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Plenty of advice on what makes for a good, happy marriage has been thrown around for centuries. <\/span><\/p>\n Ironically enough, it was a lifelong bachelor, who possessed rather ambivalent feelings on the institution, who offered some of the very best insights on this front. <\/span><\/p>\n Friedrich Nietzsche<\/a> never walked down the aisle himself, though he proposed marriage multiple times, to the same woman, who rejected each of his overtures. Perhaps, as may have been the case with Thoreau as well, this experience of unrequited love lent a bit of sour grapes to his future thinking on women and matrimony. For Nietzsche\u2019s professed feelings about marriage would indeed be conflicted; he saw the institution as beneficial for the raising of children, and thus to society as a whole, but also as a potential burden on a man\u2019s personal progress and fulfillment.<\/span><\/p>\n But Nietzsche offered similarly dualistic and frequently polemical takes on most other subjects as well. While his approach was to mix irony and seriousness \u2014 to provoke thought, rather than offer clear takes \u2014 within these intentional obscurifications he nonetheless embedded unarguably sound maxims and timeless truths<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n Thus among the philosopher’s writings on marriage, you can find some surprisingly good nuggets of wisdom. Ones that can be used as helpful gauges in deciding whether or not you should consider taking your commitment to the person you\u2019re dating to the next, ultimate, level. <\/span><\/p>\n The main thrust of Nietzsche’s view on matrimony is that if people are to make a good go of it, romantic feelings and sexual attraction alone won\u2019t suffice; the relationship has to be built on a foundation of strong friendship. As he famously said, <\/span>\u201cIt is not a lack of love<\/b>, <\/b>but<\/b> a lack of <\/b>friendship<\/b> that makes unhappy marriages<\/b>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n In assessing whether your dating relationship has this foundation of friendship, and will thus segue into a happy, successful marriage, Nietzsche would have you ask yourself the following three questions:<\/span><\/p>\n To be a good spousal friend, one should have already proved to be a good friend in general. Nietzsche said: <\/span>\u201c<\/span>The best friend will probably acquire the best wife, because a good marriage is founded on the talent for friendship<\/b>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n If the person you\u2019re dating has healthy, deep, long-lasting friendships, that can be taken as a sign that they\u2019ll make a good spouse; conversely, if their friendships are conflict-ridden, marked by premature ends, or simply non-existent, that can be a red flag worth heeding<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n The above is a direct quote from Nietzsche, and he follows it with this observation: \u201c<\/span>Everything else in marriage is transitory, but most of the time you are together will be devoted to conversation<\/b>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Feelings of romantic love and lust will decline; your physical bodies will age; but your spouse will remain your primary source of comfort, interest, and entertainment, for, if everything goes well, a half century or more. Marriage is essentially a long conversation, so when you\u2019re dating someone, evaluate the quality of your current communication. <\/span><\/p>\n Do you feel like there\u2019s always more to talk about with your significant other than there is time, that you can hardly get enough of conversing with them? Can you talk about all sorts of things, from the fun to the philosophical? As Nietzsche notes, \u201c<\/span>Friends do not unquestionably uphold, reinforce, and echo our attitudes but provide new perspectives and interrogate our presuppositions<\/b>.\u201d So does your partner like being a bit challenged and engaging in a little friendly debate? Can she hold her own in such exchanges without becoming frustrated or offended?<\/span><\/p>\n Or, conversely, do your conversations stay shallow, and you find that she doesn\u2019t have much to say, about much of anything?<\/span><\/p>\n If the latter is already the case, when your relationship is still fairly new, just imagine how barren the desert of your dialogues will be in the years and decades to come once your respective past histories, present landscapes, and future hopes have already been thoroughly mined, mapped out, and explored. <\/span><\/p>\n While the goggles of new love may cause you to overlook how little real conversation you engage in now, and how much of your time together is filled with trading memes, making out, watching TV, and nothing-more-than-time-filling-teasing, as time passes, you\u2019ll become bored, and the realization you have perhaps five more decades of daily dead time ahead will hit you like a ton of sobering bricks. As Nietzsche observed: \u201c<\/span>How many married men there are who have experienced the morning when it has dawned on them that their young wife is tedious.<\/b>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s possible to make too much of the clich\u00e9 of pitying the older couple at a restaurant that eats their meal in silence. After all, one of the well-earned privileges of intimacy is the ability to comfortably be together without speaking. But while a couple <\/span>can<\/span><\/i> sit in silence, in the best relationships, you rarely <\/span>want <\/span><\/i>to. There\u2019s too much you desire to discuss, and your banter is too terribly enjoyable to forgo.<\/span><\/p>\nIs your significant other a good friend in general? <\/span><\/h2>\n
\u201cDo you believe you are going to enjoy talking with this woman up into your old age?\u201d<\/h2>\n
Do you have mutual admiration for each other?<\/h2>\n