The Fine Print Of Dreams

Advice Columnist Ann Landers once gave some helpful advice regarding the work marriage involves. One of her readers lamented the unrealistic ideas many girls have of marriage, beseeching, “Why don’t you level with them Ann?” Landers Replied:

I have leveled with the girls — from Anchorage to Amarillo.
I tell them that all marriages are happy.
It’s the living together afterward that’s tough.
I tell them that a good marriage is not a gift, It’s an achievement.
That marriage is not for kids. It takes guts and maturity.
It separates the men from the boys and the women from the girls.
I tell them that marriage is tested daily by the ability to compromise.
Its survival can depend on being smart enough to know what’s worth fighting about.
Or making an issue of or even mentioning.
Marriage is giving — and more important, it’s forgiving.
And it is almost always the wife who must do these things.
Then, as if that were not enough, she must be willing to forget what she forgave. Often that is the hardest part.
Oh, I have leveled all right. If they don’t get my message, Buster, It’s because they don’t want to get it.
Rose-colored glasses are never made in bifocals.
Because nobody wants to read the small print in dreams.