Happily Ever After was a damn lie. No one rides off into the sunset. The days are not all rosy and loving and no one is spending hours every day lying in bed telling each other how wonderful the other is. It’s just not the reality of marriage.

The reality is this:

Half (50%) of Americans get divorced.

Statistically, it’s probably accurate to assume that ALL married people find marriage challenging and MOST married people are sometimes unhappy in their marriage and EVERY married person sometimes does something imperfect.

In fact, the state of marriage is in such trouble that the federal government is now trying to help people stay married by providing marriage education courses free of charge regardless of income. You know if anti-welfare George W. Bush is providing free social services to try to help people avoid divorce - marriage is having some serious problems.

 All the romantic movies and fairy tales and expectations were simply a load of crap. 

Marriage is this: very hard work.

If you consider staying miserably married a failure in itself, and I do, then way more than the majority of us are failing at it.

Jon & Kate’s marriage is a resounding success (statistically they’ve beaten the average divorce rate of multiples parents, which is two or three times higher than for parents of single children) and it’s a shame that anyone’s marriage would be so highly criticized. Holding on to our absurd fairy-tale ideals about what marriage should be like isn’t going to help anyone’s marriage.

Pretending that marriage is as easy as happily ever after never helps anyone’s children grow up to be good at the difficult job of being a spouse. It is better that their 8 children are exposed to the reality of the hard work, conflict and conflict-resolution that goes into a marriage, so they will have a clearer understanding of marriage before they do it expecting happily ever after.

What criticism of their marriage does is dismiss all the hard work and trial and error that a successful marriage, like Jon & Kate’s, involves.

You know what I think? I think if you’re critical of other people’s marriage – well, you’re probably critical of your own spouse. And criticism is a sure marriage killer.

Post from: Blisstree

J&K+8 = Marriage Reality

TLC, if you’re listening, here’s the episode I want to see:

I want to see the viewers who are critical of Kate’s mothering of twins and sextuplets be the nanny for a few days!

Wouldn’t that be good, wholesome, karmic fun?

You think it’s so easy? We’ll see how YOU do with every eye in America watching you babysit 8 kids under 7.

I want to see Kate behind that little monitor she was using to watch the nanny interview criticizing every breath, move, utterance and step.

Yeah, that would be really fun for me. That would get great ratings too, I’m sure.

Post from: Blisstree

Perfect Jon & Kate Episode

Truly, it’s one of the few shows on television without any inappropriate language or sexual connotation. And my kids like to watch it as much as I do.

They fight and love each other like you and Daddy, my 6-year-old daughter Ainsley remarked.

That’s right, we fight and love each other. Most married people do, marriage is hard, honey, I told her.

They got special treatment all the way through the Pittsburg Zoo with close up petting and feeding of animals and the zookeeper bonding with animal enthusiast Aiden. Little Alexis got to pet a real live algidator, just like her toy algidator.

Kate, most criticized mother in America, got neurotic about the safety of the children and took issue with where the Jon was sitting on the zoo tram.

Jon flipped out on Kate at the zoo for not disciplining her own children while she went to look in the penguin house (with at least half of them).

Kate slapped him on the leg – twice. He joked about reporting her for abuse.

The toddlers fought, slapped, hit and pushed and cried loudly, dramatically and hysterically. Even sweet Hannah, while comforting a sick Joel, attacked her sister for getting into her nurturing territory.

Jon insisted “his public” knows he’s the one who gets up with the twins at 6:30 in the morning – yes, Jon we’ve established you’re a great father.

Kate threw a dirty diaper at a producer!

Kate explained the time-outs and admitted they spend quite a bit of time in it. Can you imagine the public outrage if they were spankers?

Kate established, we don’t sleep with the boys anymore, and we won’t until your married.

They agreed two of the children, Collin and Alexis, don’t really get along because one is a control freak while the other is a wild-woman. You can’t control the wild woman.

Maddy, like a typical 6 year old, tried getting more attention than the toddlers by demanding she hand out the cards they made for Daddy. Kate admitted she was quite controlling with the younger kids, unlike anyone else she knowsshe said faciciously.

Kate explained the modern-day stay-at-home mom’s reality times 8, Everyday is painfully the same, yet vastly different.

Yep, arm-chair psychologist diagnosis: Perfectly flawed, perfectly normal and perfectly great way to spend the evening snuggled up with my kids on the couch.

I hope they win an Emmy!

Post from: Blisstree

J & K + 8 = Emmy winners?