid. It lessens the likelihood of having to talk to a lawyer later.
· You need to know if you're drinking without your husband around, any idiot could look good after several hours.
· You need to know the more you know about each other's past, the better able you'll be to withstand the present strains.
· You need to know you can always walk away from an affair before it gets started. Even if it means going home to a stressed-out mom of two babies.
· You need to know women tend to stray because of their need to connect to a man emotionally. Men who don't understand this wind up watching ESPN alone. Real alone.
· You need to know that having one affair will tend to lead to another.
· You need to know that an affair means your spouse can never trust you again. She may forgive you. She may go to counseling. She can pray for hours on end. But trust has been shattered.
· You need to know a husband doing housework is a turn-on for women.
· You need to know who's going to push the vacuum cleaner and who's going to take out the garbage. You better believe the issue will come up.
· You need to know whoever works at home is expected to keep the place clean. Even if they are the primary breadwinner.
· You need to know that even when a wife goes to work and her husband tends the house, she still does most of the housework. It's not a plot. It's reality.
· You need to know that a successful division of housework depends on what your friends are doing. Husbands will copy other husbands.
· You need to know a woman can see dirt two or three days before a man does.
· You need to know that for some weird reason, women don't equate washing the car or changing light bulbs with folding the laundry or scrubbing the toilets.
· You need to know research indicates 59% of men lose their hearing when a woman asks them to clean the house.
· You need to know the more you tell him he didn't do housework right the more he'll let you do it by yourself.
· You need to know there's no such thing as men's chores and women's chores. That kind of thinking puts men on the couch for the night.
· You need to know there's a difference between obsession and housework. If you're obsessed with keeping everything spotless, don't expect him to share your enthusiasm for Windexing.
· You need to know a man's inclination is to put things off, while a woman's is to strike before the sun's up. That's why she's vacuuming while he's groggily looking for the coffeemaker.
