My wife and I have a volatile relationship at times.  We are both first children and we both brood.  Yet some of the best passages in our marriages have been when we dared greatly.  Trying to work things out in a moderate way has led to mixed results.  Deciding not to go to bed angry, not once, has led to great results.

And so I have mixed advice to give my children about marriage.

I want to lower their expectations and raise their aspirations.  I want them to realize that when they and their spouse bicker and are petty and flawed, this is not some mar unique to the two of them, or would it be an omen.  It is simply par for the course.  They needn’t reel in horror.  Decent marriages involve quite a bit of cruft.  Especially among Americans who have both been raised with a good deal of agency and independence and self-will.  Shoulder the burden of your marriage’s flaws, hold hands, and keep on trucking.

But I also do not want them to believe that the normal is inevitable, nor that doing better than normal is down to luck.  A fantastic marriage is possible, a marriage for the ages, a marriage of poetry and song.  All it takes is them.  It is a real possibility.   Stately, refined, earthy, tremendous, fruitful, serene–they can have a marriage like that.  It is worth trying for, because it can happen.

But it takes two.  Perhaps more.  But certainly two.  And if their spouse is falling short, they should not take that as a reason to anger or blame.  If our spouse is not yet gold is no reason to ourselves be mud.  Which is tricky.  The danger of high aspirations, sometimes, is that when others fall short we allow ourselves to fall even shorter.

And, also, sometimes it takes an approach different than just trying harder.  Better than mastering the game sometimes is changing the rules.  Frolic and contemplation are both as efficacious as trying even harder.