I Had a Nice Time And Other Lies...: How to find love & sh*t like that (27 page)

The one downside of getting engaged, however, is that now you like, have to plan a fucking wedding. Which sounds nice in theory and on Pinterest boards, but in reality is like shooting yourself in the face every single day for an entire year.

First comes setting up a registry, which also sounds fun but isn’t in real life because you have to plan the gifts so far in advance. Like, all of a sudden you have a ring on your finger and now you’re just dying for a salad spinner? You already live with your boyfriend and manage to cut your own chicken every day, but will scream if you don’t have the new Michael Aram gold cutlery set? It makes no fucking sense. Honestly, registry would be much simpler if you could register at Chanel, SoulCycle, or Chase QuickPay.

But let’s rewind and talk about the actual engagement, a moment betches talk about sometimes (read: when someone else they know gets engaged) and nicegirls have dreamed about since the moment they exited the womb. The single most important thing about an engagement is that you say
yes
because you actually want to marry this person and not out of fear of embarrassing your boyfriend while he’s on the ground on one knee. There’s not much else to be said here except: Be sure.

The second most important consideration is how he does it. If he’s smart, he better fucking ask the advice of your closest friend or confidante, a.k.a. the person who knows your dream engagement scenario. He should also ask her advice
about what kind of ring you want. It’s critical that this friend knows not to spill her personal opinions into her advice. Like, if you hate a halo setting but she likes it and then your boyfriend proposes with the nastiest halo princess cut you’ve ever seen, you should just stop speaking to that friend immediately. She deserves a lifetime of unhappiness. Sorry, but it’s true. You can re-set a diamond, you can’t re-set a friendship.

Well in advance, make sure to tell him which of your friends to ask when he needs anything that requires surprising you. Then prepare that friend for every eventuality. How you want to be asked, how you don’t want to be asked, the type of ring you want, the type of ring you definitely, definitely do not want, how much you want your mom involved, and so on. As long as he’s not a total fucking moron who thinks all girls like the same type of ring and getting proposed to on an MLB game Jumbotron, you’ll probably get what you want.

Even though the whole breakdown of what your ring and engagement says about you is extremely subjective, we’ll do it anyway.

In almost all circumstances—except, of course, for the one in which the bro uses all his savings and buys a ring that leaves him homeless—the bigger the diamond, the happier the fiancée. At least this is true for most fiancées we know. So, maybe casually let your boyfriend know that you’re willing to wait for him to propose so that he can save up for a bigger rock. Make the argument that it’s better for you because you get to stare at this piece of jewelry you are obsessed with your entire life, which in turn will be a reminder of how much you love him. You can also argue that seeing your big gorgeous ring on your finger might also remind you to give him blow jobs more often. Trust us, he won’t have a good defense.

The minute you get engaged, everyone on your Facebook feed will start talking shit behind your back about your ring or about how it happened. But you don’t care about those
people. Those people are “friends,” a.k.a. people who exist to be jealous of your awesomely curated Instagram life. No, you only care about what your friends—the ones who will be in the wedding and/or will be hearing you bitch about the wedding—think. Which brings us to a very important point about getting married: Be the Bridal Betch, not the Bridal Bitch.

So, when planning your wedding, remember that just because the next year is all about you, there’s a gentle way of getting people on board with that fact. These should be the happiest days of your life. Why spend them being purposefully left out of a group chat full of your friends shit-talking about how you’ve become an overbearing bridal bitch?

Calm down there, Charlotte York. Now the issue of whether to work or not has like, a shit-ton to do with the situation. The short answer is that you should always be doing
something
besides telling the nanny how to raise your kids. You should always have things to talk about that don’t involve
you redecorating your house with your husband’s money or how big of a shit your toddler took that day. No man wants to come home and have dinner with his housekeeper. You should always be relied upon somewhere outside your home. Whether that’s being CEO of a major corporation or being a docent at the natural history museum, make sure you have a life of your own that is separate and independent from his and, most important, gives you interesting shit to talk about.

Now, as we said, the guy should still be paying for more than you do. Unless you’re one of the 1 percent of females who aren’t bothered by financially supporting a guy, seek out someone who makes more money than you. This is way easier to do if you’re a waitress than, say, Sheryl Sandberg or us, but that’s all the more reason to search for someone who’s your equal or better in ambition and drive.

