The Marriage Files

Choosing a spouse and a house are two of the biggest decisions a person will make in his or her lifetime. Luckily, the two matters amount to much the same thing. In other words, the advice that applies to one also applies to the other. To help simplify both proceedings, here are 5 ways in which choosing a spouse is like buying a house:

It’s best to get everything in writing, especially if you've got big plans. Would you buy a house on spit-and-a-handshake? Of course not—you’d want a firm commitment. You wouldn’t put the cart before the horse by, say, buying new living room furniture before the ink was dry on the closing documents. The analogy to wedded life is pretty direct. I can think of no better illustration than this one from my friend Roxi’s life:

Roxi is a black woman and a grade-school teacher who became engaged to Sandy, a white man, when they were both living in Los Angeles. L.A. is a city where, no matter what you’re planning on doing, you can rest assured someone has broken the ground before you. Although they were serious about their relationship and had even discussed starting a family, they hadn’t made any firm plans to actually get married. In L.A., no big deal. Then they decided to relocate to Sandy’s small hometown in the Midwest. One day, as Roxi was contemplating her future, she thought to herself, "I’m a black woman in a biracial relationship who’s going to be trying to find a job as a teacher of young children in a conservative, predominantly white small town, and I’m thinking of having a mixed-race child out of wedlock." She paused to digest this, and then, "San-n-n-d-Y-Y-Y!" she yelled, "We need to talk!" They got married pronto, and still are. First things first.

Every house looks good in the real estate photo. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be a show house in real life, if you catch my drift. Cameras lie, and so do men and women. Take a gander at his Pop or her Mom if you want to know what you’ll be seeing over the breakfast table 250,000 miles down the road of life. And check out the contents of his (her) medicine chest the next time you’re in his (her) bathroom alone. Women: be on the alert for bottles of Rogaine, Viagra, or Just for Men hair color. Men: be on the lookout for industrial-strength depilatory, Beano and any kind of pancake makeup (it sounds like what it is). Finding any of these products is a lot like pulling up to a prospective house with your real estate agent and seeing the "Last Laugh Pest Control" truck drive away. If you see any of them, someone’s got some explaining to do.

There will be major systems and appliances that are on their last legs; the only question is which ones and how put out you’ll be when they finally fail. Explicit questions about the results of his (her) last trip to the urologist (gynecologist) may seem rude now, but think how you’ll wish you’d asked if, to paraphrase, the plumbing clogs horribly two months after you move in. A smart home buyer would insist on a house inspection, and the worst that can happen there is that you live in a hotel for a couple of months while a major problem gets fixed. How much more important, then, to know what you're getting in a life partner?

The closing costs will make you gasp. Average closing costs for a home purchase are $5000-$7000, while the average cost of a wedding these days (are you sitting down?) is over $22,000. My figure for closing costs is based on 3-4% of a national-average home price of $175,000. To have the equivalent value of a house, your husband or wife will have to generate three-quarters of a million dollars in income that you would not have earned on your own. But interestingly, that’s probably about what the average person will clear over the course of a 40-year working life, so the analogy still holds.

However, there are some important financial differences between acquiring a house and acquiring a spouse that you should consider before taking either plunge. A home will eventually be paid off and, if propertly maintained, will shelter you for the rest of your life. Also, you can obtain homeowner’s insurance to protect your investment in your house in case of a catastrophe. Your husband (wife), on the other hand, is never "paid off," unless we’re talking about some kind of bribery; is not guaranteed to stick around for the rest of your life, even if properly maintained; and the closest thing to "marriage insurance"—the kind of thing that will protect you if Lolita (Fabio) moves in next door—is a prenuptial agreement.

The outcome depends on how much time and energy you put into it. I’ve always hated movie titles like Fatal Attraction, Lethal Intention, and Deadly Indiscretion for their cheap shock value, but they are useful in that they boil down 90 minutes of schlock content into a catchy, two-word phrase that pretty much sums up the plot. In that same vein, if home ownership was a movie, its title would be Extreme Exhaustion. If marriage was a movie, its working title would be Tempting Proposition, aka Hormonal Confusion. The version that actually made it to the big screen, after the marketing people got their hands on it, would be Perfect Combination, or maybe Blissful Exhilaration. The director’s cut, released years later (the director having gone through a messy divorce in the meantime) would be called Cunning Deception. And the reality TV show based on it would be Strange Bedfellows. Any one of these titles (or all of them) could describe your marriage as it plays out in real life. A lot depends on you and whom you pick to go along for the ride.

So you see, there are a lot of similarities between spouses and houses. So many, in fact, that I'll probably follow this up with Spouse Like House II. And not just because I've got more to say—but because all hilarious buddy movies generate a sequel.

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