THE LIFESTYLE ENTREPRENEUR

Read time - 3 minutes

The Anti-Wedding Speech

My big brother Jeff is getting married this weekend!

I’ve been tasked with the best man speech - and since choosing our life partners is the single most important decision we’ll ever make, and life recommendations is right within my content wheelhouse, I get to kill two birds with one stone this week!

While relationships is NOT one of my unique ability areas or even one of my main areas of interest, I have a point of view that’s unique - I hope you enjoy:

Common Wedding Advice that’s wrong

Jeff and I have both been married before.

We both got married when we were around 25. We both followed similar paths:

• Fell in love in college

• Started our lives and careers with our partners

• Got married at 25

• Had 3 kids (including both having a set of twins)

• Lived a pretty standard existence with young kids for awhile (Jeff as a banker, me as an entrepreneur)

• Got divorced around the same time

Divorce is really hard - it turns your life, identity, social circle, and love life entirely upside down.

You feel ok some of the time while going through it, but don’t realize how bad things are until you can look back and reflect at the hell you’ve been through.

We’re both mostly on the other side things. We’ve fallen in love again with great partners.

We’ve rebuild our lives and are moving forward with optimism, enthusiasm, and hope.

Since all four Jones brothers are really close, the above similarities make it logical that Jeff would choose me as his best man.

His quote was actually - “Will you be best man? I feel like you have a good speech rolling around”.

I don’t know about that, but I do know common wedding advice is full of platitudes and nonsense that, after going through it and looking back, we realize much of it is poor advice.

Here are 5 marriage recommendations that should be ignored:

1. The secret to a happy marriage is to prioritize each other above all else - that’s not only flawed, but it’s dangerous advice that’s caused a lot of heartache over the ages.

   The reality is - if you want a chance at being the partner each person deserves, you have to continually work on yourself. That means you need to:

   • Care for your physical self and focus on health and longevity.

   • Care for your mental self and develop mindfulness and the ability to be present with each other.

   • Continue to develop yourself forever to become your best version possible.

   This is one of my most consistent themes - care for yourself first, so you can care for others better in life.

   This is also important when raising children. Most people repeat the exact generational issues that damaged them, with their own children.

   Doing the hard work to improve ourselves, is the only way we can eliminate and unlearn the bullshit programming we got from our parents, and avoid passing it onto our kids.

2. Your spouse is “the one” - This is false for one important reason. Assuming the people getting married are growth minded people, they’re going to constantly evolve over the course of their lives together.

   This means they’ll both be different people every 10 or so years. It’s their job as a committed couple to continue getting to know each other as they evolve, and continue to fall in love with each version of themselves as they age.

   This reality requires consistent work as a partnership to:

   • Evaluate and get aligned on their shared values as they change

   • Practice detachment and acceptance for the person is

   • Consistently encourage and demand their partner work on developing themselves to continue growing

3. Till death do us part - While this is the goal of marriages, it’s not the reality of a good percentage of them, around 40-50%, end in divorce.

   The odds of success aren’t what’s important for this argument though, the mindset of it is, however. If you know you’re going to be married the rest of your life, there’s less reason to work on things.

   A better way to approach marriage is to not assume that union-till-death is guaranteed, because it’s not. Instead, work to earn the relationship on a daily basis.

   • Consciously treat your marriage like a work in process that needs focus and attention, like everything important in life.

   • Date your spouse forever - avoid falling into the “friend zone” with your spouse.

   • Work on communication strategies and tactics forever to continue developing your relationship.

4. Don’t go to bed angry - This is a very common recommendation, and one I’m completely against. Not going to bed angry requires resolution of issues on a daily basis, before going to bed.

   This isn’t practical or possible if you’re working through real issues. Surface issues, sure, but real deep issues need more time to be worked on than one day.

   Establishing clear agreements and boundaries around how issues, arguments, or disagreements are handled as bedtime nears are very important, but I am against trying to force resolution on all issues to satisfy this silly rule.

5. Happy Wife Happy Life - Well, I’m actually in favor of this one. My experience tell me this one is worth following almost all of the time.

I LOVE weddings. The hope, spectacle, and gravity of the occasion always makes me cry. I also LOVE dancing and celebrating, especially as I get older.

I also think our choice in partner is the most important decision we can make as people. It’s the biggest investment we’re going to make in our time - so once we make it we need to put in the work and make it count.

I’ll leave you all with my favorite wedding bible verses - hopefully someone reads it. If not I’m going to be armed to add them to my best man speech:

1 Corinthians 13:11:

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.

For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Talk to you next week,

Mik