1324 What did you learn the first year of your marriage?

Last night we went out for dinner with Sharon and Eric and Nancy and Ron (46th anniversary). Among the 3 couples, our years of marriage added up to 125. That's a lot of wisdom, Ron quipped. But no one will listen, his wife responded. The Toledo Blade wants to know what you learned during the first year, I said.

You can let the reporter know at tlane@theblade.com what you learned. I took a few notes on this at the coffee shop while reading the paper--it's a lot easier to remember that first year than any of the others, I discovered.

Setting aside the sex stuff (which nowadays everyone figures out by a series of living together arrangements), I developed quite a list. A lot wasn't even about marriage, but about life in general. Here's just a few:

• We had three apartments that first year, all with interesting and/or peculiar neighbors. One had an 80 year old landlady with whom I'd eat dinner; one had a 16 year old mother, married with a baby. Her mother was 32, I think.
  
  
• I learned to cook, budget, manage a checking account, use a laundromat, and keep a car running. I'd learned bits and pieces from watching and working with my mom, but I'd either lived at home or in some type of college housing.
  
  
• I learned to scrounge for used furniture and adjust to another person's taste more conservative than mine. One wooden cabinet with a metal top stayed with us for 41 years.
  
  
• I learned to live on one income and save the other. That plan never failed us.
  
  
• I learned I needed to return to college so I wouldn't be stuck in dead-end clerical jobs and how to file a complaint with the county and sue for my final paycheck.
  
  
• I learned contraception occasionally fails and found out I was pregnant after I re-enrolled to finish my senior year. So along with all the other new things about being married, I learned a lot about my body that year. Although both my sisters were also pregnant and we were all due the same week, we didn't live in the same town so we didn't do much sharing (no cell phones or e-mail in those days).
  
  
• I learned how to teach Spanish to high school kids who knew more than I did.
  
  
• I learned the vagaries of the pre-women's movement laws and regulations that bound women--like becoming an instant Indiana resident and losing my in-state student status because of my marriage; being passed over for a job because I had a husband "who could support me;" being denied consideration for professional work because I was pregnant so I clerked in a drug store.
  
  
• I learned the trick of getting maximum service from a wringer washer that offered 30 minutes of agitation and wringing for a quarter (in the basement 3 floors down). Later I would figure out how to coordinate that with my husband's schedule so I could wash diapers--but that was during year two.
  
  
• I learned that although I thought my parents in-law were loads of fun, I didn't like their values much (my husband loved my family's values but didn't think they were much fun).
  
  
• I learned that compromise was not a good option for us. It was easier to just watch and wait until something came along we both liked. At least I think I learned that the first year--it's possible I didn't put a name to it for 20 or so years.

I'm pretty sure I learned that my husband was focused, logical, thoughtful, tidier than most men, passive, and non-confrontational. However, it probably took me years to see his personality as my good fortune rather than something to be changed.

It took a quarter of a century to learn this: don't talk your relationship to death. Men hate that. Find a girlfriend and talk to her (i.e., but only if you are female). Or blog it if you just got to get it out.