But even though you should be financially supported, that doesn’t mean financially dependent. You don’t want to be trapped. You should always be working on something, and ideally it should pay you a decent amount of money. Women have come a long way since our grandmas needed to ask our grandpas for money to buy underwear and bobby pins. It’s now acceptable and important to be an independent woman. You can be a stay-at-home type of woman in the future, but only because you made money for yourself in your twenties and thirties. Never underestimate the power that comes with having your own money and being like,
Oh I don’t need another BMW, but I could totally buy it if I wanted to
.

Maybe you want more than a decent amount of money. Maybe you want a “fuck-you job” (a job in which you make
enough money that if your husband is being annoying enough, you can be like,
Fuck you, I’m out
at any point without having to worry about how to pay for your own froyo). A fuck-you job allows you to base your decision to stay in the relationship purely on the whims of your feelings and not on any financial need. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? That leads us to our next question. . . .

Generally speaking, the person who has less money is the person who doesn’t want a prenup. For those of you who are stupid, a prenup is a document that you get
before
marriage that says something along the lines of “if we get divorced, you’re not entitled to any of my fucking money.”
⁴
The person with more money usually wants a prenup because it can be easier to deal with a plan for a breakup when both people are being rational and the poor one is not beating the shit out of the rich one’s car with golf clubs.

People who are against prenups argue that they can make it too easy to give up on a partnership. Marriages are like the stock market or
Keeping Up with
the Kardashians:
Riddled with good years and years you want to punch your husband in the face on the daily. Having no prenup makes it harder to get divorced, which means you might be more inclined to stick out those shitty years, which might turn into glorious, obsessed-with-each-other-even-though-you’re-old-now years. Then again, they might not, and you might wish you had a prenup if you suddenly win the lottery or your great uncle dies and leaves you a shit-ton of money. There’s really no way to know, and we definitely can’t tell you what to do with your money, so it’s your choice if the risk is worth the potential reward, but as business betches who have dark souls, we lean toward the big P.

You know that awfully cliché phrase that people say and you’re just like,
Uugh shut up
?:
Happy Wife, Happy Life!
Yes, it’s really annoying, but it’s also really true. You know what else is painfully true? As time goes on, shit starts to droop.

One day you look in a mirror and notice a few lines forming around the eyes. Despite four Pilates classes a week, the ass is still jiggling. The veins on the ankles begin to come to the surface. This honestly sounds like a horror movie and that the person we’re describing is the monster. But no, that person is you! In like, fifteen to twenty years!

But just because you’re slowly turning into the Loch Ness Monster (read: old person) does that mean you can just like, give up on yourself? Does that mean you can order
dessert every time you go out to dinner? That you can start shopping at Filene’s Basement? Fuck that.

If you do, your husband is not going to want to have sex with you and your marriage will crumble into pieces. Note the distinction, though: We are not saying that he won’t want to have sex with you because you’re getting fat and ugly. No, he won’t want to have sex with you because you are
letting yourself
get fat and ugly. The ugliest you’ll ever be is unhappy. Wallowing around in unhappiness is why you’re ugly AF.

A confident betch is happy with how she looks. She’s happy with whom and what she surrounds herself. She still likes to have sex and generally gives a shit. This is the type of woman you want to be for the rest of your life.

Why? Because taking care of yourself and having a positive outlook attracts people to you, including your husband. The minute you start to give up on yourself is the minute he starts to give up on you.

And
of course
this is absolutely the case for him, too. If he thinks the obese version of the dad bod is cool, well, then he can sleep in the pool house until he gets his fucking fat ass onto a treadmill. At no time in your marriage should your husband think for a second that if you wanted to, you couldn’t leave and have dozens of guys trying to date you, whether you’re twenty-six or seventy-six. The key to the subtle manipulation of marriage is always letting your husband know that you’re a prize that he should be admiring and lucky to have. So what’s a betch to do? Two words: Stay hot. Your husband will be happy. You will be happy. You will also still be having orgasms and you’ll never have to see what the
inside of Filene’s Basement looks like because if it’s anything like our parents’ basements, well, then it’s a win-win for you. That shit is from like,
Saw IV
.

No man is going to opt for hair plugs and staying in shape if his wife of twenty years looks as worn out as a 2005
Us Weekly
at a nail salon. Staying in shape mentally and physically means you still give a shit about where you’re headed in life and you still have a lot to offer. Relationships are work and giving up on beauty maintenance is equivalent to giving up on life. Elizabeth Taylor’s eighth marriage was at age sixty. She was a power betch who never settled for any guy who didn’t make her happy and know she was hot shit. And she was able to have this confidence at age sixty because she made sure she always looked amazing.