A Foolproof Guide to a Happy Marriage

By Lindy West | October 2, 2012 | 5:25pm

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As we all know, love is complicated. So many feelings to contend with, so many variables, such high divorce rates—sometimes it seems like maintaining a healthy, happy, long-lasting relationship is impossible. Lucky for us, SCIENCE. Using science, I have pinned down the exact steps a couple must take in order to never, ever, ever break up (even if they want to). And you can do it too! True love for everyone!!!

In order to secure and hang on to the ideal mate, I try to be as happy as possible all the time, even when it’s creepy and inappropriate. I also make sure to stay as delusional as fuck and cling to idealism at all cost. Playfulness has been shown to attract mates, so in my 20s I never went anywhere without my rolling suitcase filled with board games (pick-up line: “Hey, do you want to come back to my room and Wake Daddy?”). Then I got 17 PhDs and burned my vast family fortune in a garbage fire under the freeway.

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Research shows that relationships work better when wives are thinner than their husbands. I took this knowledge to heart. Some early boyfriends of mine included a sign-language gorilla, a shipping container filled with ball bearings, Gulliver from Gulliver’s Travels, and a bank. But none of them was ever quite right. No butterflies, you know? Then, at long last, I met my husband—who’s just a regular human man, but a good 30 pounds heavier than me as long as I only eat pickle brine and Sensa.

Pre-wedding doubts are associated with higher divorce rates, so to avoid cold feet I had myself put into a medically-induced designer coma for a full year prior to the ceremony. Anything for love!

We made it a point not to consummate our love until three years into our marriage, because everyone knows that only lonely painted harlots engage in premarital teenage sexing. And we certainly didn’t premaritally cohabitate. In fact, we made sure to know as little about each other as possible before the wedding, because why would anyone buy the cow if he’d already found out about the cow’s likes and dislikes, talked to the cow about its political leanings, and examined the cow’s haunches for cow-rot? Seriously.

We heard that couples often “lose that loving feeling after tying the knot,” and we certainly couldn’t have that! So, to eliminate the risks inherent in knot-tying, we staged an elaborate and extremely expensive sham marriage. It looked like a real marriage in every way, except that it was officiated by a mall Santa that we dressed up like a judge.

For our honeymoon, I let my husband think that we were going to Cabo San Lucas, like he’s always dreamed. But instead, at the airport, I stuck four Ambien into his fun-size Three Musketeers and wheeled him on to a one-way flight headed to Libya! Surprise!!! Libya—lucky us—has the lowest divorce rate in the world. Ooh, and here’s a fun fact about Libyan divorce proceedings:

A man can divorce his wife simply by repeating “I divorce thee” three times before witnesses; a woman can initiate divorce proceedings only with great difficulty.

Great news! Since, in most cases, it’s the wife who initiates divorce, the less initiatin’ I can do, the better. But just to be safe, I make sure I spend 20 out of every 24 hours lying blindfolded and motionless in the root cellar. Can’t be too careful!

Since divorce and relationship strife have been known to spread like a contagion through social media, computers and technology of all kinds are outlawed in our home. Also electricity, flush toilets, and mirrors, because you can’t be too careful.

To stave off divorce, I do all the housework on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; but then to increase our overall happiness and life satisfaction we split the dishes on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. On Sundays we intercourse. We go to intensive therapy four days a week, we go to bed mad the other three, we don’t drink, and we converted to rabid, evangelical Mormonism. I gave back all my Best Actress Oscars.

We have 29 children. My vagina is very tired.

But at least it will never, ever be alone.