Learning to navigate the choppy waters of love and relationships, with only your fellow single friends to ask for advice, can often feel like an impossible task.
So Reddit decided to ask married men for the pearls of wisdom they’d like to share with their unmarried counterparts - and unsurprisingly the thread has been overwhelmed with responses.
1. “Life is never full of dates or crazy events happening. Life is 90% downtime, and if you are going to be spending your life with someone then you need someone you can spend downtime with.”
2. “When my brother asked me how I knew if my wife was the one I told him that being around her felt like being alone, but a bit better. For me, even hanging out with some of my best friends can feel a bit draining. With my wife, it always just felt easy. I think that’s love.”
3. “This is the advice I offer to people who have never been in love; being with the right person causes you to randomly blur the line between you and them. I do things for my boyfriend with the same enthusiasm I would do something for myself. It’s like he’s an extension of me, in a way. His accomplishments are mine, my happiness is his, etc.”
4. “When you begin a relationship, you fall in love with this person who seems extraordinary. Over time they begin to seem more ordinary. When that happens, take some time to reflect on what made that person so great in the first place and what has changed since then. Is it just the mundane lifestyle of being with the same person for a long time? If so, change things up. Do something to show that person that they are still the extraordinary person you fell in love with. You don’t have to stop impressing your partner because they are committed to you.”
5. “If you are not willing to be vulnerable to your partner, you are not ready.”
6. “Soul mate is a label that should be earned, not imagined. My wife is my soul mate and it’s not because she physically matches what I’d always imagined my soul mate would look like. She is my soul mate because everything I do and everything I am is better because of her. No matter how many years pass in our marriage, no matter how many ups and downs, successes and failures, no matter what reflection she sees in the mirror, I only see her. The same woman I pledged my life to the day we married. She is still the same woman I fantasise about, and try to seduce constantly. I shit you not - I know this woman is my soul mate because of the man she inspires me to be, if only because of how she loves me. And when I get into bed in the evening, and wake up in the morning - my entire world works because she’s there, sleeping peacefully.”
7. “Enjoy your time. Being married and being single are different and both have their advantages.”
8. “A friend of mine once told me that ‘love isn’t something you feel, it’s something you do’. Feeling love and telling somebody you love them is not enough - you have to show them with your actions.”
9. “Stop pursuing people more than you pursue your passions. Passionate people are very attractive - regardless of what they look like.”
16. “Dating a lot before you marry is important. And it’s not because you need to get an abundance of sex out of your system. Rather it’s learning what you don’t want in a partner. Over time, you realise that you can love all sorts of people, but you can’t love people with specific traits that you can’t endure, traits that may not be apparent to you until a way into the relationship.”
17. “Don’t get married because ‘all your friends’ are getting married. As someone in their mid-twenties I’ve seen plenty of guys and girls get married after dating for a short period of time because they felt society was telling them it was the right thing to do. Needless to say some of them are already divorced because they didn’t date long enough for the honeymoon period to wear off.”
18. “Pick your battles carefully. 90% of the time, whatever the problem is, it isn’t worth fighting over. Just apologise for whatever you may (or may not) have done, get it over with and move on.”
19. “Only marry a girl you have spent a lot of time with, and miss her every time you’re separated.”
20. “My piece of advice is to buy your own tube of toothpaste.”