What makes a good marriage?

I'm in the only happy marriage in my six-person office. Which admittedly is not a huge pool, but hey. One is never married, one widowed, two divorced, and the other married but not in what I'd call a particularly happy (though also not abusive) way. Yesterday over lunch the married one and one of the divorcees and I ended up talking about what makes a good marriage, about how fights are resolved, about how (statistically) the thing couples argue about most often is money....

Wonderful Husband and I have been married six and a half years. I think in that time we've been actually mad at one another maybe twice? For maybe twenty minutes? Apparently this is astonishing. Part of it, I suspect, is that we are in fact highly compatible, but part of it is also that we talk things out before they become problems. The lines of communication are kept open, and while (as in all marriages) there are things we each do that irritate one another, we combine acceptance and discussion with gentle "carrot" methods to retrain the partner.

As far as finances go, it was something of a revelation to my married coworker that we have both joint accounts and personal ones. I kind of suspect this to be a generation gap (I am a couple decades younger than her), but to us it's always made sense. While we trust each other implicitly, it's good to have something of your own where you don't have to feel accountable to someone else. Freedom and commitment, each in their own measure.

Old vs. New: Cookbooks

A few weekends ago I picked up a bunch of (mostly) old books at estate sales. Which included Pickles the Fire Cat, which I haven't read since I was like six. Oh, the memories....

But I digress. Included in my purchases was a 1944 edition of The Good Housekeeping Cookbook. Now, mind, this is not one of those paltry thin pamphlets. Just shy of a thousand pages, it would make a respectable doorstop. But why I bought it (for $1.50) was for the cultural insight. This was published during WWII. It has instructions for stretching those things which were rationed (butter, oil, sugar, meat, etc.) There are sections that start with sentences like "Plucking should be done promptly and quickly after bird has stopped fluttering and is still warm."

I find this a heartening contrast to the modern slow-cooker cookbook I have also been perusing, wherein (for instance) ~75% of the chicken recipes start with "take X boneless skinless chicken breast halves"....