Marriage Advice Updated For The Modern World

I was sitting with my mom on a commuter train in Vienna on the world’s most drizzly pre-Christmas day debriefing the time that had passed since we had last seen each other. I started sharing stories about the two months I had just spent in Bali, when the conversation inevitably landed on the weekly articles I started writing.

There are times I wish my face wasn’t beaming at the top of the words I put out in the world so I could avoid these moments. The ones where I have to acknowledge to people like my mom that, yes, I forgot to privately share some big details of my life before making them accessible to strangers on the internet. And that, yes, I wrote about touchy things like how my upbringing may have affected my failed marriage.

I wrote about my early, black and white views on marriage here. The comment felt offhandish when I wrote it, but my mom mentioned it had her circle of friends thinking. Mostly, they were curious what my mom thought about such a comment because, certainly, it must have been her responsibility to teach me otherwise. My mom, being the lovely woman she is, assured me she didn’t read too much into it and took the comment for what it was — an explanation of my own feelings.

As we reached our destination, our focus quickly shifted from my old faulty beliefs to the wind that kept our umbrellas…