Personal Limitations: Marital Status Part 3

Today we are looking at how readers who are married approach the fictional world.

Never having been married, I cannot speak to this from personal experience like I can with the single’s limitations. But in talking with those who are married, I have found the experiences of marriage increases both freedoms and restrictions, because now you must not only consider yourself but also your mate.

So what does this mean?

1. Respect your mate’s limitations. Your wife very imaginative and easily unnerved? Then insisting you watch a horror movie together is probably not the best idea.

2. Know how your perceptions affect your mate. For example, a friend gave up her habit of reading romances when she discovered that her talking about the heroes made her husband feel like he had to meet those expectations.

3. Learn to compromise. Each of us has limitations that are more bendable than others. Maybe your husband likes horror and WWII war movies. Although you’ll have nightmares if you watch that latest horror flick, you’re simply not fond of the violence of war movies. So compromise. Offer to watch with him that war film he wants to see as part of a special gift, or ask for your favorite musical comedy in return.

4. Use fiction to spur you toward each other. While sexually explicit movies are off-limits to me, I know a married couple who occasionally watches together a movie rated R for some of the sexual content. The wife emphasizes, however, that they must always watch together and that they do it only on a rare occasion. But she says that it can also spur them toward each other.

And ultimately that seems to be the key for married couples. Fiction that tears apart becomes off-limits while fiction that spurs the husband and wife toward each other is to be enjoyed.