Dr. V on a good test of compatibility

See here.

I once heard Dennis Prager say on his nationally syndicated radio show that traveling together is a good test for marital compatibility. Sage advice.

Long before I had heard of Prager[,] I subjected my bride-to-be to such a test. I got the idea from the delightful 1982 movie The Diner. One of the guys who hung out at the diner tested for marital suitability by administering a football quiz to his fiancé. That gave me the idea of taking my future wife on a cross-country trip from Cleveland, Ohio to Los Angeles, California in my Volkswagen bus.

[ ... ]

Dear one took the rigors of that trip 43 years ago like a trouper, and [she] passed the test with flying colors. We got married the following summer and remain happily married 42 summers later.

When I told the story to a feminazi some years back[,] she gave me a hard and disapproving look. She didn't like that I had imposed a marital compatibility test upon my lady love. What a bitch! So here's another bit of free and friendly advice. Marry an angel, never a bitch. Life's enough of a bitch. You don't need to marry one. Does your bellicosity need an outlet? Fight outside the home. Home should be an oasis of peace and tranquility.

How many people these days know the phrase is—as Dr. V writes correctly—"like a trouper" and not "like a trooper"? Like a member of a hard-working troupe, in other words. So many people spell phonetically, and when they read something, they retain only the sounds of what they've read, not the orthography. They mentally hear the words they're reading but don't see what's on the page in front of them. What a shame. Written English is a minefield for phonetic spellers and lazy, sloppy thinkers. This is why so many idiots misspell the incompetent governor's surname as Newsome instead of Newsom. They're not seeing what they read.

The point of the travel test described above is that it takes time, and the deeper, more enduring qualities of a person—her honesty, integrity, endurance, patience, kindness, etc.—can only be seen over time. True love and commitment can only be known over time. This is why the long-standing psychological wisdom has been that love is more of an action and a habit and less of a feeling. Romance is a feeling, but feelings come and go. What buoys and anchors the relationship when the initial fire of passion dies down? It's got to be something deep because, if all you have together is superficial nonsense, then your relationship has no true foundation. Underlying all of the good qualities in a person are the metaqualities of consistency and constancy. More practically, these manifest as loyalty, faithfulness, and commitment, with all of the attendant, supporting virtues like forgiveness and a willingness to begin again when one of you has messed up. If you've got all of that, you've got everything.