Writing Boots

I have a college-age daughter who is putting me freshly in touch with all the ways in which young lovers evaluate one another as long-term prospects.

Political alignment. Mutual interests. Mutual taste in friends.

All legitimate.

Longtime spouses might add, “Mutual experience of climate.”

It would be ideal if you and your life companion both like to keep the house and car cold, or you both like it hot; you both love air conditioning, or you both hate it.

Yes, that would be nice.

You should settle for simply agreeing when it is cold, and when is hot.

Twenty years into a marriage, and you are still arguing:

“It’s so hot in here.”

“No it isn’t! It’s freezing!”

Or, on the other hand,

“It’s so cold in here.”

“Are you kidding? I’m burning up!”

It sort of puts “communication” in quote marks, does it not?

My old boss scrawled on an office card when my wife and I got married, “Stay married 30 years. Then you’ll know what love is.” Boy, that was a real facer.

Now almost 30 years into our marriage, my wife and I don’t even agree on what the weather will be in the future. When she and I check the weather forecast on our phones, she says, “It’s going to rain on Saturday.” I say, “Mine says mostly sunny!”

My advice to the young: Look for someone who experiences the climate the same as you do. But if you don’t find it—well, compatibility is overrated.

She puts on a sweater. You take off yours.

Another happily married man I know says that if his beloved wife ever left him, he would to look for a woman who enjoys peach-based desserts.

“You can’t have everything,” Steven Wright said. “Where would you put it?”