1) If your friends all hate your future or present spouse, they are almost always onto something. Your friends often know you better than you do. Get out while you can, or at least get a third, fourth, and fifth opinion.

2) Never fight with your spouse in front of in-laws. They will often take it much more seriously that the two of you do, and they are much less likely to forget.

3) On a similar note, do not make fun of your spouse in front of other people, particularly physical imperfections or aspects of his or her life that cannot be helped. It is not particularly couth, for example, to make fun of your significant other’s body parts. Not only does this make your spouse look bad, but it makes you look bad as well. For one, it makes your spouse look stupid for marrying you. Two, it makes you looks stupid for marrying someone with, as an example, a small penis. And three, while it may be all in fun at the time, long after you forget it, the other people will never forget it.

4) Keep bedroom things in the bedroom. If your wife is a “screamer,” that’s probably sounds cool to tell the guys, but once again, once you tell the guys, they will never forget it, and may, in a drunken moment at one of your parties, bring it up in mixed company, or in front of your wife. If your husband likes for the two of you to secretly have sex at other people’s houses, that may also sound cool to tell the girls over drinks, but once the cat is out of the bag, your girlfriends will always remember this about the two of you, and may be very reluctant to leave you alone at their house for any period of time.

5) Don’t expect your spouse to ever completely understand you, or for you to ever completely understand your spouse. I have been married six years, and I still don’t understand why Jinny thinks boogers are yellow, or why the smell of skunks is a great smell. She must have smoked a lot of pot before we got married. That would explain her love of the pine scented air-fresheners, too. Likewise, she doesn’t understand my spotty record of perfectionism or my love of projects. (That’s okay, I don’t really either.)

6) Being a newlywed normally sucks, or is at least problematic at best. Get over it. If it doesn’t, either you people are on another planet, or you have been together already for a hella long time. It’s hard enough to have a roommate– now remember you now have a roommate of the opposite sex that shares your bank account and owns half of your assets. Oh, and, by the way, you can never have sex with anyone else ever again. Even if it doesn’t seem like it sucks, and you are all lovey-dovey, ask your partner. They may be having a harder time with certain aspects of the new arrangement that you are (Honestly, I wasn’t aware that the first year sucked until Jinny told me). The problem is that girls dream of their wedding day from the moment they are conceived, but forget to think about what it will be like to have to clean the cat litter box after getting back from the two week honeymoon. Guys normally have a “deer-caught-in-headlights-look” to them; very few men ever dream of getting married. They were too busy just trying to get into girl’s pants to think any further. The important thing is that once the changes settle out and both of you start to get comfortable with the way things are, things will get better.

7) Any chick that really wants a ring to cost two full months of your salary isn’t worth it. She’s a money-grubbing whore, and she won’t get any better once the marriage contract is signed.*

8) Do not compare your spouse to your mother or father. It is tempting, but don’t say “My Mom used to make French toast the other way…” It breeds feelings of inadequacy and ill-will on the part of your spouse toward your parent.

9) Her parents always become more important, unless she is an orphan. It probably has something to do with the mom being at the woman’s bedside right after childbirth, though I am not 100% sure on this.

10) Once you are married, you can no longer confide in anyone outside your marriage about personal intermarital problems. This means that if you and the hubby have a fight and you tell your mother, for example, while you will forget the argument within hours, she never will, and she will hold it against him for a very long time. This is true with all family members and close friends. In a nutshell, once you are married, you are trapped to hold in arguments and problems within the marital unit, or suffer endless silent criticism from relatives. If this is an untenable situation, don’t get married. This is probably the only reason Jinny’s family thinks I am a better husband than Nico or Jonathan.

11) You never get laid on Thanksgiving. It’s probably because all of the coats are on the bed.

*Unless you make virtually nothing, in which case, why in the hell are you getting married in the first place?