Happy anniversary.

Today is the fourteenth birthday of our marriage. I bought nothing special for my wife. She bought nothing special for me. I didn’t give her a card. She didn’t give me a card. In fact, most of the day, we both worked on things that needed to be done. Then, in the middle of the afternoon, we ran a few errands together with the children and ended up at our favorite burger bar. We ordered and ate in the company of children, alcoholics, and televised sports, and then we played a little corn hole with the kids. After this extravaganza of excitement, we drove home and split up to home-school our respective kids. After that we put them to bed and watched some TV before going to bed ourselves. Sound special? The sort of thing you read about in those ridiculously long British and Russian novels in literature classes? Perhaps not.

Then again, considering that neither my wife nor I care much about gifts, cards, or spending lots of money on anything, it was actually quite nice. We were full, happy, and grateful to God for a decent life with each other. And that’s pretty much the most important thing you have to know about your own marriage: what works for you.

See, a lot of relationship books and experts will give you a whole long list of “the right things” to do to make a marriage work. And many of them are quite useful. But the problem with reading such books is that it can make you think you’ve done what you’re “supposed” to do, hence you’re good. But it doesn’t matter if you do all the things you’re “supposed” to do in a hundred books if your own spouse doesn’t care about any of that stuff or needs something different (whether more or less) from you personally.

Today made me happy. Today made my wife happy. And just the fact that after fourteen years, we know each other well enough to know exactly this about us both is one of the greatest thrills of being married for a little while. Perhaps it sounds far less glamorous than the ads encourage you to imagine, but let me assure you that glamour isn’t nearly everything it’s cracked up to be. Especially when you compare it with the simplicity of sharing a life with someone you love, a rather mundanely exotic thing that I worry far too many people think somehow inadequate because it fails to live up to all their ludicrously epic expectations.

Don’t underestimate the value of a good sedan. There’s a reason it’s the kind of car most people wind up buying…and being satisfied with.