My dream in life (beyond being left alone to eat biscuits and getting paid for it) is to be an agony aunt. The kind of old-school newspaper columnist that people write to about their worries so I can solve them with some sage advice.
I even went through the “considering being a nun” phase all thinking women have as a child until I realised it’s the priest not the nun who gets to hear Confession and dole out the absolution. So I make do by religiously reading other people’s quandaries every week in the paper. I am single-handedly firing these types of articles to the top of the most-read list.
“My wife wont be intimate with me unless I dress up as Engelbert Humperdinck”? That’s getting my click. “My husband stopped speaking to me over a game of Scrabble, it’s been 30 years.” Click.
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It’s not just the extreme dilemmas either. I’m invested in the day-to-day friction that comes with loving others. Resentment over uneven domestic loads, fights over money, feeling like things aren’t bad enough to break up but not happy enough to pretend everything is okay. They are situations we have all experienced flashes of, either directly or as a bystander over the years, which is why we love to read how someone else thinks we should handle it.
This is why I know I should never be allowed to be an agony aunt. There’s a reason The Irish Times has never asked me – aside from already having two brilliant ones in Roe McDermott and Trish Murphy. My answer would always be “leave them”. No considered empathy from me. Just two wordsWhat we would lose in quality (and readers) we would save on printing ink. I’m not anti-family or relationships; just impatient and prone to giving out advice I don’t follow myself. This is why people don’t ask me for relationship advice.
But if they did, here’s what I would tell them:
Opposites attract, but money decisions divide
Love does not conquer all. And you wouldn’t want it to. Opposites attract, but without some level of compatibility and a shared idea of what a good life looks like, the couple won’t last. Or worse, they will keep going at the cost of at least one person in the relationship living a compromised life. I’ve seen couples from different cultures, religions, families, class, music tastes and education work out beautifully, because they had joint missions – whether it was a commitment to giving their kids a better life or building a business or never going to bed angry or making each other’s lives easier. I believe that it’s easier to marry someone with the opposite political beliefs than someone who has opposite ideas about how to spend money. The small divides that come up day-to-day over the big shop are harder to reconcile than the big gaps that only come up at election time.
Only marry someone you want to go on holiday with forever
Anyone can get along on the same 9am-5pm grind of work, Tupperware container dinner and sleep. But annual leave is sacred. It is the only thing between most people and responding “get stuffed” at the next meeting request. It cannot be spent with your bum in white plastic chairs at an all-inclusive if you would prefer it on a bicycle seat in Basque Country. And vice versa. Ever since I was a little girl I have had one dream. Not to start a family or explore the Amazon, but to fly business class. Is it comfort-obsessed and superficial? Yes. But so am I and my soul mate accepts that.
If you love someone, let them sleep
We have to wake up every day. The only way out if it is dying. The timing and manner of that daily event determines your quality of life. If you wake up your morning person by creeping to bed at 2am (your best thinking hour) they will not be happy. Neither will you when the first of their six alarms set at 15-minute intervals rings out at 5.30am and you’ve just fallen asleep. Having natural body clocks set in different time zones can work, but only if you respect and protect each other’s slumber.
Agree on how to fight
Ask them if their parents fought. If they say yes, ask them how, and whether they think it was a good way to resolve disputes or something they would do differently. If they tell you their parents didn’t fight but “just didn’t speak to each other for weeks” after a disagreement, then it’s worth having a conversation about how you don’t have to yell at someone to hurt them.
