--- title: Marriage Advice: The Best Advice Ever Given description: Know someone saying 'I do' this month? Here's what to tell them canonical: https://time.com/3909505/marriage-advice/ author: Lisa Grunwald article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-06-05T10:00:40.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-07-09T08:19:56.062Z article:section: Ideas og:title: The Single Best Piece of Marriage Advice Ever Given og:description: What to tell newlyweds og:url: https://time.com/3909505/marriage-advice/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltda5dc70ed3413d2d/6987efae3c16392abd455fef/the-marriage-book1.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: the-marriage-book og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Single Best Piece of Marriage Advice Ever Given twitter:description: What to tell newlyweds twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltda5dc70ed3413d2d/6987efae3c16392abd455fef/the-marriage-book1.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Single Best Piece of Marriage Advice Ever Given ## Video: What One Woman Learned From Taking a Year Off From Her Marriage [Watch (HLS stream): What One Woman Learned From Taking a Year Off From Her Marriage](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/B3QCkNPd.m3u8) (3:53)  _Published 2015-04-01. Robin Rinaldi did what many women dream of but few actually do: she took a year off from her marriage, made an agreement with her husband that they would both sleep with other people for a set period of time, and threw caution to the wind._ by [Lisa Grunwald](/author/lisa-grunwald/) ## Lisa Grunwald Jun 5, 2015 10:00 AM CUT  Simon & Schuster by [Lisa Grunwald](/author/lisa-grunwald/) ## Lisa Grunwald Jun 5, 2015 10:00 AM CUT First, some numbers: I’ve been married (to the same person) for twenty-seven years. Those twenty-seven years have included six in which we were researching an anthology about marriage. That anthology ([The Marriage Book: Centuries of Advice, Inspiration, and Cautionary Tales, from Adam & Eve to Zoloft](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1439169659/?tag=timecom-20 "undefined")) is 560 pages long. Those 560 pages include 529 entries that we arrived at after scanning—honestly—tens of thousands of books, poems, newspaper articles, letters, postcards, photographs, and songs. So after all that searching, I’ve been asked to name the one—just the one—best piece of advice that my husband and I would offer a newly married couple. Are you ready? With the caveat that there are 3.7 pounds of other wisdom in our book, this is it. It was written in a notebook in 1909 by the poet William Butler Yeats when he was 44: --- > “” --- Simply put: If you’re smart about it, you’ll rise above the inevitable setbacks and stresses of a shared life, and you will make it your lasting mission to bring out the absolute best in your spouse. How do you do this? You have to banish contempt. Contempt is an acid, and it etches ugliness into love. To banish contempt means that when your husband has given in to his least attractive tendencies, his most fearful, or fearsome; when your wife has lost her focus, her patience, or her heart, this is the moment when you must exercise the x-ray vision I’m sure Yeats would have mentioned if he’d known about Superman. This is the moment when you must see through the annoying, demanding, complaining, failing, faltering wreck in front of you—and find the strong, kind, fascinating, functional person you know your spouse wants to be. You have to learn to be a critic without criticizing. Thanks to the internet, I now know that the origin of the word critic is the Greek word kritikos, which—strangely enough—does not mean “able to pick at flaws incessantly” but does mean “able to make judgments.” This is a crucial difference. The kind of criticism that helps marriage is the kind you learned in English class: studying something so well that you can find its hidden patterns and its deeper truths. If you apply this kind of criticism in marriage, it is actually possible to stop a spouse in mid-spiral (sometimes even in mid-sentence!) and say, “Excuse me, no offense, but you are not being the person you want to be.” The pronoun is vital. The difference between “who you want to be” and “who I want you to be” is the difference between encouragement and nagging: spark and ash. You can’t do this without understanding what it is that your spouse truly wants. That may sound easy, but isn’t. In the short term, you might know she wants a promotion, or he wants to live in the country. But that is not the “high secret self” you need to know. The “high secret self” exists apart from daily desires and even