Secret Rules

Never carry a debt on a credit card.

Invest early.

Before asking her to marry you, come clean with all your shit you’re going to want to do once you’re married.

Change the oil in your car every 5,000 miles.

Read to your kids every night.

 

Tell a beautiful woman she's smart, and tell a smart woman she's beautiful.

Search for women in the aisles of your local bookstore.

Keep a cellphone in the wheel well of your car, along with a wallet that has $100 in it.

 

"I married that woman."--Boots

 

I think the issue is whether or not you are going to have to deal with them or see them on a regular basis. If so, that can be trouble.

 

I've always figured co-workers are the bigger problem. The "during" and the "after." Awkward as hell.

 

Not quite the same thing, but my college newspaper yielded at least five marriages, including mine. And, to be fair, many more flings that ended awkwardly.

 

At the newspaper where I met my first ex, we were one of four couples there that eventually married. Pretty sure only one remains standing almost 20 years later. The rest ended in spectacular shitshows.

Also, at every paper I ever worked at, there was a well established “village bicycle,” if you know what I mean. Those are the ones you learn to avoid.

 

At a former shop, one of my colleagues was the entertainment writer, and married. He was at the county fair to cover that night's stage performance, when a female reporter came into the makeshift office, shed her clothes down to bra and panties and changed into another outfit. She said to him, "You know, you're one of the few guys in the office I haven't ..." This was before I worked there, but within a few days of my start, I was warned about her.

 

It was the cops writer at my first paper.

 

At my second newspaper gig, the copy desk chief was married to one of the copy deskers. The guy who took my place in sports married one of the librarians who was there when I worked there. Two male reporters married two female reporters. Hit or miss office romances were pretty routine.