Dear E. Jean: I want an open relationship. I have broached the topic numerous times, but my man won’t listen to my pleas. Also, I want to move abroad. He wants to stay in California. Finally, he wants children, and I despise children. We’re both 23. He is a wonderful man, and we’ve been so happy together that I married him six months ago. But do these three disagreements foretell our doom?—Mrs. Content for Now

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Content, My Kumquat: Yes.

PS: However, because you’re happy now…because the hard part of marriage isn’t the disagreements but the boredom in between…because nobody knows what to do in a marriage until they do it…because next week, you may picnic under a 1,700-year-old redwood tree in Big Sur and decide to open your own winery and never leave the state of California…because your husband may start raising a pack of Russian wolfhounds, mush them to record-winning glory in the Iditarod, and forget all about having two-legged kids…because keeping marriage going is fun if you make it fun to keep going…and because when you reach the advanced age of 24 (early midtwenties!), you may get new ideas…well, Mrs. Content, I’d say your marriage is likely to last as long as, if not longer than, half the marriages in America.

This letter is from the Ask E. Jean Archive, 1993-2017. Send questions to E. Jean at E.Jean@AskEJean.com.



E. Jean I write the ASK E.

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