Saving Grace (What Doesn’t Kill You, #1): A Katie Romantic Mystery

Excerpt from How to Screw Up Your Marriage (Successful Relationships)

  Bring me a bucket.

  When people tell me and my husband that we make them want to puke, we gaze into each other’s eyes and say, “Thank you!” Then we go home and make sweet, sweet love, while singing each other Marvin Gaye songs and weaving promise rings out of sea grass and clover.

  It’s hard work, being this nauseating. The effort involved in all this damn smiling—you wouldn’t want to take it on, I promise. Totally exhausting. Add to this burden our perfect children and our perfect careers, and you’ve got the makings of chronic fatigue syndrome, at least.

  As my youngest daughter would say, “Whatever.”

  The first time an acquaintance told me, “Y’all are just so cute together it makes me want to puke,” I wasn’t sure how to take it. It sounded like a compliment, but it felt like a barb. I thought about her sterile marriage to a nice but unaffectionate man who didn’t seem to find her interesting, and about how she laughed about him behind his back. I analyzed the green look in her brown eyes; I’d seen it in other people’s eyes when I was with my husband. I concluded that, given the choice, I’d like to keep my relationship over hers, thank you very much. Also, while she seemed envious in a grudgingly admiring way, I’d never seen evidence that she worked to improve her own marriage. Not once. Did she think pukeworthiness just happened by accident, by a sprinkling of pixie dust? I don’t believe it does.

  So, yep, I am the lucky princess with the fairytale marriage. But I’m willing to bet even Cinderella and Prince Charming had their issues. Unfortunately for my prince, I habitually and publicly confess my more interesting failings, which inevitably involve our relationship from time to time. I guess that in addition to being half of a couple who makes you want to puke, I have diarrhea of the mouth (and fingers), too. Totally irresistible, I know.

  I wish I could make it sound more scintillating than it really is, maybe write about how Eric is a compulsive gambler and I am a gender-reassignment success story, and the neighbors have called the cops to break up our fights on three separate occasions. That would be exciting, but it wouldn’t be true.

  The truth is boring. The truth is that we are as flawed as the next couple. I adore my almost-perfect husband, who puts up with me writing about him and being a gigantic pain in the ass. I love my normal, fallible kids and stepkids[footnote]I’ll refer to family members, friends, and clients from time to time. Names have been changed to protect the innocent—which Eric and I are far from.[/footnote]. I love our messed-up, wacky life. But just because we adore and love each other, it doesn’t mean the rest comes easily.

  While I have no scandalous revelations for you, I can share the secrets of how two highly emotional, self-absorbed, over-committed Type-A losers at marriage (we are both each other’s second spouse) manage our relationship into the true thing of beauty that it is.

  And I do mean manage.

  (Are you choking on that vomit yet? Stick around.)

  If my day job counts, I am a so-called expert in human relations. As a hybrid employment attorney/human resources professional and consultant, I get paid to help grownups manage their workplace relationships. The HR principles I apply at work are, in theory, principles for humans anywhere—like humans in a marriage, even a second marriage like mine.

  There’s a good reason doctors don’t usually treat family members: when it comes to our loved ones, our rational selves are replaced by emotional creatures. Things get personal. Things get messy. All the psychological training in the world couldn’t guarantee that someone (and by someone I mean me) will play fair.

  Physician, heal thyself. HR Consultant, you too.

  So it is with some embarrassment, and hopefully a bit of humility, that I will share our foibles and our feats. We understand how wrong we each got it on our first ride on the marriage-go-round, and we believe that through painful trial and error, we’ve finally gotten a grip on the brass ring. We know the statistics: over 40% of first marriages end in divorce and up to 67% of second do, too. The big issues—emotional intimacy, mutual support, compatibility, respect, sex, and money[footnote]And, these days, I'd have to say that technology, like social media and smartphones, makes these issues more immediate and drives up the intensity.[/footnote]—get even trickier when you add stepparenting, alimony, child support, ex-spouses, and the “It’s easier to say ‘I quit’ the second time” phenomenon. But we’re beating the odds, and we want you to, as well. And so we begin. Keep your Pepto-Bismol handy.

  ~~~

  There’s nothing under the canoe, honey.