Marriage Tips from the First First Couple

It’s a self-evident truth that George Washington set precedents. In her new book The Washingtons, a biography of America’s founding marriage, Flora Fraser makes the less evident point that Martha Washington set some too and that together they paved the way for First Couples to follow.

The Washingtons can be a model for the rest of us too. George and Martha had a full partnership and a functional blended family, in which George fully embraced his stepchildren as his own. Privately and publicly, according to Fraser’s account, they weren’t stingy with affection. Martha, predating Joni Mitchell by about 200 years, called George her “Old Man”; his comrade-in-arms Henry Lee III once noted that George, in turn, was “exemplarily tender” to Martha.

They also knew that marriage takes work. It’s pointless to “look for perfect felicity before you consent to wed,” George would write to a granddaughter in 1794–but whether or not he sought it, he and Martha are proof that you can get pretty close.

–LILY ROTHMAN