apart from the twists of fate and fortune that get in the way. Example: A long, long time ago, I asked my husband what he wanted. I mean Wanted, with a capital W. I asked: Is it fame? Money? Power? Adventure? He gave me his answer (PS, it was none of those things), and, when he asked me, I gave him mine. The specifics only mattered to the extent that we each had an answer, and that neither of us was planning to knock off a bank. Since then, we have, to the best of our abilities, been the guardians of each other’s answers, the guardians of each other’s best selves. (Naturally we haven’t always succeeded, and naturally some of our goals have evolved over time, but, hey, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little marriages.). In 1928, Henry Neuman, who was a leader of the Society for Ethical Culture, wrote a book called Modern Youth and Marriage, and in it, he gave advice remarkably similar to Yeats’ journal jotting: --- > “” --- William Butler Yeats spent his life desperately in love with a woman he never got to marry, so, sadly, he never had the chance to exercise this privilege. To newly married couples, I would say: Seize it. Assist your spouse in doing justice to that better possibility.And while you’re at it, remember: say I love you, put the cap back on the toothpaste, and never —no matter how great the provocation—insult one of your in-laws. _Read next:_ [_14 Pieces of Practical Dating Advice From My 85-Year-Old Grandmother_](http://time.com/3896246/grandmother-dating-advice/?iid=time%5Freadnext "undefined") [_Listen to the most important stories of the day._](http://time.com/newsletter/the-brief/autoplay/?xid=spl-fullbrief-article "undefined") ### Photographing a Kiss: Long Time Love Affairs  Joseph and Dorothy Bolotin Sharon, Pennsylvania Married on June 16, 1938\. Dorothy, "I never think of it in terms of years. I think of it in terms of good years. In love, hot romance doesn’t last forever. So I would say that yes, I think love changes. I would say we’re still in love. It’s focusing, doing little things. He’s an amazing man." Lauren Fleishman  John and Sherma Campbell Star Valley, Wyoming Married on May 13, 1955\. Sherma, "When you start out, you think you love each other as much as you possibly can,but love grows—just like your inner self grows as time goes by and you have experiences.And now at this stage of the game, I love him even more. I can’t even imagine life without him." Lauren Fleishman  Jin Lin and Lai Mei Chen Brooklyn, New York Married on February 4, 1961\. Jin Lin, "We had so many things in common it was like our hearts were the same." Lauren Fleishman  de'Spagnolis Aldo de’Spagnolis and Maria Filiozzi Itri, Italy Married on October 23, 1949\. Aldo, "When I first saw her, she was 14 and I was 22.Was there a concern that she was too young for me? No! Even now I look like a young child! Yes, even now I’m still young." Lauren Fleishman  Jake and Mary Jacobs Solihull, England Married on April 27, 1948\. Mary,"Jake said to me,'Would it ever be possible for me to marry you?' And I said,'Possible but not probable!' And that’s how it was. It wasn’t likely that I would ever marry him, and he knew that. So when he went home to Trinidad, my mother and father breathed a sigh of relief. But he used to write, and he said, 'I’m thinking I might come back to England.'" Lauren Fleishman  Kissin Yevgeniy and Lyubov Kissin Brooklyn, New York Married on June 29, 1941\. Yevgeniy, "We met at a dancing party. It was in January 1938\. My friend invited me to the party, he said there would be a lot of beautiful young girls. Another cadet with high boots had approached her, but she didn’t like high boots and so she said no to him. I was the second one to approach her. I had a different uniform, but I’m still not sure if it was my uniform or my face that attracted her to me." Lauren Fleishman  Itig and Golda Pollac Brooklyn, New York Married on August 13, 1946\. Golda, "I would say love came little by little. Not right away.We were young.And he was older, but I liked him. He spoke to me in a very nice way." Lauren Fleishman  Yaakov and Mariya Shapirshetyn Brooklyn, New York Married on July 6, 1949\. Yaakov, "What is the secret to love? A secret is a secret, and I don’t reveal my secrets." Lauren Fleishman  Gino and Angie Terranova Staten Island. New York Married on September 27, 1947\. Angie, "You really don’t think about getting older. First of all, you’re aging together, and when you see a person constantly,you don’t notice big changes. Like you don’t notice, oh you’re getting a little wrinkle here and tomorrow you say it’s a little deeper. No, those are things that just happen." 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