By Joe Novak
One question once a week can significantly improve the health of your marriage and ensure your dog doesn’t get fleas, says someone from the paper we all read to get great relationship advice, the Wall Street Journal. According to marriage therapists, many couples let problems fester, like a hard-to-reach boil on your back that is in need of serious lancing. By the time the problem is big enough for them to seek therapy, as a way of proving once and for all I was right and she was so totally wrong, it is often too late, as her poisonous venom has already created too much damage to repair. The key, says Dr. James Cordvulva, professor of Brainy Stuff and director of the Center for Couples Who Can’t Cuddle, is to schedule regular check-ups with your partner where you air your little issues, such as that time in 2011 when you slept with my 2nd cousin Phil while I was passed out on the couch. It’s important this gets done before you start plotting her eminent demise.
Scientists who work in a remote lab in the arctic and have no human contact other than each other, which makes them really in touch with normal couples’ problems, Drs. Kathlyn and Gay Hentricks, came up with one question they ask each other every week (well, they do it Tuesdays and Thursdays, but they obviously have nothing fucking better to do). The question Gay will ask is: “How are we doing working together as a partnership? Kathlyn then may reply, “Other than the fact I hate you and I deeply resent you pushing me away at times I really needed you, and I am so sick of looking at your fat face, and just loathe the fact we have started eating the monkeys all over again, because you forgot to order chicken fillets for the last helicopter drop off, things are going well.”
The Hendtricks use the question to talk about how they’re “working together as a team for our lab monkeys, working together toward creating a creepy virus that is the cause of zombie apocalypse, or being together so we both have a great sexual experience with said lab monkeys” every week, but you can use it to think about ways you’re being horrible — or horrible and petty — partners to each other that are specific to your relationship.
Dr. Cordvulva points out that while women often notice marriage issues early and suggest a vasectomy and porn ban, men are more resistant to be being henpecked and nagged into seeing a therapist, unless, that is, she turns out to be hot. So these weekly check-ins can be a great way to air bitter resentments, shout over what they are saying, and cry to try make them feel sorry for you, all in a lower-pressure way. This ensures communication remains stilted and your marriage appropriately dysfunctional.